Thursday, January 12th 2017
AMD Begins Sampling Entry-Level Ryzen Chips - 4 Cores With SMT Disabled
With AMD's Ryzen chips launch being ever closer to us, details about its product line - which still remain mysterious enough - eventually begin to slip. Reportedly, AMD's entry-level Ryzen chips - the SR3 line of processors, if previous leaks ring true, will be made up of 4-core processors with AMD's SMT (Simultaneous Multi-Threading), the equivalent to Intel's HT (Hyper-Threading) disabled. These will be, apparently, true 4-core processors, without any additional logical processors exposed by SMT.
If reports about AMD's line-up being composed of 8-core and 6-core processors, then with this news, we can now theoretically paint the numbers on AMD's Ryzen line-up. As it stands with this new information, it could be composed of entry-level four-core parts (under the SR3 product stack, and a base clock of 3.4 GHz at the minimum for any Ryzen-based part, according to AMD); a midrange six-core, twelve-thread part (under the SR5 moniker; I don't figure AMD would disable their much-lauded SMT on this six-core part); and the top-of-the-line, SR7 8-core, 16-thread chip we've seen in so many benchmarks and leaks.
I find it strange that AMD would cut the SMT out of any of its processor lines, though - at least, from all of its processors. My educated guess would be that AMD is planning to release a special-edition part (or a specific part number) just like Intel does in its i3, i5 and i7 product lines to differentiate between multiplier-locked (non-K processors) and multiplier-unlocked (K processors, such as the i5-7600K). Though, with all AMD Ryzen processors having an unlocked multiplier, like the company has often announced, this differentiation might be between SMT-disabled and SMT-enabled chips - perhaps with AMD bringing back their Black Edition line of processors for this particular use-case. It just seems strange for AMD to shed one of their vaunted technologies (which would allow them to improve their performance at little to no cost added) completely, considering the comeback the company is planning to accomplish.
Source:
Canard PC Gaming Twitter
I find it strange that AMD would cut the SMT out of any of its processor lines, though - at least, from all of its processors. My educated guess would be that AMD is planning to release a special-edition part (or a specific part number) just like Intel does in its i3, i5 and i7 product lines to differentiate between multiplier-locked (non-K processors) and multiplier-unlocked (K processors, such as the i5-7600K). Though, with all AMD Ryzen processors having an unlocked multiplier, like the company has often announced, this differentiation might be between SMT-disabled and SMT-enabled chips - perhaps with AMD bringing back their Black Edition line of processors for this particular use-case. It just seems strange for AMD to shed one of their vaunted technologies (which would allow them to improve their performance at little to no cost added) completely, considering the comeback the company is planning to accomplish.
37 Comments on AMD Begins Sampling Entry-Level Ryzen Chips - 4 Cores With SMT Disabled
If Ryzen competes, actually competes, with Intel's i3-i7 line-up the pricing will be similar and rightfully so. Just because they're AMD doesn't mean they have to sell competitive products for 50% or even just considerably less than Intel's. They've HAD to sell Bulldozer -> Excavator chips for $<200 or they would have never sold any. The last time they were competitive they had SKU's from $100-$1,000+ and they are absolutely looking to increase their ASP's across the board.
I think it will probably end up looking something like 80-90% total platform cost (CPU/MOBO/RAM) of a competing z270/x99 setup.
If the 8c / 16t part does actually compete with the 6900K I think we'll end up with something like:
SR 8c / 16t - $550
SR 6c / 12t - $350 (Hello 7700K)
SR 4c / 8t - $250 (Hello 7600K)
---
SR 4c / 4t and Below - <$150
Boards with similar feature sets to z270 a few bucks cheaper would bring your total platform cost a fair bit cheaper than an Intel setup with similar performance.
Unrelated: 'm really hoping we see x99-ish boards with PLX chips or something for additional pci-e lanes and functionality. I was really hoping x370 would follow in 790/890/990FX footsteps and offer 32-lanes for GPU in addition to what we're getting. X370 should of = x99, x300/B350 = z270, A320 = H270, Q, B etc.
That would leave wiggle room for non-SMT enabled parts in the gaps and also Raven Ridge APU's 2H 2017.
it already HAS 32 lanes, 16 chipset and 16 cpu pci-e lanes if I'm not mistaken ?
They got ya covered it seems ;)
From what I've seen X370 will only offer 8x/8x mGPU and that's due to shortage of lanes. If I misunderstood this that's great cause I was surprised since all previous info/slides showed 16x/16x for x370 and they have to realize people who run mGPU setups also want things like NVME drives.
36 pci-e lanes is the total max, 16 for dual gpu and remainder will suffice, hell most could throw in a third gpu at 8X and still have enough left.
IF you haven't seen the benchmarks even here on tpu on pci-e lanes.. well, be in an for a surprise cause they hardly matter.
They don't look for performance metrics, they look for generic advice from other people (what's faster, nvidia or AMD, w/o mentioning a price range or model) and think that cards at the same price point perform the same, when they clearly don't.
I want AMD to succeed and succeed hard in both "mainstream" and HEDT segments and I'm afraid this could hurt them. There are also plenty of legitimate use cases where X370's configuration simply isn't viable in comparison.
P.S: Forgot to put the I7 875K on this list.
Again, not the biggest deal but it absolutely decreases value overall.
The top end mainstream i7 costs $350 regardless of the performance increase.