Welcome competition for Intel with AMD's latest Ryzen CPUs

[PC_Ace]

I remember a time in the late 90's/ early 2000's when AMD processors used to give Intel's a jolly good run for their money.
I had rooms full of them in fact, used in both my ISP and computer training businesses.
Since then, Intel has dominated performance PC platforms, with AMD playing mostly catch-up and relegated to mostly budget-builds.
The enthusiasts went for the Core i7s and the like and the data centres and enterprises for the Xeons.

With details of its new Ryzen CPUs/ architecture being progressively revealed/ disclosed there is considerable interest in the impending release of these chips in the next month or two.
Adding extra fuel to the increased interest is this article from Forbes:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyl...-revealed-massive-blow-to-intel/#3b4474d26e7c

If these rumours of AMD's pricing strategy for this new line are true, AND assuming that the initial independent benchmark tests support the engineer's claims of greater performance and efficiency per watt for the new Ryzen line, then we will have a wonderful new environment of healthy competition and system-building opportunities arising for PC consumers and gamers alike.
Could re-ignite the moribund PC market in fact.
Bring it on, I say!

 

[blueodessey]

And I remember having a couple of there Chips burning up on my Mother Board's (MBO), and just lucky I had the CPU to replace and not the whole MBO....I bought Intel when I could, due to reliability and performance, because I built PC for folks for several years, and would use AMD for myself, but Intel for most of my customers, unless they specifically asked for AMD........

Interesting times to say the least, and I believed in AMD, but there were times when performance or heat factoring just didn't come up the Standards we needed. As far as I'm concerned AMD is and can be the come back KID if they get their R&D more rigid, quality control wise, that's just an opinion.

I agree with you, competition is good and keeps prices a little more in check for the consumer overall.

Some folks say the Desktop Computer is Dead, I don't quite believe that with some the Games out these days, and of course Trainz fits in nicely in that category, you need the horsepower under the hood, and Laptops can't do it all, I have been on both sides of fence for 35 yrs or more, there are just some things, you can't do as well on Laptop vs Desktop, as I used both in my career, point being, you need the right tool for the right job.

 

[PC_Ace]

This is also a much-needed kick in the pants for Intel's engineers, who have been struggling to move on from their current 14nm process architecture to ~10nm and beyond. (Minimum price for a new Fab kicks in at around US$7 billion these days...)
Their old Tick, Tock cadence is gone and it looks like 8th Gen CoffeeLake CPUs will bring incremental performance and efficiency improvements only (albeit amounting to about 15% over the current Kaby Lake line).

During these times of increased competition, more choice and competitive prices mean end-users like you and me are the ultimate winners.
Accordingly, I'm holding off my planned new system build until I see how this pans out in the next few months or so.
My current 4.4+Ghz Core i7 4790k (Devil's Canyon, 4th Gen) CPU is not all that far off the pace from today's 7th Gen Kaby Lake i7 k series processors.

 

[euromodeller]

I too remember when every PC I made back in the 80'/90s used AMD processors, and good value they were too.
But then something happened to them quality wise, they would overheat and shut the PC down.
Then Intel saw the light and stepped on their sales accelerator. It cost me a fortune back then to convert my PCs to use Intel processors.
I had 7 cable networked PCs across my house due to 5 teenage offspring and a wife, (now relieved of all of that baggage ).
After that the only reason to change a processor was to upgrade and not due to reliability problems, motherboards kept pace too.
It would take a lot to make me change from Intel even though I only have 2 PCs now.
I hope that AMD do make a success of things and that motherboard manufacturers suitably support AMD.
Competition is good for customers

<beginning of funny comment> As for desktops being dead, not a chance while gamers demand massive and/or multiple monitors and cases with LED light displays in them.
Also there's a 'mine's bigger than yours' mentality of gamers, my eldest son is one of them </end of funny comment>

 

[amigacooke]

Oddly hardware competition is good, but when it comes to operating systems, one is apparently enough.

