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Ryzen 5 rumored to arrive April 11
http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-ryzen-5-processors-start-at-169-at-launch-on-april-11th_192763
They claim that Guru 3D accidentally posted some slides online, then deleted them. Either the slides are real or else they're pretty good fakes.
People saw the launch of Ryzen 7 and said, but it's not competitive with Kaby Lake for gaming. Well, it wasn't supposed to be. That's what Ryzen 5 is for.
Let's get to the specs:
SKU cores base turbo price
1600X 6 3.6 4.0 $249
1600 6 3.2 3.6 $219
1500X 4 3.5 3.7 $189
1400 4 3.2 3.4 $169
One thing that jumps out to me is that 4 cores doesn't save you that much as compared to 6 cores. I think there's a statement in there about yields. I don't know if AMD is able to disable individual cores or if they have to come in pairs or whatever. If AMD can disable individual cores and 90% of CPU cores are good, then with suitable independence assumptions (which won't actually be true in the real world), only 43% of the dies have all eight cores good, but 96% have at least six cores good.
It's also interesting that the Ryzen 5 1600X gets you the same clock speeds as the flagship Ryzen 7 1800X. Getting six cores rather than eight cuts the price tag in half. Drop down to 4 cores in the 1500X and you not only don't save that much money, but the clock speed also drops a lot.
AMD's Ryzen CPUs are all unlocked, so you can also get a Ryzen 5 1600 and try to overclock it to 1600X speeds. No guarantee that they can all overclock to 4 GHz, but most of them can probably get pretty close. This does bring the usual overclocking caveats, as well as needing a more expensive motherboard to allow you to even try to overclock. For only a $30 savings on the CPU, the 1600X looks pretty good if you're inclined to buy AMD.
And that, of course, leads to discussing the competition. AMD doesn't have a competitor to the Core i7-7700K. They're not even trying to offer a competitor there. Ryzen can't clock high enough and doesn't have high enough IPC. But that's also out of the budget of most gamers.
Comparing the Ryzen 5 1600X to the Core i5-7600K is more interesting, however. They're nearly the same price. The latter tends to have a little better IPC and is clocked 200 MHz higher. The former has six cores rather than 4 as well as SMT enabled. I'd bet on the Core i5-7600K nearly always winning in cases where you can't use more than four cores, and sometimes by quite a bit. But if you scale well to many CPU cores, the Ryzen 5 1600X will nearly always win and often by a huge margin.
If you need a lot of multi-core CPU performance on a small budget, Ryzen is going to dominate. Ryzen 7 made that clear in the $330+ range, and Ryzen 5 extends that down the ladder.
But that's not very many games. I'd expect a Core i5-7600K to beat a Ryzen 5 1600X at most games where there is a meaningful CPU bottleneck. But that doesn't automatically mean that it's a better gaming CPU. We could easily end up in a situation where we have something like:
in 50% of games, the GPU is such a heavy bottleneck so they're basically tied
in 30% of games, the Core i5-7600K is faster than the Ryzen 5 1600X, but they're both so fast that the difference doesn't matter
in 10% of games, the Core i5-7600K is a little faster than the Ryzen 5 1600X, and the frame rates are low enough that it matters
in 5% of games, the Ryzen 5 1600X is faster than the Core i5-7600K, but they're both so fast that the difference doesn't matter
in 3% of games, the Ryzen 5 1600X is a little faster than the Core i5-7600K, and the frame rates are low enough that it matters
in 2% of games, the Ryzen 5 1600X is a lot faster than the Core i5-7600K because the game needs a lot of CPU cores, and it really matters
In that scenario, the Core i5-7600K clearly beats the Ryzen 5 1600X four times as often as the other way around. But it's not at all clear that that makes it a superior gaming CPU. It really only takes one game that you like that needs a ton of CPU power for Ryzen to be the better option. And that game might launch next year. Or the year after.
I will say, however, that a game that has a single-threaded bottleneck harsh enough that a Zen core clocked at 4 GHz is a serious problem has a severe case of badly-coded syndrome. (Civilization IV, that means you.) That's likely to cause problems elsewhere in the game--and not likely to be fixed by having a Kaby Lake core that is only slightly faster.
I haven't talked much about the quad cores yet, and I don't think they're all that interesting. The Ryzen 5 1400 in particular seems to be basically the garbage bin, for chips that need too much voltage or can't clock very high or whatever. I wouldn't count on one of them overclocking to 4 GHz, or for that matter, 3.8 GHz. Or the clock speeds might be so low because they're binned to be 35 W parts or some such, but I doubt that.
