Exactly. one-hit-wonders aren't going to work. they need to consistently undersell and perform comparably, or outperform to be relevant. Ryzen is a nice start, but it's just one data point (and it ain't cheaper or better than anything Intel is offering).
Hardware & Technical 16-Core / 32-thread Ryzen (OMG, OMG,OMG...)
- Thread starter shadragon
- Start date
Exactly. one-hit-wonders aren't going to work. they need to consistently undersell and perform comparably, or outperform to be relevant. Ryzen is a nice start, but it's just one data point (and it ain't cheaper or better than anything Intel is offering).
For me, they've SERIOUSLY mis-stepped with the launch strategy and - potentially - snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
The problem is that - by launching the 7-series first - they've managed to make Ryzen seem expensive (it isn't) and underwhelming (it isn't). The 7-series competes with some expensive processors and was always going to be largely of interest to a specialist, enthusiast market. Since it isn't ideal for what most of the youtube reviewers want to use it for (gaming) and it's aimed at a slightly different market (productivity, notably multi-media productivity) it's got some underwhelming reports. Trouble is. This has probably poisoned a lot of minds against the whole line of chips, so when Ryzen 5 launches (which is aimed at Gamers, may well perform better than Ryzen 7 does at gaming and will definitely be much cheaper than the 7 series) Ryzen will already have a bad reputation for underperforming.
It's crazy. But there it is.
The problem is that - by launching the 7-series first - they've managed to make Ryzen seem expensive (it isn't) and underwhelming (it isn't). The 7-series competes with some expensive processors and was always going to be largely of interest to a specialist, enthusiast market. Since it isn't ideal for what most of the youtube reviewers want to use it for (gaming) and it's aimed at a slightly different market (productivity, notably multi-media productivity) it's got some underwhelming reports. Trouble is. This has probably poisoned a lot of minds against the whole line of chips, so when Ryzen 5 launches (which is aimed at Gamers, may well perform better than Ryzen 7 does at gaming and will definitely be much cheaper than the 7 series) Ryzen will already have a bad reputation for underperforming.
It's crazy. But there it is.
Very good point -- and you'd think they would have learned this from Intel. The enthusiast, $1,7000 chip is always the last in the series. Heck, we're already on Kaby lake in consumer gamming CPUs and the most recent enthusiast chip is still on skylake. If you release the top dog first, the entire series is, for better or worse, defined by that release.
Yep. Just like Alfa Romeo with their recent Gulia. They released the niche-market 50-grand supercar variant first. Now nobody is buying it as they think's it's a really pricey car - which it isn't as it competes with the 3-series and better Mondeos. Or, it would if people even considered it when looking for their new Repmobile.
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no, it won't. You're better off with a lower-count core with higher per-core performance, like a i7 7700.
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Ditto
Most games don't take advantage of multiple cores very well.
Ryzen would have been interesting if it had a spot in Servers. Price isn't as big a factor in that space as power consumption. If AMD produces a multi-core chip that uses significantly lower power and better performance than an Intel chip, it can gain some market share.
I run 10 servers out of my home and know full well the impact of moving to a more efficient platform. I recently replaced an old dual quad-core Xeon system with a new server using a single Xeon E3-1226. It performs faster than the system it replaced and that one change has reduced my electricity bill about $40/month.
Server farms are far more interested in power consumption savings than initial CPU cost. If AMD doesn't compete on that basis, just selling a cheaper chip won't make any significant competitive impact.
It's worth bearing in mind that applications have to be specifically coded to take advantage of threading. With something like graphics rendering it's just a basic buttload of maths to be done in the shortest time possible & you just shovel the numbers in one end and the results come out the other whenever the processor has finished it - speed is important, timing isn't... However with games it's a bit more complex as so many functions have to be synchronised (imagine if the AI, World sim, Graphics, Sound and so on got out of sync!). Also there is a cost in threading things and synchronising them, and you do get to the point where the losses and complexities in doing so more-or-less outweigh the advantages.
Most games producers these days have the sense not to write games that most people can't run well. Since the average processor is a quad and there are a lot of duals still out there nobody is going to write anything for a while that doesn't run well on a quad, and the advantages of more than four cores are likely to be slight for some time to come - because games will not be coded to take best advantage of them. It would just be terrible business to produce a game that the majority of your potential customers can't run.
But, then again, running a single game or program isn't the only point of having a high thread count. On our PCs we have the operating system, the services it's running, we might have things like chat clients, system commanders, fan software, streaming software etc etc etc running as well. So having the opportunity to execute them on a different core to your game is clearly a nice thing and an advantage.
But 16 cores? Well, that makes sense for a server workload, sure. Lots of sessions logged into a server, running lots of applications. But it's a far cry from a PC with a Game and number of minor apps on it running in a single session.
I'll be very surprised if there is much difference in gaming for the average gamer between an R5 and an R7. Probably the R5 will be just slightly worse, but there is also the very slight chance that - for the specific task of gaming - it may be slightly better. It'll certainly be better value! - almost certainly you'd be better off with the top R5 (Which has more than a enough cores for the foreseeable future) than the base R7. Spend anything saved on a better GPU!
Elite specifies a quad-core as it's minimum spec, but people have run it on duals as well to good results.
Most games producers these days have the sense not to write games that most people can't run well. Since the average processor is a quad and there are a lot of duals still out there nobody is going to write anything for a while that doesn't run well on a quad, and the advantages of more than four cores are likely to be slight for some time to come - because games will not be coded to take best advantage of them. It would just be terrible business to produce a game that the majority of your potential customers can't run.
But, then again, running a single game or program isn't the only point of having a high thread count. On our PCs we have the operating system, the services it's running, we might have things like chat clients, system commanders, fan software, streaming software etc etc etc running as well. So having the opportunity to execute them on a different core to your game is clearly a nice thing and an advantage.
But 16 cores? Well, that makes sense for a server workload, sure. Lots of sessions logged into a server, running lots of applications. But it's a far cry from a PC with a Game and number of minor apps on it running in a single session.
I'll be very surprised if there is much difference in gaming for the average gamer between an R5 and an R7. Probably the R5 will be just slightly worse, but there is also the very slight chance that - for the specific task of gaming - it may be slightly better. It'll certainly be better value! - almost certainly you'd be better off with the top R5 (Which has more than a enough cores for the foreseeable future) than the base R7. Spend anything saved on a better GPU!
Elite specifies a quad-core as it's minimum spec, but people have run it on duals as well to good results.