 

[PC_Ace]

Reckon more affordable 8-core/16 and 10-core/ 20 threads CPUs will lead to more multi-OS virtual machines being hosted on enthusiast's PCs though...
This next era of personal computing hardware is enhanced by more accommodative, 'open-architecture' operating systems, bringing some amazing new technologies to play...
For example: HBM2, Optane and DDR6 RAM, more affordable PCIe SSDs, 16Tb HDDs and the like.
We've never had it so good.

 

[amigacooke]

This next era of personal computing hardware is enhanced by more accommodative, 'open-architecture' operating systems

Really? Care to name a few?

 

[clam1952]

Oh boy look at this leaked Ryzen Benchmark! ..... http://www.game-debate.com/news/223...-1700x-intel-thrashed-on-price-to-performance

 

[johnwhelan]

Oddly hardware competition is good, but when it comes to operating systems, one is apparently enough.

I think its the barrier to entry. It costs a lot to build a new operating system from scratch. Second programs are insulated from the hardware by the operating system so its easy to change bits of hardware underneath its more difficult to change the operating system although WINE does try to interface to software as if it was Windows.

Cheerio John

 

[PC_Ace]

Oh boy look at this leaked Ryzen Benchmark!

The 1700X is not the top of the line Ryzen CPU either, and those test results show quite modest RAM speeds and CPU overclocks.
We now know, courtesy of BioStar, that their new Ryzen-capable X370 mobos will support DRR4 speeds up to 3600MHz (G-Skill F4-3600C17D-8GVK)
Funnily enough, one of the best websites to keep abreast of the latest CPU news/ rumours/ leaks is the Videocardz website at https://videocardz.com/

Leaked results are one thing, but independent tests/ reviews based on the official released product line will be far more compelling - together with the actual retail market pricing that prevails a month or two after the release.
If the performance proves to be similar to or better than the leaks, then AMD have a lot of wriggle-room in the prices they can command in the marketplace.
Just as they have begun to take market share from nVidia in the GPU-space, they will likely enjoy a big improvement in market share in CPUs this year.

It all comes down to the actual price/performance of these chips on delivery.

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.
in regard to PCs, higher specification components and lower pricing may make the machines more attractive to purchasers. However, it has to be faced that Windows 10 has not been the Salvation for Microsoft that the operating system seemed so assured to offer at its launch. Indeed, many manufacturers and developers now seem to be openly questioning Microsoft's long term commitment to Windows 10.

The above speculation has been circulating for some time on various media channels as many forum members may have seen. However, that speculation greatly increased of recent with the Redmond corporation announcing the introduction of a Microsoft Cloud laptop that will have “a stripped down version” 0f the current Windows 10 operating system according to Microsoft.

The above is the first attempt by Microsoft to counter the ever growing presence of Google Chromebooks in the business and education markets. The foregoing market has been core to the Redmond company in recent years following its complete failure in the mobile market. Provisional third quarter trading results for 2016 (the Christmas period) demonstrate that Windows 10 mobile devices captured only six tenths of one percent of that huge worldwide market.

The above stated, where i would agree with PC Ace (the opening poster) would be in his earlier statement on this thread advising that competition is always a good thing in device components. I would only add to that statement by advising that competition in operating systems is also a good thing and something which is long overdue in cloud operating systems where Google OS has dominated unchallenged for almost seven years.

Whether new chips and the advancement of other components can turn around the fortunes of the declining PC Market is I feel extremely unlikely. Where that leaves the PC gaming market with its many hobbyists and enthusiasts we can only wait and see. However, Amazon with their Echo Speaker has in recent months succeeded in “completely scuppering” the flagship Google home launch program and with it sales of their associated speaker. Therefore it has to be said that anything is possible in the IT world at present.

As PC Ace stated in the opening post of this thread, as consumers we have never had it so good, and i will most definitely second that.

