AMD To Livestream Zen 'New Horizon' Gaming Event On December 13
AMD is holding a live-stream "New Horizon" event on December 13 at 3pm CST to showcase the performance of its Zen CPU. AMD's Zen is perhaps one of the most exciting processor releases in recent history, largely due to the redesigned microarchitecture, which promises a 40% IPC boost compared to the previous-generation AMD products.
You can register for the live-streamed event here, but there are very few details available. We do know that eSports and Evil Geniuses "legend" PPD will (apparently) do some live gaming on a Zen system, and the company also notes that there will be appearances from other special guests and prize giveaways. Geoff Keighley will MC the event.
We already had some hands-on time with functional Zen Summit Ridge desktop systems at an offsite location during Intel's IDF event earlier this year, but we weren't allowed to benchmark the systems, so the demo machines provided little more than confirmation that the systems were running well. The event also featured a demonstration of Zen beating a Broadwell-E Core i7-6900K (albeit, an underclocked one) in a multi-threaded Blender workload. AMD conducted the Blender test with both processors clocked at 3.0GHz to highlight performance on a level playing field, but we expect Zen to debut with higher clocks when it comes to the retail market.
Our tests results from a leaked Intel i7-7700K Kaby Lake CPU indicate that (as expected) there isn't a quantum leap forward as we move from Intel's Skylake to Kaby Lake, which makes the pending Zen launch all the more interesting.
Hopefully, the live-streamed event will give us further insight into gaming performance, and perhaps a bit more technical detail as well. AMD is shipping the AM4 platform, which supports Zen, with its 7th-gen Bristol Ridge APUs, but one might expect the demonstration to occur on the as-of-yet unannounced AM4 enthusiast chipset.
AMD plans to begin shipping retail Zen SKUs in Q1 2017, so the trickle of information will soon turn into a flood. We do know that the company is on track with its schedule, so we expect to hear much more during CES in early January 2017.
The AMD registration website popped up without a formal press release or announcement from AMD, but we have reached out for further details.
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Paul Alcorn is the Editor-in-Chief for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.
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RomeoReject Really hoping they do well. I haven't bought a CPU since way back with a FX-4170 (Laugh it up, I know it was a poor idea now). I'm hoping AMD makes me want to support them still.Reply -
cknobman I hope they do really well as my AMD stock value is going through the roof now.Reply
Up over 350%!! -
kiniku I have been an Intel/Nvidia gamer guy for over a decade. But if Zen and Vega were to make a build viable I'd jump in a heartbeat.Reply -
Anarkie13 Seriously, let's get competition going again on the CPU and GPU fronts. Leaving Intel and Nvidia undisputed for too long will kill advancements.Reply -
mellis This will probably be the beginning of the battle between AMD and Intel for whom can provide the most cores with the best performance. I have still not seen a reason to replace my old Intel 3930K anytime soon. Maybe in the next year or two I will have a reason to.Reply -
alextheblue Reply18935612 said:Really hoping they do well. I haven't bought a CPU since way back with a FX-4170 (Laugh it up, I know it was a poor idea now). I'm hoping AMD makes me want to support them still.
It really wasn't the worst thing you could have done. After all, board permitting, you could still slap an 83xx in there bundled with a Wraith cooler and overclock it a bit for a cheap performance boost. They've been putting AM3+ chips on sale a lot lately too. I've seen much bigger mistakes. -
Clive_2 Now if we could just get more AMD powered laptops and convertibles, after using a variety of Intel products with Intel Graphics, I refuse to even entertain the concept of buying Intel with Intel graphics. And yeah I know I can buy a higher end gamer one...but there goes battery life...Reply