ALL THE LATEST ON AMD RYZEN
A return to form
THIS IS AN IMPORTANT release for AMD. Yes, every processor launch is important, but AMD’s Ryzen chip is the first to feature its Zen core architecture. This is AMD’s first serious assault on the high-end and enthusiast market for five years, and there is an awful lot riding on its success. Ryzen is an eightcore barnstormer, built using a 14nm production process. Intel chips have been top dog in serious machines for a while now—AMD fanboys will tell you how AMD chips can run faster, but it always seems to require a specific set of circumstances to achieve the trick. Ryzen looks to have the raw power to tackle Intel’s finest across the board.
The Zen core architecture is a clean-sheet design that’s been cooking since 2012. The development team has been led by Jim Keller, the man behind the original Athlon architecture (which was great). Highlights from the feature list include a write-through L2 cache, simultaneous multithreading (at last), and a clever new branch prediction system. This has AMD claiming there is a “true artificial network inside every Zen processor.” A trifle optimistic, perhaps, but we get the idea, guys: It’s better at predicting. AMD claims that all this trickery gives Zen a 40 percent instructions-per-cycle improvement on the previous Excavator architecture.
To enable more flexible and effective DVFS—Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling— Ryzen is fitted with a matrix of embedded sensors to monitor temperature, frequency, and voltage. This enables more effective management of power consumption, and a new system called Precision Boost. This works seamlessly to ramp up selected cores in 25MHz increments. More interestingly, though, we also have XFR— Extended Frequency Range— which will enable higher clock rates if the system detects sufficient cooling. Sounds like automatic overclocking, doesn’t it? Effectively, it is.
Early benchmarks using engineering samples, and AMD’s launch presentations, have been tantalizing. It shows itself as a match for the mighty i7-6900K across a range of benchmarks, including some awesome 60-plus fps 4K gaming. Count us impressed. Early indications (all right, then, leaks from the fabs in China) have four Ryzen chips ready for launch early in the year. The 3.4GHz SR7 and SR7 Black Edition are the range-toppers, with eight cores, 16MB of L3 and 4MB of L2 cache, and an impressive TDP of 95W. A sixcore SR5 and a four-core SR3 are to follow.
All well and very good so far, but the clincher is the pricing. The SR7 is “expected” to retail at $349, and the lovely tinkering-friendly Black Edition at $499 (all prices are a little fuzzy as yet). That’s near enough half what Intel will charge you for a comparable Core i7. The SR5 and SR3 are similarly attractive at $249 and $149. That last price puts it into Core i3 territory.
The SR7 Black Edition will probably grab the early headlines. It is a “3.4GHz+” chip. How far that “+” can be stretched is going to be fun. To 4GHz on all cores and 5GHz on a single core without liquid cooling, if the rather over-excited early testers are to be believed. Ryzen has the dream combination of effective multithreading across multiple cores and decent clock speeds.
Even allowing for the expected huff and puff from AMD and its fans, Ryzen is going to put AMD back on the map in a big way. The next few months are going to be interesting times indeed. If you are planning a new rig in the near future, it looks like the “AMD or Intel” decision just got real again.
XFR will enable higher clock rates if the system detects sufficient cooling.