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Your Take on Ryzen? Worth buying or stick to Intel

Page 3 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

Would you buy Ryzen?

  • Yes, it is good enough or better

    Votes: 125 75.3%

  • No, not worth it

    Votes: 41 24.7%
  • Total voters
    166
  • Poll closed .
I voted yes only because at this time I have an i7-2600 in my computer. I play quite a bit of Warthunder at 1080 highest settings using an R9 290 overclocked. It crushes the game no problem as well as BF2 and does ok on BF1 for my needs. I got rid of my FX 8320E I had running @4.5ghz because when I benched the i7-2600 Dell 990 I got for $25 against it, I ended up getting an extra 18+FPS on the top end in Warthunder's built in Tank benchmark. Felt very bad for AMD at that point and ebay'd all my AMD components. I'll probably build a new Ryzen system this fall.
 
Ryzen is better than I thought it would be; while AMD remained relatively strong in heavily multi-threaded workloads, it has improved considerably on single-threaded loads, though in plenty of them even 2012/2013 Intel CPUs are still pulling ahead of AMD's 2017 flagship.

I guess it will cause Intel to slash their prices at the absurdly high end, but I've never spent more than about £400 UKP on a CPU for a customer, let alone for myself (gaming is my only CPU-intensive interest).

One thing to bear in mind is that AMD has had a long history of their first gen of a new arch being 'rough at the edges', with noteworthy improvements with subsequent revisions. For example, I entirely skipped the Phenom I and went straight from Athlon 64 X2 to Phenom II. Bulldozer was another example, and Vishera was a fair improvement. The first Athlon XPs were competitive but ran very hot. The picture changed drastically by the time the Barton core came out.

However, I am still worried about AMD's future. It wouldn't surprise me if Intel haven't been bothering to pursue desktop CPU R&D with the vigour that they had been when AMD was leading the pack, and while it's nice that AMD has done something respectable, there will always be a response to whatever they produce. I think there's a certain amount of respect that carries a monetary value that goes to whoever is the leader of the mainstream set, e.g. geeks at home buying product X are more likely to choose product X's manufacturer in the workplace (e.g. server environments). IMO what AMD has done is to get their nose near Intel's range, and they will get noticed for it (the main benefit will probably be to secure new console contracts), but Intel will respond, and unless Intel are reaching the end of the Core line's evolution and also need to revolutionise their design (ie. they might need multiple years to complete it), Intel have the budget to easily pull ahead if and when they choose.

Another game-changing tactic might occur when the lower-end AMD CPUs come out: perhaps they will position their (presumably competitive) CPUs in a way that makes Intel play second fiddle, like for example putting a CPU between the i3 and i5 which soundly beats the i5. I haven't voted because I don't know what's going to happen in this respect.

The other thing that is notably absent from AT's and TR's reviews are temps and power consumption stats. While some people don't care how much power a CPU uses, I certainly do.
 
Arachnotronic said:
Sure. The idea is that if you run a game at 1080P, the GPU will be able to deliver higher frame rates than it can deliver at 1440p -- less graphics work to do.

What this means, then, is that IF the CPU is capable of rendering more frames but is being held back by what the GPU can do at 1440p, then lowering the resolution to 1080p (reducing the burden on the GPU compared to 1440p) will allow you to see just how many the CPU is able to pump out when the GPU isn't holding it back.
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thanks, I remember learning about that a long time ago.
 
It seems like Ryzen is worth it to get 8 cores plus 8 HT's. So while i am willing to get a Ryzen CPU i would have a hard time buying anything other than a 7 series. Unless the extra cache per core of the 6 core/12 thread CPU makes an improvement i would probably only get a an 8 core/16 thread model.

I would have no problems recommending Ryzen to my extended family who do not game for a cheap upgrade when the rest of the models are released and budget motherboards.
 
Ryzen is pretty much what I expected it to be - massively increased IPC over Bulldozer derivatives, but not enough to catch up to Intel. Power usage under control, with clock speeds a little bit lower than Bulldozer but not much lower.

So I'm not surprised that it performs like it does. I think it is still good value for the money - if you need 8 cores. If you are building a workstation, this would be a very cost effective part. For most gamers, the 8 cores are unnecessary, and an Intel Core i7 7700k would delivery better framerates. Obviously there are a few games where the Ryzen would perform better, but not many. It does however perform "well enough" that you would get perfectly playable framerates, but not quite as fast as a Core i7.

I think it still a great achievement by AMD - they can be proud of what they have done. I do think people got a little carried away by the hype, but I don't think that is AMD's fault. There were quite honest about it.

Personally I'm excited by the 4C/8T Ryzens, because it looks like they will be half the price of a Core i7, but might not be that much slower. I'm also curious if they will be able to clock higher because they have fewer cores.

That being said, we know they are working in Ryzen 2, and I'm also wondering if it is worth delaying my upgrade to next year, to get Ryzen 2 instead. Then again, I have a Phenom II X6, so it is pretty ancient now!
 
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_creators_of_athlon_radeon_and_other/

From the AMD AMA. CEO herself answering stuff.

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Expect games to be patched at some point.
 
