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Real AMD Bristol Ridge on sale?

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jpiniero said:
It's pretty obvious that AMD decided to not release it to DIY and just focus on Ryzen.
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I can't say I blame them. As impressive* as Carrizo/Bristol Ridge are in their own right, with Ryzen they just got Conroe'd. Excavator was rendered irrelevant over night. I don't think we'll officially see anything with an IGP for AM4 until Raven Ridge. AMD would not be doing themselves any favours by dragging the remains of the BD fiasco over on their new platform.

*compared to other BD derivatives.

hojnikb said:
Not for retail they didn't.
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For the above reason I think.
 
Insert_Nickname said:
I can't say I blame them. As impressive* as Carrizo/Bristol Ridge are in their own right, with Ryzen they just got Conroe'd.
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Well, it would have cost them something and maybe meant a loss of focus on Ryzen, however against that if they had made a push with Bristol Ridge for DIY'ers the state and supply of AM4 motherboards might have been a lot better when Ryzen launched.
 
KompuKare said:
Well, it would have cost them something and maybe meant a loss of focus on Ryzen, however against that if they had made a push with Bristol Ridge for DIY'ers the state and supply of AM4 motherboards might have been a lot better when Ryzen launched.
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Both yes and no. Since AM4 has been launched since late september for OEMs, the platform was already in the wild for 5 months prior to the Ryzen launch. The kinks would have been worked out of the platform itself since, if not before, then. No OEM worth their warranty would have considered using a half-baked unstable platform.

The specific AGESA microcode for Ryzen is another matter, it would have been very much in development by september. Whereas Excavator microcode was pretty much a done deal once Carrizo launched in '15. I don't think it required that much effort to port it to the AM4 platform, since that capability was built-in from the start. In other words, its Ryzen that was not really "ready" by the time of its launch. The AM4 platform itself is/was fine.

BTW Ryzen itself is fine, even with a "beta" BIOS it is rock stable. It is only tweaking that is a problem currently. Particularly with regards for memory. If you run at stock, the platform is fine.

Another reason would be the simple lack of volume in the DIY space. The interest in APUs is slim at best, and AMD already had Steamroller APUs on FM2+ for that market. There really isn't much difference between Steamroller and Excavator. Both have their strong points and weaknesses, while AMD would love to sell every one of Carrizo/Bristol Ridge dies to OEMs.
 
KompuKare said:
Well, it would have cost them something and maybe meant a loss of focus on Ryzen, however against that if they had made a push with Bristol Ridge for DIY'ers the state and supply of AM4 motherboards might have been a lot better when Ryzen launched.
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The issues with the Ryzen motherboards are mostly related to memory clocks, Bristol Ridge is limited to DDR4-2400 anyway.

The supply issues are worst with the high end boards, an earlier release of Bristol Ridge would only have improved the availability of entry level boards.
 
Bristol Ridge has been available in Japan and Germany (and possibly elsewhere) in a combo with an Asus A320 board since like . . . Nov 2016? The A12-9800 anyway.

Good luck getting that from a NA retailer though.
 
Sounds about right. It isn't worth it to go bonkers over one of those anyway, and AMD knows it. They aren't bad chips. They just aren't up to Summit Ridge standards.
 
Raven Ridge APU isn't due until next year so why not launch Bristol Ridge APU in the meantime?
The A8-9600 is $101 so its a good choice for work/office PC or home PC for web browsing/work/light gaming.
I just don't understand why they are not launching it in retail now? Maybe not enough AM4 motherboards to go around?
The Pentium G4560 is just sitting there with no competition where the A6 and A8 could slot in.
 
I was really interested in BR as a cheap mITX light gaming rig, but it failed to materialize before seeing Zen in action. Now I'm waiting for Raven Ridge to fill that void. I'm hoping for 4C/8T Zen + Vega IGP for under $200.
 
mohit9206 said:
The Pentium G4560 is just sitting there with no competition where the A6 and A8 could slot in.
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Exactly. RyZen 7 competes favorably with Intel's HEDT and high-end mainstream consumer CPUs. Soon, we'll have RyZen 5 to compete with Core i5 CPUs.

But where is AMD's competition for the G4560? Are they going to cede the budget market to Intel, just as they are poised to overtake market-share in the high-end market?

Seems like they need both Defense as well as Offense to "win" this game, or at least gain and not just transfer market-share.

I would buy a Bristol Ridge APU + AM4 board, NOW, if I knew that I could drop in a Raven's Ridge APU 6-8 months from now. Or even with the knowledge that I could drop in a RyZen, if I bought a dGPU to go along with it. (Assuming BR prices are sane.)
 
$101 for the A8-9600? Is that a joke?

The only thing currently exciting about Bristol Ridge is the 64-bit iGPU performance. There are probably some niche applications where that could be very useful.

But $101 for a chip like that is too much.
 
VirtualLarry said:
Exactly. RyZen 7 competes favorably with Intel's HEDT and high-end mainstream consumer CPUs. Soon, we'll have RyZen 5 to compete with Core i5 CPUs.

But where is AMD's competition for the G4560? Are they going to cede the budget market to Intel, just as they are poised to overtake market-share in the high-end market?

Seems like they need both Defense as well as Offense to "win" this game, or at least gain and not just transfer market-share.

I would buy a Bristol Ridge APU + AM4 board, NOW, if I knew that I could drop in a Raven's Ridge APU 6-8 months from now. Or even with the knowledge that I could drop in a RyZen, if I bought a dGPU to go along with it. (Assuming BR prices are sane.)
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I hear a lot of people think the zen/vega apu would do them nicely.

but not til ~xmas it seems

so:

to move now with new gen stuff (am4/ddr4/freesync/pcie3 m.2 slot/...) mostly,

u have to go the dear and over powered ryzen am4 discrete gpu route & miss out on vega or wait ~a month+ for it

or u could use this am4 apu as a $100 bench warmer for the drop in raven ridge apu when it arrives.

biz users planning fleets of raven ridge PCs for their workers, could do worse than play with one of these in the interim as an exercise, or even actually use them as low but sufficient power desktops w/ an excellent upgrade path.
 
Finally, our issues that we reported to the German supplier who sells the AM4 + BR bundle have been confirmed. And it seems it is not a board issue, something is wrong with the chipset. Really don't know what can go wrong, since OEMs have been selling BR for quite some time now. Although no big review site bothered to review any, and I haven't spotted any OEM system for sale without a dGPU. For a reason, I guess ... 🙄

Don't think AMD has the manpower to manage multiple simultaneous releases, and of course, RyZen is the most important for them now.

Bristol Ridge was ‘pre-announced’ a year ago. 😱
Nice time to market, once again.
 
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