AMD's Ryzen CPUs (Ryzen/TR/Epyc) & Vega/Polaris/Navi GPUs

Yay! Good job AMD.. Screw you Intel. Half the price and better construction... I'm hoping for quality mobile components too.

 

First early benchmark by user who received their 1700x pre-order early.

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-7-1700x-delivered-early-benchmarks/

 

There are already Intel influenced benchmarks leaking on the web. They are benching games at 1366x768?? Who plays games at that resolution? I am afraid that is what the Intel PR departments email regarding the "call us first" is all about. How to bench against Ryzen to show Intel in a better light. Reviews show the 7700k beating everything at those resolutions. I think another way is benching the single threaded CS go, at low resolutions to hammer the CPU, which will favor a higher clocked 4 core Intel.

I want to see 1080p and up resolutions!


Hopefully we are all a little smarter 10 years later, and I think we are.

 

First 8 core benches leaked, Ryzen looks like a great CPU

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-review-processor-leak/


Prime 95 stress test, I think, shows the efficiency of the Zen architecture. Better numbers than the 7700K at wattage, and heat!!

 

I noticed that as well. It threw the rest of the scores shown into question on that release.

 

I see all the 'kiddos" posting what a fail ryzen is after looking at those type of benches, and some of the wiser "men" hammering them for being such n00b's.

Edit: Overclockersclub.com has a review released. Holy crap! That 1700 is a monster!

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

The only con to Ryzen is the max OC 4.1 Ghz

Site must be getting overwhelmed, it is extremely slow.

 

Another review at techspot

http://www.techspot.com/review/1345-amd-ryzen-7-1800x-1700x/

 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3176191/computers/ryzen-review-amd-is-back.html?page=3

 

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X review: Good, but not for gamers https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/03/amd-ryzen-review/

 

Look at those temps!!!

 

Gaming performance is not what was expected. I think this will improve dramatically with bios revisions. Many of the reviews I have read, said they were having issues, and bugs with motherboards.
I am thinking OCing should improve as well.

 

https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/...g-workstation-chip-1080p-gaming-achilles-heel

 

I know, those are amazing, makes you think there HAS to be some OC room with MB bios revisions.

 

Many reviews listed here

 

Makes me want to call in sick!!

 

Main problem seems to be memory frequency. In Linus' video, he said they couldn't get above 2666 MHz on any of their kits. This should be correctable via BIOS updates. Even still, at first blush, it looks like these CPUs are winners. I'm eager to see what the company's Core i3/i5 fighters are going to do.

 

That is already known and they are working on a fix to be released in a couple months.

On a different note, turns out some of the old benchmarks that AMD has sued for unfair trade practices favoring Intel show neutral increases for both AMD and Intel, meaning they are good. But either Blender or POV (I forgot which one) recompiled for AVX2 and in a new version of the Microsoft software, causing Intel to now perform WAY better. Just should be noted. It may simply be because AVX2, although supported by Ryzen, is not as good as Intel. It also could be meant to dog AMD. But, if you use AVX2 a lot in workloads (and this is a workstation chip, which is what I am looking for), it is something to consider.

 

Good review at Guru3D - https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-processor-review,1.html

Spoiler

The Gaming Performance. So here is where we need to write an entire paragraph. You have been able to see that the Ryzen 7 1800X performance is good, but not just yet 100% where it needs to be. During the past week we have been going back and forth to figure out what could be causing the relatively lower game performance. To date, we have no valid answer to that. The graphics card runs properly PCI-Express 3.0. We know from the RAW and synthetic performance benchmarks that the cores are fast enough, in fact VERY fast. Somehow that does not relate to game performance. It will be interesting to see if other media / websites will show similar results to ours. It rather feels and smells a little like what Nvidia has been fighting a while ago, a DPC latency issue. Next to that we find Ryzen 7 rather memory bound with fairly high memory latency in the 80 to 100ns+ ranges depending on your configuration. It is what it is though, the performance definitely is good enough for what it needs to be, but currently at 1080P with a fast enough GPU the performance lacks a little compared to where it needs to be and can be. I will need to give AMD the benefit of the doubt here, the platform is young and everything is new. The processor certainly is fast enough compared to the Intel 59xx / 69xx counterparts. We will keep an eye on this and when we have to report anything about it we'll update this content. And also in closing on this topic, if you are a little GPU bound or use 2560x1440, this really is a non-issue as perf there is top notch

 

Just finished this entire article. Not a bad breakdown. It seems like some issues are MB related, others are software related. So performance benches may change in the months to come as the platform develops.

