AMD Ryzen CPUs Beat Intel Chips in Performance at Half the Price

AMD has long been struggling in the CPU market even though its GPUs have been received well over the years. It seems this is all set to change with launch of AMD Ryzen CPUs produced on a 14nm FinFET process, which AMD claims, can take on Intel’s best at half the price. Sounds to good to be true? Not the case here.

The new CPU chips are based on AMD’s new Zen architecture, comes with 8-cores, 16 threads plus 16MB L3 cache and claim to offer high-end performance, yet retain a price-for-performance ratio unseen in the CPU market for more than a decade. Zen chips offer a 52 percent boost in instructions per cycle (IPC) over its last generation.

There is still plenty of power left on tap as these CPUs come with SenseMI (Machine Intelligence) tech. This allows for better CPU power efficiency “Pure Power”, which is a set of temperature, clock speed, and voltage sensors. Then there’s “Precision Boost” which uses this information to adjust the core clock speed on-the-fly “without halts or queue drains” in small 25MHz increments.

AMD Chief Executive, Lisa Su, said that AMD had just one goal in mind when it was developing the new chips i.e. “We wanted to disrupt the PC market, we wanted to bring innovation, choice and performance to as many people as possible.”

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X

The highest end chip is the R7 1800X. It compares directly to Intel’s best Haswell based i7-5960X and Broadwell based i7-6900K and a few server Xeon chips, all of which cost over $1,100.

The 1800X has a base clock of 3.6GHz with a boost of up to 4.0GHz. It has the same 8 cores, 16 threads and 16MB L3 cache. AMD claims a TDP of just 95W compared to Intel’s 140W for the same performance.

Compared to Intel’s latest Broadwell flagship chip, AMD claims its new processor is 9 percent better in Cinebench R15 multithreaded rendering test. In single threaded performance, both come out with the same performance. AMD manages to this with a slightly higher clock speed since its IPC is still a little behind AMD but manages to conserve power thanks to the new Zen architecture.

AMD testing also showed that it beat Intel’s flagship chip at Handbrake video encoding and boasted better frame rates in Snipe Elite at 4K.

The best part is the price. You only have to pay $500 for the chip that beats Intel’s $1,100 one and you still save on TDP.

AMD Ryzen 7 1700X

R7 1700X also comes with 8 cores, 16 threads and 16MB L3 cache but with a slightly lower clock speed. It is clocked at 3.4GHz with a boost speed of 3.8GHz. AMD is positioning 1700X against Intel Core i7-6800K which only has 6 cores and 12 threads and still costs higher than AMD at $439.

You get all this for $399, and still get better performance than Intel’s competitive CPU.

AMD Ryzen 7 1700

This is the least powerful chip in the bunch, but by no means a slouch. It competes head on with Core i7-7700K which costs $349.

While Intel’s i7-7700K comes with an outrageous clock speed of 4.2GHz and a boost frequency of 4.5GHz, it only has 4 cores and 8 threads – half of what AMD boasts. AMD concedes, Intel does open up a gap in single core performance here, but when it comes to multi-threaded performance, AMD thrashes the 7700K with a 46 percent higher score in Cinebench.

AMD has priced this one at just $329.

Conclusion

AMD has not only released its first credible gaming CPU in more than a decade but has also put Intel on the back-foot here as it has priced its chips below Intel’s less powerful chips. Intel must surely be thinking of ways to outmarket AMD right now by either reducing its prices or increasing clock speeds.

The chips are already available for Pre-order today and will go on sale on March 2, which AMD claims is the hard launch date.

AMD’s Ryzen 7 1800X CPU is already the best selling chip on Amazon and the announcement has helped AMD receive a 2% shares boost in just a few hours. AMD has also announced that it will be bringing Vega architecture based GPUs in latter half of the year.

However, we will still have to wait for reviews to see what sort of performance we can expect, though initial numbers give a pretty clear indication that Intel is in trouble. It’s great for the consumers as the PC CPU market is seeing competition for the first time in ages which better price-performance ratio for everyone.

Via: Arstechnica

He is the Chief Content Officer at ProPakistani. Reach out at aadil.s[at]propakistani.pk


    • are u kidding ?!

      that TOTALLY KILLS INTEL ! just go see how much the 7th Gen i7 costs and compare it to the top-end ryzen !

      been waiting for this baby for about six months now !

      glad to see they’re beast , at least on paper…

      now if only AMD could come to Pakistan , like Xiaomi did … THAT could change the whole picture !

      • AMD is available in Pakistan already, I managed to buy mine though had to find re-sellers (was distributors of Philips back in 2001), after that got XP series for free direct from AMD as I have family members working in CPU engineering team, and that is why they use to have Pakistan as listed on their website sometime back as plenty of Pakistani people work in their CPU division, not sure about now. let me get to them and ask if it will be made available in larger quantities.

        • great …

          as a hardware enthusiast , i would also love to meet the mates at CPU engineering team !

          can you atleast ask them how they got to AMD ? have they done their PhD’s and masters abroad ?

          • Alhamdullilah our whole family is foreign qualified, so far only me and and another cousin manage to return to Pakistan permanently, I came to raise my kids here and he came because I came ;-) rest are eagerly trying to come back. and those who are in AMD yes did their Masters from Uni of California.

            • wow .. brilliant

              Alhamdullilah i’m also from an educated family background. i would love to work for AMD one day !

