Ryzen or Kabby Lake?

there should be hands on impartial reviews of ryzen very soon now

still not sure why people think you will get a lot more bang for your buck

here in the uk at least ryzen like 1800x they want £500

compared to £330 for a 7700k

That's a quite a markup, are you sure your figures are accurate? Here in the USA you can buy the R7 1800X for $499 US. And bear in mind the R7 1800X is 8 cores and 16 threads and in early benchmarks is outperforming the 8 core 16 thread i7 6900K. The i7 6900K retails in the US for over $1000 whereas the R7 1800X retails for $499. I would say that is a lot of bang for your buck. A lot more bank for your buck than you get from Intel.

Also keep in mind with your above quotes that the R7 1800X retailing for $499 is 8 cores and 16 threads, the above mentioned i7 7700K is only 4 cores and 8 threads. The upcoming R5 CPUs will be 4 cores and 8 threads and the top tier R5 1600X is set to sell for only $259 and should give the i7 7700K a run for its money. All quotes given are in US currency.

major uk retailer and usually one of the cheapest

yes i realise compared to the 6900k broadwell-e the price looks good

but the majority of people dont use a 6900k even a 7700k is out of reach price wise for a lot of people at £330



obviously we still need some independant unbiased/impartial reviews first any way to see how things really stand

Wow, Ryzen is a lot more expensive in the UK Here Ryzen 1800X is $499, in the UK the price in US dollars is $610. Still The R7 1800X is a great value for power users who need 8 cores and 16 threads as the closest Intel comparison will cost you over $1000 US. And early benchmarks have the R7 1800X outperforming the i7 6900K.

For most buyers and gamers the apex processors are going to be the R5 1600X or the i7 7700K. I don't have UK pricing, but the i7 7700K retails for around $350 and the R5 1600X will be retailing for $259. The i7 7700 retails for around $315 whereas the R5 line will include the R5 1500, and R5 1600 retailing for $229 and $250. The R5 lineup are all 4 cores and 8 threads (and the i7 7700(K) are also 4 cores 8 threads) which would make them the gamers choice. We should have more reliable benchmarks for the R5 vs i7 7700(K) soon, however early benchmarks have the R5 1600X and i7 7700K performing neck and neck.

If you are a power user and do lots of video editing/ rendering and gaming then in just 4 days Ryzen's R7 will be releasing and there will be a lot of user benchmarks to compare. If you are a gamer then the R5 will be releasing soon, however the R7's benchmarks should give us a much better picture of how the R5 will perform against Kabby lake i7s. Ryzen will also be releasing R3s that are 4 core 4 thread to compete directly against Kabby Lake i5s and are priced better than i5s.

To OP: I personally don't foresee any big surprises with Ryzen. I fully expect that what we have seen in early benchmarks will hold up when officially released and Ryzen CPUs should trade blows with or maybe even out perform their Kabby Lake and Broadwell-E competition at the same clock speeds. And Ryzen processors will be priced to undercut Intel offerings. I recommend waiting for Ryzen and barring any huge surprises upgrading to whatever Ryzen processor best suits your needs, in the US market they truly should be the best bang for your buck available.

UPDATE: I was mistaken the Ryzen R5 1600X and 1500 processors are an even better value as they are 6 cores and 12 threads. The Ryzen R5 1300 and 1500X are slated to be 4 core and 8 threads and will cost $175 - $199

yes in the uk you can pay any where from roughly 20% to 40% more than in the usa depending which components

if it wasnt for the high postage and import duties we here would be buying from the usa

but those negate the savings unfortunately

and yes i am hoping impartial reviews really do show ryzen as being competitive to intel

and if they can do it with their new graphics cards as well it will be great--though think the series 10 TI cards might just rain on that parade some how

but proper competition is usually the best thing there is for the consumer so really hoping they pull it off with both cpus and gpus

I totally agree with you. Intel and Nvidia have both had such supremacy for so long that they could basically set whatever price they want and only offer meager performance gains per generation. If AMD is able to pull of Ryzen and Vega it will hopefully make everyone "honest" again. I am personally astounded by what AMD has been able to pull of with Ryzen in its first generation. I would have been beyond impressed with AMD had they achieved the 40% IPC gain over Excavator that they were promising, instead they are now claiming a 52% IPC gain over Excavator. Instead of coming out of the gate trading blows with Intel Haswell, they are coming out of the gate going straight for Broadwell-E and Kaby Lake. It is a feat that just six months ago I would tell anyone was like 98% impossible, yet AMD seems to have done the impossible. If early benchmarks are true then in one generation AMD has caught up to Intel's high end Braodwell-E and Kaby Lake processors and that is really exciting. For a long time I've been wondering if the iCore architecture has been pushed about as far as it can be or has Intel just been lazy and content to only have meager performance gains per generation because they don't have any competition? With Ryzen now a reality I'll guess we will see if Intel has to go to a new architecture to regain dominance or have they just been lazy and not putting effort into their "tick-tock" generational advances.