Edit: it should also be mentioned that it is obvious the 1800X excels at some workloads and lags in others. The price/performance ratio is great. But, if you have heavily ram dependent workloads, this CPU is not the one your looking for (you get the reference). The overclocking seems weak to a degree in most reviews as well, but most left voltage controls on auto. This was true of even reviewers who I've seen do decent overclocking review articles in the past. That is obviously disappointing. Still keeping an eye on the numbers submitted to HWBot this morning, but it will take a couple weeks to get enough numbers to see a pattern emerge. Also, many BIOS updates will likely be pushed out in the coming weeks and months. But, for now, take the review numbers as true and what you see is what you get. It has workload power, has issues with gaming (which the numbers have varied here and a large difference has been seen between DirectX 11, DirectX 12, and Vulkan being used to benchmark the games).

Edit 2:

 

As expected, dissappoints. But actually not dissapointing me, because I knew after seeing the first pre-benchmarkes. It is big dissapoint for those who did not believed it will underperforming. In more games even an old Sandy Bridge faster;
http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-1700x-and-1700-processor-review_191753/10

 

It isn't that disappointing, really. I am looking at two things, benchmarking for points and productivity. It pulled out as a value build for productivity. In fact, in many workstation benches, it shows it keeping up with Intel. The disappointment comes, as expected, in dual channel instead of quad channel memory and in memory speed (which is supposed to be remedied in future firmware).

Games depends on multi-threading support and CPU optimizations. In fact, the number one thing I heard related to cache performance and most software was that it was not optimized for the new chip. Gaming was never the big driver for me, at least. It's like some reviews even following Intel's instructions to set the resolution to 720P to make AMD look horrible under the auspice of "the GPU is the chokepoint otherwise" when you are doing 90+ FPS at 1080 on the same game across all CPUs.

With that said, we already knew that if you want the gaming top performance, choose 7700K. That was said months ago. Behold, we were right! Ass! (Edit: I will say the game performance on the multitude of setups was lower than AMDs internal numbers, which used yet unreleased optimizatioins that are forthcoming. Still, the ram speed seems to be part of the issue as well as not being optimized for the CPU. But, there is no reason to hold the belief that it will rise significantly moving forward unless a revolution comes in multi-threading for games. See my discussion above on the use of DX11, 12, and Vulkan utilization effecting benchmark numbers.).

But, the workstation performance is there. I just wish it overclocked better (which is where I find myself pumping the brakes). Software optimizations will come in varying degrees for different companies. So, due to the current state of the platform, I give the majority a wait recommendation for the platform to mature. Beyond that, it is a direct blow to Intel and should bring pricing down, hopefully!

 

Pretty impressive for the price in my opinion. The 1800x even beats out a 6950x in 1 of the benchmarks.
Even price aside it's hardly a disappointment by any stretch in my opinion. It was never going to beat a 7700k in clock speed, nor do any of the x99 chips either though. I want to see what the gains are once the RAM is sorted out - that should make a measurable difference. Then I'd like to see more info on OCing.

 

Whether it can beat Intel chips or not, what AMD achieved with Ryzen 7 is to bring workstation/server-level hardware to average Joes, meanwhile being very affordable. Kinda like what they did with K8 Opterons.

Now my dilapidated budget LGA 771 Xeon build can finally see its successor

 

This is so much wow. I somehow expected a slow and inefficient design that has been overhyped by AMD and its fans. But they really do deliver! And how they do! Can't wait to stuff one of these powerhouses in a laptop!

 

Very nice on air cooling

" Operating Temperatures
I saw respectable temperatures on the Ryzen 7 1800X processor using the supplied Noctua NH-U12E SE-AM4 cooler. The chip idled at just 35 degrees and peaked at just 53 degrees under full load using the AIDA64 burn-in test. At first I thought the motherboard or software must have been reporting incorrectly but after 40 minutes of load the heatsink was barely warm to touch. Testing was conducted with an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees."

 

There will be a lot of reading and watching reviews over the next weeks, followed by testing when I get a work task to apply AMD to the task, but after reading that 51 page pdf leaked yesterday, I saw the same general results found by other reviewers.

