Now, I know that it’s extremely dangerous to get caught in any AMD hype. But I’m going to be in the market for a 6 or 8 core machine before summer, and cautiously optimistic that it might be time for my first AMD CPU in over a decade. The only remaining question marks for me are whether they really hit at least Haswell level IPC, and that the virtualization story checks out.
Anyone else planning to jump onto the 8 core train?
Someday I’ll have to replace my aging Ivy Bridge i5 system (motherboard has already started the wonk with dying USB controllers), and if AMD is actually competitive in the CPU market that’s a win-win for me.
I am sure its going to do really well, and I am glad. Its already starting to lower Intel prices, my 7700k dropped $50 in the last 3 weeks.
My assumption is we will start to see a serious move to 6/8/10 core cpu’s in the next 2 years. And AMD is going to help by keeping prices down thanks to competition! :)
Sadly the movement of software to support even 4 cores has been soooooo slow. Yet alone the future of 6+ cores in mainstream pc’s.
As I posted in the other thread, this is a great step forward but unfortunately AMD is not competing on mobile right away. Since the vast majority of computers sold today are laptops and you don’t want a 95w TDP CPU on your lap, this is more of a halo product than anything else.
That said, 95w TDP is very competitive with intel’s high-end CPUs, and from the benchmarks looks like performance is there too, all at a much lower price-point. So this will disrupt the high-end desktop market. It’s about time AMD actually competed with Intel. I can’t remember the last time that was really the case… Athlon64?
AMD was competitive (and winning) up through the Pentium IV. But when Intel shifted to Core they began to fall behind. That was around 2006. Then Intel began to go to the Core i3/i5/i7 chips around 2009 and really started to separate.
I’ve been putting off my new build for a while now, waiting to see whether a ryzen was a better buy than an I7-7700k.
I still remain optimistic. The news about the cpus themselves have been positive, if albeit all from the horse’s mouth basically. I won’t fully trust how powerful it is claimed to be until someone takes it home and then overclocks it.
The thing that worries me is the motherboard offerings in March. The ones i have seen have not impressed me AT ALL after having looked at Z270 motherboards. Very possible i’m missing something super special they are doing new that makes it all worth it in the end, but i can’t help but be disappointed.
So maybe this is a stupid question, but does 6-8 cores actually matter in any tangible way? Every time I look into it, even nowadays, software isn’t taking full advantage of the 4 cores in my i5. Let alone 6-8 in a new CPU. So why spend all that money?
People sometimes like having the stuff with the highest number! ;)
That said, there’s no real benefit from them unless you’re frequently something that involves crunching numbers in a way that’s scales nicely. If you’re doing lots of video editing or happen to be a 3D artist who works with the corresponding software and also renders stuff a lot or a physicist who runs some heavy calculations - chances are the software will properly take advantage of these additional cores. For gamers - not so much. Here you benefit from a higher clock rate.