Bill

 

[PC_Ace]

Well, the first independent reviews are in - and it's not exactly a slam-dunk for Ryzen, especially for gamers.
Some reviews are very positive, others not so enthusiastic.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-cpu,4951.html

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/amd_ryzen_7_1800x_1700x_1700/

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/AMD-Ryzen-7-1800X-Review-Now-and-Zen

These 8-core, 16 thread chips look great for those of you who do a lot of rendering and compression/ encoding type tasks.
Also good for maths-centric and many workstation apps.
Office applications and stuff favouring single-threaded performance is still best served by Intel.
But their patchy performance on multithreaded games and tricky memory and overclocking requirements may mean there's a penalty to be paid for early adoption.
May be prudent to wait for a few further BIOS and mobo tweaks before dropping some serious dough on these top-of-the-line Ryzens.

They represent excellent value for money, but right now, cannot outperform the latest quad core i7s in most modern games, particularly at 1080p and 1440p.
Reckon I'll wait a little longer for Intel's reaction to this welcome competition via either price reductions or new, faster chips like CoffeeLake.

In the meantime, software and game developers (and AMD itself) will have more time to optimise their code for Ryzen CPUs, ensuring that they represent an even more compelling price/performance option for PC consumers.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

I know next to nothing about PC technicalities, but this review popped up in my Google News this morning and it supports your summary of the situation.

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/615216/which-processor-best-intel-amd/

 

[clam1952]

Could be that most games are optimised for Intel chips, that may well change at some point, best to wait for some real user reports rather than lab test reviews.
Having looked at the reviews though I don't think they come out of it too badly and will provide a good alternative to those who can not afford the overpriced top end Intel chips and just want to play games with a reasonable frame rate.
Given time for some fine tuning of the processors and motherboards things can only get better.

Good balanced and thorough review here http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-processor-review,1.html

 

[pcas1986]

Somewhat related so I will toss this into the mix.

Got an e-mail from NVidia inviting me to pre-order an NVidia Geforce 1080Ti with 11 (repeat) 11 GBs of GDDR5 RAM. This card (Pascal architecture) allegedly outperforms a GTX 980 by a factor of 3.

Maybe, in about a years time, I just might consider a new PC build. I wonder when TANE Next will come out. :hehe:

Meanwhile, my GTX 780Ti, that works just fine with TANE, will suit my needs.

 

[nicky9499]

Oddly hardware competition is good, but when it comes to operating systems, one is apparently enough.

There are quite a few more than "one" operating system out there today. They just serve different purposes and are used in different environments.

 

[wholbr]

Hi everybody.

There are quite a few more than "one" operating system out there today. They just serve different purposes and are used in different environments.

You are very right in what you state above Nicky. Here are a number I can think of:-
Google Android, for tablets and phones.
Google OS, a desktop and laptop cloud based system for home, business, education.
Amazon Kindle, for Amazon tablets and book readers.
Apple Mac, general operating system for Apple laptops
Apple IOS, for iPhones and iPads.
Nvidia mobile OS, used on their new range of gaming tablets.
Linux, open source system

Of course we also have the long standing Microsoft Windows mostly used on desktop PCs and laptops. The system has lost out badly to mobile device penetration with users running their devices using the above operating systems. However, still the best system for very high end gaming.

Microsoft have announced that they are to launch a cloud based operating system probably by the middle of this year. At the same time Google announced that they are to launch a “business, education version” of Google Android. The foregoing has brought much speculation on Google forums that the two companies are talking about the same operating system.

Microsoft and Google working together, now there is food for thought. However, it is distinctly just possible with Google losing IT market share to Amazon in recent months. Any such tie up would give Microsoft the lift and innovation they so badly need in several areas and help secure the future of PC gaming.

As PC ace has stated all this competition can only be Good for us consumers especially with Facebook and Steam developing their own operating systems for devices yet to come.

Bill