One thing I did notice is that in most games the AMD CPU's still kept the performance well above Freesync/G-sync V-sync display refresh speeds, and even though the unlimited FPS of the Intel CPU's was nice, the AMD CPU's delivered enough performance - much cheaper and with less power draw (except for prime95) than the Intel CPU's.

I want to support AMD, then as before I can buy it to get work done, but I won't have bragging rights to the highest performance in all things. I can live with that.

I'd rather support AMD and keep them going as long as the work flow isn't negatively affected, and save the Intel stuff for the things that must get that particular performance that AMD can't match, yet.

There aren't a lot of competitors out there to Intel, and AMD is making a valiant effort, I want to help AMD stick around long enough to get on top again, as long as their parts can do the job's I need done.

 

Just read the Ryzen review over on Guru3D - Ryzen no good for 144Hz gaming is my conclusion. Intel is clocking higher than Ryzen during overclocking and performing better at high framerates - hence the 144Hz comment. I'm interested to see how the smaller brothers will perform, the Ryzen CPUs with only 4 & 6 cores - I think they will overclock higher than the 8 core monster and consequently be better gaming performers. Ryzen also has a gaming performance issue when hyperthreading is enabled - disable hyperthreading & then gaming performance increases - they need to fix this.

Here's the link to the article:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-7-1800x-processor-review,1.html

Here's a link to a page in the discussion that might be interesting (where hyperthreading issue is discussed too, hyperthreading issue not discussed in actual article above though) (look in earlier couple of pages too):
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=413072&page=8

 

When will Intel learn and begin use solder between die and IHS on mainstream chips

 

Disabling Hyperthreading with Intel at times improves performance as well, when I get new long running batch jobs it's one of the things I vary to profile a process for best performance.

The one example I saw for AMD SMT made 8% difference, enough to disable for a long running process, but not enough to worry about.

Actually, depending on what I am doing I go the other way, leaving Hyperthreading off all the time. I can get better OC, better temps, and disabling Hyperthreading either helps or makes little difference.

For long running batch jobs I'd worry about it, tuning in specific apps runtime profile, otherwise I would either leave it off or leave it on, and not worry about the small difference it makes.

 

My understanding is that Intel HT woes were a thing of the past when it comes to gaming, the AMD Ryzen hyperthreading issue seems a lot more significant at this point. I'm a hyperthreading believer/fan when it comes to Intel and gaming, not seeing that yet with Ryzen. They do need to sort it out. Ryzen still a fantastic workhorse for professionals & content creators I reckon, and still a good value CPU full stop, with a large future potential for more future proofing at significantly lower costs than Intel - it's just that Ryzen is not stacking up with today's gaming environment, it's probably more future proof though even in terms of gaming as future games become more higher core count aware.

 

This is partly what I meant in software optimization. I do not think the compilers used all work well with the cache and ordering relating to the threading. AMD is working with many companies software engineers to change their optimizations for better performance. But software vendors will not do so for current software unless a large enough user base exists to justify the expense. In this regard, Microsoft and Intel will likely be of little help. Very few (but notedly a couple) reviewers point to this being an architecture issue rather than software, but considering some software using similar instruction sets get different results on how well Ryzen performs (outside an expected range of variance), those instances speak to coding, not hardware (not to say that there are no hardware issues, just that it is a bit early to draw that conclusion)...

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

 

Intel Hyperthreading characteritics haven't changed, the developers have worked smarter with it, and the swing in help/hurt performance have evened out more, but it's still a big enough issue, much greater than 8% in many cases I have seen for long running batch jobs.

AMD SMT characteristics appear to be different than Intel's so they are sticking out in ways Intel's aren't.

Over time developers can take advantage of the increased number of cores in vastly higher numbers of desktops (and hopefully laptops) with AMD and Intel higher core count CPU's, improving multi-core and HT/SMT so it will lift everyone's boat.

For now it's something to be tested for in long running jobs just like Intel, but until I see it as a problem in everything - like Intel, I'll leave SMT On, otherwise I'll turn it Off - either way it's not something I'm going to worry about any more than I worry about it with Intel - which is a lot

 

Architecture is what drives software optimization, it defines the parameters of what we have to work with to get "better performance", however it's being measured.

Those differences are what tilt benchmarks toward one "architecture" or another, it's the defining difference.

