More, better cores are handy for streaming, too, not that that’s a common use case.
What’s this XFR business, and who should care about it?
OK fine, I’ll Google it myself!
Looks like it’s on the fly automatic overclocking. Interesting. We’ll see what the testing says as to whether it’s worth the price premium, I suppose. And the higher power draw.
This is great to see on the competitive landscape.
AMD’s 6 year or so heyday lasted until about 2006 and the Athlon 64 X2. Essentially, Intel released 1st, the Pentium M on mobile, and then the Core 2 Duo to take the high end PC CPU market. Since then, there’s been no looking back.
I may well build a 1700X machine next month!
Intel will still be better for gaming but CPU is rarely the bottleneck anyway. In a few games it is, but you would usually be better off putting the money into better GPU.
This will actually be very interesting. Not two weeks ago, Intel was announcing that it was delaying 10nm for consumer CPUs in order to prioritize it for server chips, which means 4 straight years at 14nm for consumers. Intel is de-prioritizing the consumer market.
Now AMD is roaring in with Ryzen. They can gain a lot of mindshare, particularly with enthusiasts.
I’d say Intel has de prioritized the consumer market for years now, at least in the desktop area.
Ryzen up, back on the street
Did the time, took the chances
Went the distance, now back on their feet
Just AMD and their will to survive
(Sung to the tune of Die of the Tiger)
Unlike their Intel counterparts, R5 and R7 processors do not come with built in graphics meaning that they actually have a smaller die size. This should make them cheaper to produce assuming AMD gets decent yields from GloFo.
Of course Intel also enjoy very healthy margins.
You watched a very different Rocky than the rest of us :)
I’m going to go out on a limb and argue this is actually bad news for all involved. The desktop market is shrinking year over year, and adding pricing pressure is if anything likely to actually accelerate that trend. We’re starting to hit the limits of conventional silicon and forcing Intel’s hand here might do nothing but hurt Intel without giving AMD anything but a spoiler’s reward.
In other words, if we’re making songs:
Win the battle, lose the war!
Choice of evils lies before your feet,
retreat, retreat, retreat!
You are standing in Moore’s Law’s dark gloom
Cede an inch, and Chapter 7
All around ceding ground, in an ever shrinking room
And the die blazes red!
We need to keep pushing forward though. Without competition, this often doesn’t happen. I know mobile seems to be where all the action, read profit, is at these days but pushing limits beyond just how small you can make it still matters. I want my holodeck damn it!
If the market for Desktop CPUs is going to not be worth it for Intel, it would have been so even without AMD being competitive. AMD obviously thought that it was a market worth chasing.
I for one am starting to get excited. We aren’t that far from seeing actual, real world reviews and whether AMD’s claims were all BS.
I don’t know about actual stats, but is desktop PC market really shrinking? I had gone years with a laptop and I’ve finally gone back to a desktop, because of price and flexibility. The weird thing is, if there were no tablet or smartphone I would have stuck with a laptop. But nowadays I can do a lot of work on a pinch on an ipad and my phone (transferring my mad dual thumb controller skillz to dual thumbing emails). My desktop is basically an all-in-one entertainment/work/backup/whatever mother station. Every other gadget plugs into that.
If Ryzen is real competition to Intel’s chips, it can only be a good thing.
It’s not just about market. Desktop CPUs are halo products. With lower power and thermal constraints, they’re much faster than laptop CPUs.
That said, the market does matter and AMD needs to release 35w TDP CPUs to truly be relevant in 2017.
Rumors so far say it’s not the case, but if Microsoft’s Scorpio made the jump to even a 4 core RyZen in its GPU that would truly be generational leap in computing power for the console.
Eh, games are largely GPU-bound. That said, console CPUs are insanely underpowered even compared to a 5 year old i3, so they could certainly use a boost.
The real question is how the mobile iteration of the Zen architecture will do, especially if the performance per watt of the desktop is to be believed.
Looks like a pretty significant price drop on Intel CPUs across the board.
Yes, intel desktop CPUs with 6 or less cores are much more competitively priced. However the Ryzen highest-end 1800X has 8 cores for $500, and intel’s 6900K is still $999. Literally twice the price.
Still, it’s a beautiful thing. Finally, some competition.