AMD's Ryzen launches March 2, outperforming Intel's Core i7 at a fraction of

the price
pcworld.com/article/3171161/components-processors/amds-ryzen-launches-march-2-outperforming-intels-core-i7-at-a-fraction

By Mark Hachman

Ryzen is here. AMD said Wednesday that it plans a hard launch of its first three Ryzen processors on March 2. The highly anticipated
chips promise to outperform high-end parts from Intel and undercut their prices by as much as 54 percent.

AMD executives confidently unveiled the first three desktop chips to attack Intels Core i7, supported by several top-tier motherboard
vendors and boutique system builders. In many cases, executives said, AMD will offer more for less, as early Ryzen benchmarks prove.
The top-tier Ryzen 7 1800X will cost less than half of what Intels thousand-dollar Core i7-6900K chip doesand outperform it, too. You can
preorder Ryzen chips and systems from 180 retailers and system integrators today.

Like Intel, AMDs Ryzen offerings consist of three new chip families: the premium Ryzen 7, the midrange Ryzen 5, and the cheapest Ryzen
3. AMD is rolling out its fastest, premium Ryzen 7 chips first, including the Ryzen 7 1800X ($499), the Ryzen 7 1700X ($399) and Ryzen 7
1700 ($329). AMDs Ryzen 5 and the Ryzen 3 will ship later this yearat the moment, AMDs not saying exactly when.

Why this matters: About the only major aspect of Ryzen that AMD hadnt yet disclosed was its price and availability. Analysts say AMD
appears to have done its homework, leaving Intel in danger of giving up market share in the bread-and-butter PC microprocessors that built
its company. But Intel has its ways: Possible responses include price cuts, additional chips with more cores, and promoting its new Optane
technology, they said.

Mark Hachman

AMD will begin taking preorders for the Ryzen today for shipment next week.

AMDs mojo is Ryzen

Unlike Intels massive January launch of more than 40 Kaby Lake chips, AMDs playing it slow. Here are more details on the three new Ryzen
7 chips:

AMDs Ryzen 7 1800X, a 95-watt part, boasts 8 cores and 16 threads. It runs at 3.6GHz and will boost to 4GHz, AMD chief executive Lisa
Su said. When AMDs $499 chip matched up against the eight-core Intel Core i7-6900Ka $1,089 partthe 1800X recorded an identical
single-thread score of 162 on the Cinebench benchmark. But when all of its cores were turned on, the 1800X outperformed the 6900K by 9
percent, recording a score of 1,601. The 1800X is the fastest eight-core processor on the market, Su said.

Mark Hachman

AMDs Ryzen 7 1800X is the fastest 8-core processor in the market today, AMDs Lisa Su said.

AMDs Ryzen 7 1700X, a 95-watt, 8-core, 16-thread chip, runs at 3.4GHz and boosts to 3.8GHz. Using the multicore Cinebench
benchmark, the $399 1700X scored 1,537, 4 percent faster than the $1,089 Core i7 6900K chip.

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 Mark Hachman

AMDs Ryzen 7 1700X is aimed at gamers and content creators, according to AMD.

AMDs Ryzen 7 1700, consumes up to 65 watts and runs at 3GHz, boosting to 3.7GHz. It, too, includes 8 cores and 16 threads. According
to AMDs own tests, it recorded a score of 1,410 on the multicore Cinebench test, a whopping 46 percent better than the $339 Core i7
7700K. Using the Handbrake video-encoding test, the R7 1700 finished in 61.8 seconds, AMD said, versus 71.8 seconds for the 7700K.

Mark Hachman

Though the cheapest Ryzen 7 AMD announced, the 1700 still packs a punch.

According to AMD, the Ryzen 1700 will be packaged with a new Wraith Spire cooler, which will run at 32 decibels. (The other two Ryzen
chips will not.) AMD also confirmed the Wraith Stealth cooler, too.

Ryzens apparently strong performance is due to an overachieving design team. (For more on AMDs Zen architecture and its features, see
our earlier story.) AMD said early on that one of its goals was to increase Zens instructions per clock (IPC)a measure of its performance
efficiencyby 40 percent. In fact, Su said, AMD achieved a 52 percent IPC improvement.

We not only beat our goal, we beat it by a lot, Su said.

All three chips will be supported by motherboards from ASRock, Asus, Biostar, Gigabyte, and MSI82 different boards in all, AMD said. They'll be
based on the AM4 platform, and AMD's X370 and B350 chipsets. At launch, 19 elite builders, per AMD, are expected to debut Ryzen systems, with a
total of 200 expected during the first quarter. PC towers designed for gaming from top hardware makers are also coming during the same period, AMD
said. Next up: Radeon Vega, AMDs next-gen PC graphics solution, scheduled to launch in the second quarter.

Mark Hachman

Su reiterated that she believes AMD will have adequate supplies of Ryzen on hand to meet customer demand, a claim that Moor
Insights analyst Pat Moorhead says hes confirmed.

So far, talking to the partners here, it sounds pretty good, Moorhead said. Theyre telling me that theyre getting the volumes that they want
to get when they expect to get them. And thats good.

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How Intel could respond
AMD believes that Intels rested on its laurels, delivering a series of minor improvements year in and year out. To its credit, however, Intel
has maintained operating profits even as it negotiates a gradual shift away from a shrinking PC market by prioritizing profitable high-end PC
processors. With Ryzen, AMD sees an opportunity to steal some of that high-margin share.

Intel, however, has several opportunities to respond, including simply lowering its prices. Intels latest official processor price list remains
unchanged since early January. Still, as Moor Insight's Moorhead pointed out, AMD has a lot more to lose than Intel has to gain by a
price move.

Intel

What does Intel have up its sleeve?

The way that I think [Intel will] react is to say, lets see if this is for real, and determine what Ryzens performance actually is, Moorhead
said. But they might have two or three things in the hopper, he added, including pushing single-threaded chips like the Core i3, and adding
additional cores to its existing lineup. The third option is Optane, Intels super-speedy storage technology, which Intel could use to pooh-pooh
CPU performance and push system-level improvements.

Adding cores seems most likely, however. With the exception of the 6900Kas well as its eight- and ten-core Extreme Edition chips
Intels Core i7 chips top out at six cores, compared to eight for AMDs Ryzen. AMD has a core advantage, and eventually I am expecting
AMD to layer in cores, Moorhead said.

A statement from Intel, meanwhile, provided a fourth alternative: sowing dissent via a tried-and-true PR strategy known as fear,
uncertainty and doubt.

We take any competition seriously but as weve learned, consumers usually take a wait and see approach on performance claims for
untested products, Intel said in a statement. Seventh-gen Intel Core delivers the best experiences, and with 8th-gen Intel Core and
new technologies like Intel Optane memory coming soon, Intel will not stop raising the bar.

The early verdict? Get ready to duck, Intel

Until Ryzen chips become available for benchmarking, we wont know for sure how well the Ryzen will compete. For now, though,
anticipation is running high.

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 Gordon Mah Ung

A closeup shot of AMD CEO Lisa Su holding the Ryzen processor.

Nathan Brookwood, an analyst with Insight 64, said Ryzen is clearly the most competitive chip theyve fielded in a decade, a statement
that Moor Insight's Moorhead, an AMD veteran, echoed. Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds noted that AMD has extended the single-core
performance that Intel itself offers over eight cores, with high-memory bandwidth to boot.

AMDs Su had a simpler take: The best starts now, she said.

Updated at 10:07 AM with additional details.

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