Still, they seem to be targeted at the high clocked Kaby Lake dual cores as much as at the low clocked Kaby Lake quad cores. And while you can make a good case that four cores is enough for nearly all games today, the case for two cores being enough is much, much weaker. I didn't think the Kaby Lake dual cores were interesting, though the Ryzen quad cores aren't good enough to make them trivially stupid to buy.
They claim that Guru 3D accidentally posted some slides online, then deleted them. Either the slides are real or else they're pretty good fakes.
People saw the launch of Ryzen 7 and said, but it's not competitive with Kaby Lake for gaming. Well, it wasn't supposed to be. That's what Ryzen 5 is for.
Let's get to the specs:
SKU cores base turbo price
1600X 6 3.6 4.0 $249
1600 6 3.2 3.6 $219
1500X 4 3.5 3.7 $189
1400 4 3.2 3.4 $169
One thing that jumps out to me is that 4 cores doesn't save you that much as compared to 6 cores. I think there's a statement in there about yields. I don't know if AMD is able to disable individual cores or if they have to come in pairs or whatever. If AMD can disable individual cores and 90% of CPU cores are good, then with suitable independence assumptions (which won't actually be true in the real world), only 43% of the dies have all eight cores good, but 96% have at least six cores good.
It's also interesting that the Ryzen 5 1600X gets you the same clock speeds as the flagship Ryzen 7 1800X. Getting six cores rather than eight cuts the price tag in half. Drop down to 4 cores in the 1500X and you not only don't save that much money, but the clock speed also drops a lot.
AMD's Ryzen CPUs are all unlocked, so you can also get a Ryzen 5 1600 and try to overclock it to 1600X speeds. No guarantee that they can all overclock to 4 GHz, but most of them can probably get pretty close. This does bring the usual overclocking caveats, as well as needing a more expensive motherboard to allow you to even try to overclock. For only a $30 savings on the CPU, the 1600X looks pretty good if you're inclined to buy AMD.
And that, of course, leads to discussing the competition. AMD doesn't have a competitor to the Core i7-7700K. They're not even trying to offer a competitor there. Ryzen can't clock high enough and doesn't have high enough IPC. But that's also out of the budget of most gamers.
Comparing the Ryzen 5 1600X to the Core i5-7600K is more interesting, however. They're nearly the same price. The latter tends to have a little better IPC and is clocked 200 MHz higher. The former has six cores rather than 4 as well as SMT enabled. I'd bet on the Core i5-7600K nearly always winning in cases where you can't use more than four cores, and sometimes by quite a bit. But if you scale well to many CPU cores, the Ryzen 5 1600X will nearly always win and often by a huge margin.
If you need a lot of multi-core CPU performance on a small budget, Ryzen is going to dominate. Ryzen 7 made that clear in the $330+ range, and Ryzen 5 extends that down the ladder.
But that's not very many games. I'd expect a Core i5-7600K to beat a Ryzen 5 1600X at most games where there is a meaningful CPU bottleneck. But that doesn't automatically mean that it's a better gaming CPU. We could easily end up in a situation where we have something like:
in 50% of games, the GPU is such a heavy bottleneck so they're basically tied
in 30% of games, the Core i5-7600K is faster than the Ryzen 5 1600X, but they're both so fast that the difference doesn't matter
in 10% of games, the Core i5-7600K is a little faster than the Ryzen 5 1600X, and the frame rates are low enough that it matters
in 5% of games, the Ryzen 5 1600X is faster than the Core i5-7600K, but they're both so fast that the difference doesn't matter
in 3% of games, the Ryzen 5 1600X is a little faster than the Core i5-7600K, and the frame rates are low enough that it matters
in 2% of games, the Ryzen 5 1600X is a lot faster than the Core i5-7600K because the game needs a lot of CPU cores, and it really matters
In that scenario, the Core i5-7600K clearly beats the Ryzen 5 1600X four times as often as the other way around. But it's not at all clear that that makes it a superior gaming CPU. It really only takes one game that you like that needs a ton of CPU power for Ryzen to be the better option. And that game might launch next year. Or the year after.
I will say, however, that a game that has a single-threaded bottleneck harsh enough that a Zen core clocked at 4 GHz is a serious problem has a severe case of badly-coded syndrome. (Civilization IV, that means you.) That's likely to cause problems elsewhere in the game--and not likely to be fixed by having a Kaby Lake core that is only slightly faster.