Software can be tuned to take advantage of, or tilt against a particular parameter, or architecture.

It's all hardware, and it's all software.

 

Damn ,

Even overclocked up to 4.1 GHz on all cores the Intel Core i7-2700K still has better 1080P gaming performance, which is still hard for us to understand how that is possible when the multi-threaded performance is so good and the single threaded performance in applications like Cinebench are the same as a 2700K processor. Really odd, but the numbers don’t lie!

 

You know what I meant! Yes, you can design the architecture around the software, but developing an elegant solution for usage on architecture makes more sense. Then designing the software to better utilize the features of the architecture make more sense. You cannot copy verbatim your competitors (although certain elements are common and necessary for certain designs). So you are correct, but you are also being a turkey!

Yes, games still heavily rely on single threaded performance and speed. Thank you for the news flash! /snark

 

It's not that simple. Single-core CPUs have been marginal for nearly a decade now, but many (perhaps even most) applications are still single-threaded. Not every task can be parallelized and even fewer are "highly" parallel.

Ryzen is more or less what everyone expected it to be: it is competitive with Intel on highly parallel tasks like multithreaded rendering, but not on single-threaded ones or lightly multithreaded ones (e.g. practically all gaming). That said, the single-threaded results aren't nearly as bad as they were before. Here's an AnandTech graph showing single-threaded CineBench 15 results. Notice that the previous AMD generation represented by the A10-7890K isn't even in the same neighborhood as anything else on the graph -- it's nearly a factor 2 worse than Intel's best. The Ryzen 7 1800X makes up more roughly two thirds of that ground and is now competitive with the Broadwell-E parts which are its only competition in highly multithreaded workloads. It's the difference between single-threaded performance being garbage and single-threaded performance being OK, but nothing to write home about.

This is a very interesting CPU launch if you work with heavily multithreaded programs -- even the most expensive Ryzen is half the price of the corresponding Intel processors with 6 or more cores. I suspect Intel's prices on those will go down shortly. Also, the next iteration of both Intel and AMD CPUs will likewise be very interesting: AMD only needs another 20-30% to catch Intel on single-threaded performance so Intel is highly likely to amp up the 3% per year improvements to something more reasonable.

 

1080p performance is disappointing but at the very least gaming-wise, it performs quite well at 1440p and 4K. But for workstations, this thing is a beast for the price.

Also apparently older BIOS versions have worse performance, only Gigabyte has fixed their BIOS as far as I've read. OC3D's BIOS 5704 benches have better performance than BIOS 5702. So hopefully some performance can be gained with updates in the future.

Looks like some competition is back on the table, looking forward to what the R5 and APU series bring to the table.

EDIT: Has anyone seen the power consumption/draw by the way? It's pretty damn great.

 

Yup, it is that simple - AMD single threaded performance is now "good enough", and more cores gives it an edge moving forward, and eventually AMD will be correct and more cores will win, but for now they gotta ride the wave of what's possible with all the single-threaded apps throwing off the averages.

AMD is once again possible to recommend on the desktop, and with proper application testing and vetting - which we do anyway when profiling new hardware - it can be a win in the workstation and eventually data center again too - with that low thermal and low power advantage - sometime soon hopefully.

Now we need to give hardware makers time to tune and optimize their MB's, AMD time to keeping improving, and now we can feed AMD some $$$$$$$$$'s to keep going

 

You mean like this? (on the money front)
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-sold-out-again,33799.html

 

It's gonna be a constant out of stock and back in stock roller coaster for a while, but luckily back in stock and out of stock seem to happen multiple times a day - not sure what's going on, maybe the web site software only has limited increments of stock increases, and it needs resetting multiple times a day due to the high volume.