              • Then take Electronics engineering as majors, or Masters in Technology concentrating on communications and electronics, good thing about American companies is they look for talent and not race so as long as you have skills, you’ll be hired. Just take example of Raja Koduri, he is Head of Graphics team at AMD looking after Radeon group, he has Master degree from India (not even US)

                • Hmm… indeed , that’s the reason USA is so successful and ahead of everyone ! Raja Koduri is a real inspiration , that man has taken so much brunt of his group being blamed for over heating GPUs and being poor in performance as compared to NVIDIA counterparts but he stuck back this time around and quite strongly with the Polaris GPUs this year ! the RX 480 Crossfire equaled and even beat the GTX 1080 in perf benchmarks for Ashes of Singularity using the DX12 API !

                  im doing B.E Computer Engineering .. what discipline should i opt for at masters level ?

                  • BE.CE is fine, concentrate on hardware side, learn CPU programming skills in C#, and most importantly, let IEEE issues flow in your blood.

                    • in C# only ? what about the other languages and frameworks ?

                      also … kindly elaborate IEEE ‘issues’ a bit :D

                    • C, C++, C# works the same for both Intel and AMD, no other frameworks required as both companies uses superset of 8086 assembler language with each generation of CPU adding to previous one, so skills in C, Assembly language are a must.
                      Your university must have subscribed to IEEE magazines, I was referring to their issues whether monthly or quarterly, just dont keep yourself to the books.

                    • ah .. i see , thanks for that tidbit !

                      yeah , in fact the chairman of the university’s IEEE branch is teaching us this semester . i’ll see if i can get IEEE magazines from the reference library…

                      thanks for all the guidance Mr.Asar :)

      • AMD was here, but went into cave after core series.
        my first AMD PC was Athlon 600 mhz slot processor round 1998/99.

  • Bros…….everything is great about the new AMD processors………but the problem remains………there is no official AMD presence in Pakistan, and to enjoy such great products, one has to import manually which will considerably add to price of the product hence the purpose of low cost but great computing dies…..sadly

    • Still the offering is better than Intel Finally!. We have been sold the same Intel Architecture since 1 Generation of Core series (released back in 2009) due to no competition. Heck Intel didn’t even bother to improve the core count / cpu on-board cache!

      Having a true 8 core, 16 threaded CPU for multi-tasking under 500$ is some serious business.
      Even if we don’t have the market for AMD, Intel surely will be cutting down its cost or improve performance per clock somehow, eventually WE the End-User will benefit.

    • Comparatively, the cost will still be lower even if there is a (god forbid) 50% price hike if you import these.
      329$ is miles below the intel competitor’s 1000$!

      • exactly !

        it’s amazing that Ryzen can beat Intel just like that !

        i’m excited for AMD !

    • There’s no official presence of Intel either. That’s why 7700k is selling about $430-$450 which about $150 more than original price… nevertheless these offerings from AMD is a sigh of relief

      • The price shown at intel’s website as retail prices are actual prices of tray packing of 1000+ where no one shop is capable of ordering this much quantity in one go so you can expect this much pricing.

        • @mruasar:disqus , can you explain more regarding “prices of tray packing” ?

          i would like to know more

          • Yaar, first line of contact with manufacturer (Intel or AMD) is either distributors or OEM companies (Like HP, Dell), distributors usually ask for retail packaging with Box, Cooler and all gizmos that come in the box, OEM asks for open CPU’s (they are in form of trays) with no fancy boxes or booklets but do include stickers, as they use their own fans/cooling.

            The price shown on Intel website are of Retail Boxed ordered per 1000 of CPU boxes, these then go to retail outlets who can order like 20 CPU’s or +/- depending on the distributors MOQ (minimum order quantity).
            For Pakistan where market for building new systems is still low so ordering 1000 of one type of CPU isn’t feasible therefore they have to rely on main distributors in UAE who can ship in quantities around 100 per CPU or even less, so this 2nd level distribution channel adds to the pricing, add sales tax to it and pricing gets higher in Pakistan as you may get your CPU after passing through 2 retail channels each adding their own price.

  • I would have consider this news well done if you people would have shared some sources like who will be offering this in Pakistan. So far only chance remains gear-up dot me in UAE that can send to Pakistan

  • People are talking about intel’s monopoly ending, ending where? In Pakistan? Not anytime soon. Because there is no official presence of AMD here in Pakistan.

    • there was also no xiaomi here 4 days ago , but we all know what happened with time.

      sirf govt ki thori boht blessing chahiye , baqi sb hojaega !

      • AMD has been around for decades, much much longer than Xiaomi. I don’t think they have any plans for expanding into Pakistan.

        • that’s because there’s no incentive for them to do so …

          something inviting needs to be done to lure them to the local market !

            • lel …

              but seriously , this in itself , is a massive incentive for them to open up some sort of shop here. the recent boom of software companies in Pakistan could use some cheaper CPUs for high performance duties

    • Competition was between Core i7 6900k and AMD RYZEN 1800 both are 8 Core 16 Threads Chips. Intel i7 Scored 1400 Points where as AMD Scored 1600+ Points in Cpu intensive Benchmark. AMD 1800 was giving High Frames in Gaming and Fast Rendering times than Intel 6900k.
      AMD RYZEN 1800 is Priced at $500 USA where as Core i7 6900k is $1090-1110 USA and in Pakistan i7 6900K available at the Price of 129,000/ PKR.

  • we can buy 10k computers with everything here in pakistan…cant afford 329$ just 4 a single processor

    • Bro, if you can do your work on a 10K Computer that is Good for you, but these Processors are for Gaming Enthusiasts and Professional Developers etc.

  • is amd ryzen 1700 better than core is 7600k
    if it is better than on what terms


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