Ryzen up again: AMD workstation CPUs strike back

Although Intel has already fought back with the launch of the Core i9 ( see Unveiled, p12), the chip giant was taken by surprise when AMD launched the Ryzen 7. Its performance is highly competitive, but the price was the real shock.

In this review, we’ve been assessing the top Ryzen 7 1800X in a system that would normally have arrived with an Intel Core i7 sporting six, eight or even ten cores. Yet the price of the Ryzen 7 range puts it more in competition with Intel’s quad-core range. The Ryzen 7 1800X showcased here is less than half the price of the eight-core Intel Core i7-6900K –although the latter has considerably more headroom for overclocking, so has an edge in performance despite its lower 3.2GHz base frequency. The Ryzen 7’s price is more in line with the quad-core Intel Core i7-6700K, which the 1800X will soundly trounce in any multithreaded work. Not good news for Intel.

Intel hopes to head off this challenge with the forthcoming Core i7-7820X, which should be only slightly more expensive than the Ryzen 7 1800X and probably quite a bit quicker. Then there are the brand-new Core i9 processors, although none of these were available for testing at the time of writing.

But AMD hasn’t finished yet either. Hot on the heels of the Ryzen 7 will be the Ryzen Threadripper, which will offer 16 cores and quad-channel memory.

AMD also has its EPYC server and workstation range imminent, with up to 32 cores, eight-channel memory, and both single- and dual-socket configurations. This will give AMD a continuing advantage in core count over Intel, reminiscent of the glory days of Opteron.

Our conclusion? Ryzen is not a flash in the pan. Intel has some serious competition again for professional and enthusiast users, which is great news for workstation performance – and for pricing.