 

Some of today's new AMD related youtube video's:

Spoiler

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. Game Streaming on the AMD Ryzen™ Processor
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fy1_BEr1DE
10. ROG CROSSHAIR VI HERO AM4 Motherboard overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIId9b4qFEU
11. AMD RYZEN 7 REVIEW... WE DROP IT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wJQEHNYE7M
12. AMD Ryzen 7 - Launch Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sciuiEcrnzg
13. AMD Ryzen 7 1800X CPU Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yk-izRf2Ro
14. AMD Ryzen 1800X Benchmarks, Review, & Our Opinions | AMD is Back
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GS6zPaSdn8
15. AMD Ryzen 1800X Review | In-Depth Benchmarking
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lay7YuqPscQ
16. Ryzen 1700 vs i7 7700K REVIEW | Best CPU Under $350?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5RP1CPpFVE
17. Ryzen 1700 vs i7 7700K | An Unbiased Look at Benchmarks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXVIPo_qbc4
18. AMD Ryzen & GPU Bottlenecks w/GamersNexus - TGW #90
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04p_ryVM2ow
19. AMD Ryzen R7-1700X Review - Gaming, Productivity & Overclocked Benchmarks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caDxAJMAu0w
20. FIRST OFFICIAL Ryzen 7 1800X Benchmarks! Is AMD BACK? ($1.49/mo paywall)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZxvt5R0Dx4
21. ASUS Crosshair VI Hero X370 VRM Analysis with Buildzoid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xfLYLRsPZ0
22. Tech Talk #145 - Ryzen launched... but was it a dud?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1dhYDm7SLw
23. Live AM4 Motherboard overviews and Q&A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsz5P54CsxE
24. LIVE STREAM: Ryzen 1800x with ASUS X370 Prime Build and Q&A with ASUS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqKtz5lj7rg

And, be sure to check the video notes for links to print articles with more in-depth details.

 

We are AMD, creators of Athlon
We are AMD, creators of Athlon, Radeon and other famous microprocessors. We also power the Xbox One and PS4. Today we want to talk RYZEN, our new high-speed CPU five years in the making. We're celebrating with giveaways, and you can ask us anything! Special guest: AMD President and CEO Dr. Lisa Su.
https://www.reddit.com/r/amd/comments/5x4hxu/_/

 

That was cool. Hate I missed it. Good to see them addressing the 1080p problem. It will be interesting to see what future games come out that can utilize the full potential of the Ryzen.

 

Here is my AMD first prize winning photo from back in the day. You were supposed to take a picture with as many references to AMD as possible If you look closely you will see two thoroughbreds or XP's sitting on top of the PSU. Two 3870's crossfired, and I think that is some sort of phase change on the cpu?

Edit: thats not a psu, its a Phenom 2 box

 

If any of you know chew* or heard of him over at Xtremesystems.org, he has done a great write up! For those who do not know of him, he is an extreme overclocker, and is quite good at it.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?293130-Ryzen-Return-of-the-Jedi

 

Cool info. Thanks for posting the link.

 

Interesting thread, but The Empire Strikes Back is not Sandy Bridge -- it was clearly Conroe.

 

+rep, Really insightful
Appreciate the bravery of taking the downsides - 1080p gaming, SMT etc., hopefully they keep improving the "Zen" and make the market more steered towards the consumer and not the extortionist path likes of Intel and Ngreedia.

 

Some of those benches look a little low (like PiFast, where my 6700K scored 12.43 seconds, or SuperPi 32M where mine is 6minutes and 20seconds flat. Edit: on further examination, those actually feature better scores on quad core chips, meaning they aren't as good on multithreaded. My ignorance is showing! (eat your heart out)). But, as he pointed out, it doesn't OC well but the scores still compare well to BW-E with 200-300MHz+ over his chip. He also pointed out the boards are a bit shiite at the moment (some will be fixed with later bios updates) and the memory has 5 settings (no secondary or tertiary, meaning you may not get ram not on the list to work very well).

This means I will be delayed in my setup (although the water chiller has already arrived). I'll see what develops between now and the 5th or 6th. If Silicon Lottery and reviews of MBs between now and then give me more hope, then I will dive in, otherwise, I may put it on hold until MB and CPU support is more developed (this stuff has happened even with HW-E Z99 platform release, to a degree). If I do wind up waiting, I may just buy a block for my M8E so I can play with my current toys while waiting (although if I do that, I'll wait for better boards to be released and may wait until August to see Skylake-X)...

What is sad is it is mainly MB and ram support that has held me back from getting this at the start, not the chip itself. The MB manufacturers just didn't seem like truly trying for high end boards on release. (Plus, I've read about complaints of Asus, GB has no bclk settings, etc. Haven't heard bad on the MSI I thought about, but it is AMD that has the ram restriction applied to MB manufacturers, so they do need some blame).

Thoughts from those here? ( @Papusan , @triturbo , @hmscott , @Raiderman , etc.)