JimKiler said:
those answers are Reddit are awesome because they answer the tough question and it does give me hope AMD can get 1080p peformance on a more even playing field with Intel. in 3 months i wonder were we will be for 1080p benchmarks.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

Landscape should change A LOT by the time the 6 core models are released in a month or two, motherboard BIOSes are more stable and tweaked, and games themselves start getting optimized for Zen. It's pretty much guaranteed results will be much better and consistent between reviewers by that time.

It's been 5 years of software tuning done exclusively for Intel architectures. Although Zen runs most of the code out there quite admirably, there will be bottlenecks here and there that are optimizations for Intel architectures.


Give it time. Everyone wants a new platform to be 100% out of the gate, that's just not possible especially for a company like AMD with limited resources vs the competition. It's a miracle that they're back in the game, for starters.
 
Ryzen. Intel doesn't sell what I need, at a price I am willing to pay. I need more cores for the things I do, and I refuse to pay the Intel tax. Plus, gaming at 4k everything is GPU bound anyway.
 
Overclocking leaves a little to be desired. But I don't think you can beat the price : performance of the 1700. Its fast enough in games, sometime faster than Intel, can overclock and eight cores / sixteen threads is pretty nice.
 
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I will probably go with 1600 or the 1700 depending on the price/performance ratio and how it performs on linux. i5 level gaming performance is good enough for me, i need better compile times and multitasking. So twice as many cores for a similar price to the intel offerings is pretty clear win in my book. The 1600 is very interesting to me, because if it competes in the same price bracket as the i5 and has similar gaming performance, the i5 would start to look very sad with it's 4 threads...
 
thepaleobiker said:
I have that G4560 🙂 its a sweet little CPU! I wish Ryzen had R3/R5 CPUs with ITX Mobos so I'd return these and get AMD instead, but unfortunately I dont think that's possible....for another few months.
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I actually think its best that they are delayed right now, ryzen needs the bios sorted and games need to be patched for ryzens uarch according to lisa su, so by the time ryzen 3/5 come out the landscape will be better.

Yea that little pentium is a cracker 🙂
 
I want an upgrade from my AMD 860K, Frys has a combo with the i5-7400 non k and a MSI B250 motherboard for $235 should I buy that combo or wait for the lower end Ryzen cpu's to drop. Im looking for maximum performance and am very cheap when it comes to computer parts. What do you guys think will be the best bang for the buck? Or should i sit on my 860K still which i really dont want to do because I know im missing out on some good performance.????
 
eternalone said:
I want an upgrade from my AMD 860K, Frys has a combo with the i5-7400 non k and a MSI B250 motherboard for $235 should I buy that combo or wait for the lower end Ryzen cpu's to drop. Im looking for maximum performance and am very cheap when it comes to computer parts. What do you guys think will be the best bang for the buck? Or should i sit on my 860K still which i really dont want to do because I know im missing out on some good performance.????
Click to expand...

I have the same cpu as you do and i'm personally waiting to see how the ryzen 5 1600 turns out. Depending on the price performance ratio it could potentially make the i5 choice seem like a really bad idea. Even more so when one thinks about future prospects.
 
eternalone said:
I want an upgrade from my AMD 860K, Frys has a combo with the i5-7400 non k and a MSI B250 motherboard for $235 should I buy that combo or wait for the lower end Ryzen cpu's to drop. Im looking for maximum performance and am very cheap when it comes to computer parts. What do you guys think will be the best bang for the buck? Or should i sit on my 860K still which i really dont want to do because I know im missing out on some good performance.????
Click to expand...
if i was buying for the here and now and Couldn't wait 3 months, i would either buy a cheap pentium, a 6800k or a 6700k, any of those three would be great for the next year or so.

If you can wait untill ryzen 3/5 i would look very hard at 1600x for 260$, alternatively if you take lisa su word that games are going to be patched for ryzen then i would just get an r7 1700 now and overclock it to 3.8-4 ghz, crazy power and future proof 🙂
 
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Have to admit I'm a little disappointed. No question about it, Ryzen is a huge step up for AMD. However, as usual the hype has made it out to be a bit too good to be true. It's not as fast as it was made out to be in single thread performance, it doesn't overclock well, and its real world power consumption is not as low as it was believed to be. If I had to buy now I'd seriously consider Ryzen, especially if we confirm working ECC RAM. However, I no longer feel the itch to upgrade from my 4790K's, Ryzen is good, just not good enough to plunk down money upgrading from 4790K.
 
fleshconsumed said:
Have to admit I'm a little disappointed. No question about it, Ryzen is a huge step up for AMD. However, as usual the hype has made it out to be a bit too good to be true. It's not as fast as it was made out to be in single thread performance, it doesn't overclock well, and its real world power consumption is not as low as it was believed to be. If I had to buy now I'd seriously consider Ryzen, especially if we confirm working ECC RAM. However, I no longer feel the itch to upgrade from my 4790K's, Ryzen is good, just not good enough to plunk down money upgrading from 4790K.
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Read a few posts up, the Reddit AMA. Ryzen supports ECC but you have to check what motherboard you buy as it has to have the setting in the BIOS for it to work.
 
.vodka said:
Read a few posts up, the Reddit AMA. Ryzen supports ECC but you have to check what motherboard you buy as it has to have the setting in the BIOS for it to work.
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The ones I've read say pending motherboard support, and so far most motherboard manufacturers explicitly said no ECC ram support. We'll need a few days to get first hand user accounts whether the motherboards actually support ECC RAM or not.
 
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