I haven't talked much about the quad cores yet, and I don't think they're all that interesting. The Ryzen 5 1400 in particular seems to be basically the garbage bin, for chips that need too much voltage or can't clock very high or whatever. I wouldn't count on one of them overclocking to 4 GHz, or for that matter, 3.8 GHz. Or the clock speeds might be so low because they're binned to be 35 W parts or some such, but I doubt that.
Still, they seem to be targeted at the high clocked Kaby Lake dual cores as much as at the low clocked Kaby Lake quad cores. And while you can make a good case that four cores is enough for nearly all games today, the case for two cores being enough is much, much weaker. I didn't think the Kaby Lake dual cores were interesting, though the Ryzen quad cores aren't good enough to make them trivially stupid to buy.
Comments
Meanwhile, Ryzen 3 doesn't arrive until the second half of this year.
One costs about $225, and "wins" four times as often as the other CPU.
The other costs $249, and ~might~ win at some things in the future.
Why would I ever buy the $249 chip if I'm building a PC today? In a year/several years from now, if the PC I build today isn't able to compete, then I'll look at the options then. But I don't historically build with a ton of "future proofing" in mind, particularly when it involves sacrificing something today for something that may or may not come about in the future.
Right now, the default position for most gamers is an Intel CPU. X7 didn't change that; most all said "Ok, X7 is competing against EX, that isn't necessarily for gamers." And I still agree with that. But i5 sure as hell is, and I would have hoped X5 was too. Maybe OC results and real benchmarks will prove the price worthwhile, I don't know. But I can say I lost a good deal of enthusiasm.
I will say, the premise of my article holds true for Intel as well - why would I ever pay more for a Core i7 if I'm building a gaming rig? And yet, those sell quite well. It does appear that AMD is trying to position their X5 1600X against the 7700K, and it very well may compete very well in the same types of applications where the X7 vs EX comparisons were favorable as well (it will be harder, 7700K at near 5G, I don't know). But I would say, if that's the case you are looking at, you probably shouldn't have got a 7700K, you should have got a Broadwell EX.
2) I'd bet on Socket AM4 getting better upgrade options than LGA 1151 in the future.
3) It only takes one program that you care about that needs a lot of CPU cores to make a strong case for a 6-core Ryzen 5 over a quad core anything.
I'd be very, very surprised if Ryzen 3 or Ryzen 5 overclocks to significantly beyond 4 GHz. Maybe they could coax more MHz out of a respin or something, but if disabling cores allowed higher clock speeds, you could probably do that to Ryzen 7 through the BIOS.
There is a fairly strong case for gamers to get a Kaby Lake Core i5 over Ryzen 5. But it's not an airtight case.
Also, I think you mean Broadwell-E, not Broadwell-EX. The latter is not offered in desktops at all, and is only Xeon E7 for 4-socket and 8-socket servers.
courtesy of anandtech
Currently still running an AMD 8350.
Upgrading to a Ryzen 5 1600X might be interesting. That's really just a question of why you discovered that you need to upgrade. If you've run into a game that you really like and doesn't scale well to multiple CPU cores but does need faster CPU cores than you have, then you should upgrade to Kaby Lake, as in, a Core i5-7600K or Core i7-7700K. If you've run into a game you like that does scale well to a lot of CPU cores (as demonstrated by all CPU cores being near 100% busy on your current rig) but four cores just isn't enough, then you should upgrade to either a Ryzen 5 1600X or some variant of Ryzen 7.
But don't just try to guess which of those situations you'll hit first and upgrade pre-emptively. Wait until your current CPU is too slow, or perhaps the computer is so old that it's unreliable and needs to be replaced outright. It might be 2020 by the time that happens, in which case, neither Ryzen nor Kaby Lake will be interesting anymore, as they'll probably both be discontinued and off the market in favor of something newer and better.
Just read the anandtech preview, these are the ones to keep an eye out on. 6 core 12 thread for $249? Same base clock and boost clock as the 1800x? I mean basically you're getting a 6/12 proc for the same basic price as the intel 4 core 4 thread piece.
Now, if only game developers would start properly multithreading the games we could take advantage of this and start realling pursuing lots of CPU cores as a way to boost speed.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Agreed, i7 3570k is a great proc and is more than enough for pretty much any game on the market right now.
My suggestion would be to buy a good CPU cooler and do a mild overclock if you haven't already.
Spending $500 on a new CPU/mobo/ram to get 5% increase in FPS would be a complete and utter waste of money.