shame i just bought z270 and a 7700k

been an awful awful long time since i bought a amd cpu was back in the good old athlon days got to be almost 15 years ago

yes i kind of agree theres not much headroom left in current intel cpus the 7700k is kind of pushing the envelope now

though doubt they have been sitting back and not looking for something new but looks like ryzen may give amd a good head start

even before impartial reviews a lot of places are showing sold out on their pre-orders here which has to be great news for amd

Had to update an above post, totally forgot that the Ryzen R5 1500 and 1600X are 6 core and 12 thread processors. I doubt Intel, especially with their huge R&D budget hasn't been at least in the fist stages of developing a whole new high end architecture, however hopefully Ryzen caught them with their "pants down". I'm sure Intel figured at best Ryzen would be competitive with Haswell and they would have time on their side to release their next best thing. I really do think that iCore has been pushed about as far as possible, and if that is the case then hopefully Ryzen has some time where they are the equal to or better performer than Intel's high end iCore line. Who knows, with Ryzen only in first generation its not out of the question that second generation Ryzen and Intel's next architecture won't still be neck in neck for performance. It would be nice to have competition drive pure innovation and keep prices honest.

well shouldnt be long till the NDA lifts now but yes so far looks good for amd

bet toms hardware already has some ryzen chips in its possession for a review

AMD able to caught intel because intel putting their focus elsewhere after sandy (it is one of the reason why intel decided to replace Paul Otellini). AMD probably would having more trouble if intel keep coming 30% improvement for each generation after sandy. in any case it is good thing for AMD because finally recommending AMD CPU becoming much easier once again. in fact even better that it was during Phenom II vs intel Q9xxx CPU.

but one thing for sure: AMD also want to sell their stuff at higher price for better profit. AMD always aggressive with their pricing but that also put them in other issue: they have much harder time to sell their product at the same price as competitor even if the performance is the same or better. this is what happen with their gpu line up. Vega might be able to drop some of existing gpu pricing but i don't think AMD can bring "Ryzen" moment with nvidia. unlike x86 market the gpu market still very competitive for years. yes we no longer see "double performance jump" from one generation to another but the market is still very fierce. funny thing is people complaining about nvidia only give us minimal performance jump every year but it is AMD that first that start this trend with 7970. and it seems AMD wants their flagship to last roughly for almost 2 years before replacing them. to be honest i'm not really surprise Vega as AMD 2017 product. after looking at their release history you will notice that.

7970 - december 2011
290X - october 2013
Fury X - june 2015
Vega - Q2 2017

The GPU market seems to move much more rapidly than the CPU market, at least for now. I would hazard a guess that even if AMD's Vega comes out outperforming Nvidia's 10 series Ti cards it would be a short lived victory. Just like when AMD's R9 290X released beating the then top tiered GTX Titan it was a very short lived victory and Nvidia very rapidly recaptured the performance crown.

AMD re-entering the high performance CPU market and attempting to dethrone Intel has a much better chance than AMD trying to dethrone Nvidia with Vega. I think AMD can keep the GPU market competitive and release good high performance GPUs but I think Nvidia will always be able to release something better much more rapidly than AMD can respond. For one thing Nvidia only has to concentrate on GPUs whereas AMD is developing CPUs, APUs, and GPUs.

back then if AMD really able to beat 780ti then nvidia will have no way to top AMD. because back then GK110 (550mm2) is pretty much the limit nvidia can go with TSMC fabrication process (at that time). it is the same story with GM200 (600mm2). but with GP102 that's not the case. GP102 die size is measured at 471mm2. GP100 shows that nvidia have a room up to 610mm2 with current 16nmFF. so even if vega able to match nvidia fastest GP102 configuration nvidia still can come up with even faster gpu.

personally i think AMD can match nvidia performance if they willing to make big changes to their architecture. but it seems AMD is quite insistent not to move away from GCN. because if they change their architecture too drastically from GCN then they will lost "console optimization" benefit. AMD actually really rely on console to stir game developer to develop their games more towards their hardware strength. remember when AMD being asked about FL12_1 hardware support in their cards? they said the feature is not important because console hardware does not have it implying that game developer will not going to use it because such hardware does not exist in console. now even with polaris 10 &11 they still have no FL12_1 hardware inside them. i don't know why AMD still does not have them (it is still part of DX11/12 spec) but it seems AMD have tendency not supporting feature that they don't like. and they did something similar with DX11.

"Major mark up"

It's a 19% mark up, which basically falls in line with our VAT or customs charges.

1 Dollar is currently 81p