Now, if you were on an i7-860 or something, then yes, it would be worthwhile.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Sounds like a new build is definitely up your alley. I would strongly recommend waiting for that 1600x, if you want/need a 6 core proc that's the one to get.
What's your overall budget look like for this build?
Edit: BTW I get it man, I had an i7-2600k that I bought pretty much the day they came out, and I ended up upgrading to the 6700k last year when I frankly didn't need to. The 980ti already played most everything at max settings fine on my old system, I just wanted new stuff. Plus I was able to throw an old GTX 760 into that system and my friend will use it to play stuff like HOTS or older/less taxing games like Titan Quest when he comes over. So it was overall a win/win.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
But if it uses a lot of CPU, then yes a 6 core CPU would help.
I don't think there's many surprises. Still pretty much capped at <=4Ghz. Consensus that I've seen so far is: if your intent is mostly gaming, Ryzen isn't bad but go Intel; if it's pretty much anything else that's moderately intensive, Ryzen is damn good.
I still don't see a huge point in the 5 myself, but that's speaking as a gamer. If I were to be building a rig for something CPU heavy, I still don't think I'd use the 5, I'd just jump straight to the 7, but having the 5 around does give you some budget flexibility. Usually, when you are talking CPU heavy applications though, the difference in $100 is nothing compared to the increase in operational throughput you get (that's why Intel has been able to successfully charge many times more for their higher core count chips).
...either it is more prevalent or it isn't, can't be both. Correct answer is: It isn't.
There is no reason to pick AMD over Intel outside of a few corner cases such as production workstations.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
Also Ryzen cpus incur fps penalty with Nvidia in DX12. The big 1080p difference completely disappears in dx12 with AMD 480 (due to 480s hardware scheduler, removed draw call ceiling, and spreading game logic and draw call more equally to cores other than the first)
In DX11 its a more complex story, but Nvidia generally runs better with both intel and ryzen (due to spreading draw calls to more cores equally with its software scheduler, while keeping the bulk of the game logic on first core and second core.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoZB-cnjc0&t=1s
The video above from NerdTechGasm is the only one that explains what's actually going nvidia vs amd, dx11 vs dx12, ryzen 1080p vs 4k.
And the key is software scheduler implementation on nvidia vs hardware scheduler implementation on amd, auto pseudo-multi-core on dx11 on nvidia.
And NerdTechGasm's findings are pretty much in line with the discrepancies AdoredTV noticed in dx11vsdx12 1070vs480 Rise of The Tomb Raider :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tfTZjugDeg
But yes, a lot of benchmarks for Ryzen do seem to scale pretty well with memory speed.
Nvidia's DX11 command lists(deferred rendering) operates with no developer programming/input due to intercept "workers" mechanism (bulk of game logic on first core, draw calls spread over multiple cores).
AMD DX11 cannot do this because it lacks software renderer and the server intercept workers, and incurs heavy penalty if games in DX11 don't spread workload in the following way : (bare minimum game logic on first core with all draw calls on first core, and game logic spread over multiple cores ).
You might notice that this makes it extremely easy to intentionally cripple either Nvidia or AMD cards in any game with minimal effort (and moderate bribe from either Nvidia or AMD).
This also is what leads to faulty conclusions of why intel i5/i7 are 95% maxed and amd is <50% maxed in certain situations (not because i5/i7 has no breathing room, or because amd is underutilized, or due to specific optimizations, but because due to the differences in how scheduling works on amd vs nvidia cards ( you have 3 different ways that the cpus can be burdened depending on whether it's DX11 AMD, DX11 Nvidia, or DX12 ).
AMD opted not to develop a similar mechanism to Nvidia's DX11 command lists, but to focus on DX12 and utilize it's raw power and hardware scheduler.
However this meant AMD gambled on extremely fast DX12 adoption rates which hasn't happened and thus Nvidia came on top by focusing on the past-present instead of the future,and removing the burden for developers with the incredibly smart ghetto dx11 multi-core software tweak.
And now AMD is forced to work together with developers (Bethesda for Prey and beyond) as a stop gap before wide DX12 adoption (which in turn is much harder due to money availability gap between Nvidia and AMD)
It would probably be much easier to understand this from his video, he does have the actual technical knowledge for this, and could probably answer question or additionally explain parts of his video in further detail
Specifically he has awesome graphs on command lists, and explains basics of how it works really nice (the server-worker mechanism which intercepts and splits up draw calls to send them to unused cores)
It's in the first part of the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIoZB-cnjc0&t=1s