AMD Ryzen 7 Processor Specifications
It’s finally here. Is this the $499 you’ve been looking to spend?
It’s finally here and its finally time to talk about. The AMD Ryzen processor is being released onto the world and based on the buildup of excitement over the last week or so since pre-orders began, details on just how Ryzen performs relative to Intel’s mainstream and enthusiast processors are a hot commodity. While leaks have been surfacing for months and details seem to be streaming out from those not bound to the same restrictions we have been, I think you are going to find our analysis of the Ryzen 7 1800X processor to be quite interesting and maybe a little different as well.
Honestly, there isn’t much that has been left to the imagination about Ryzen, its chipsets, pricing, etc. with the slow trickle of information that AMD has been sending out since before CES in January. We know about the specifications, we know about the architecture, we know about the positioning; and while I will definitely recap most of that information here, the real focus is going to be on raw numbers. Benchmarks are what we are targeting with today’s story.
Let’s dive right in.
The Zen Architecture – Foundation for Ryzen
Actually, as it turns out, in typical Josh Walrath fashion, he wrote too much about the AMD Zen architecture to fit into this page. So, instead, you'll find his complete analysis of AMD's new baby right here: AMD Zen Architecture Overview: Focus on Ryzen
AMD Ryzen 7 Processor Specifications
Though we have already detailed the most important specifications for the new AMD Ryzen processors when the preorders went live, its worth touching on them again and reemphasizing the important ones.
| Ryzen 7 1800X | Ryzen 7 1700X | Ryzen 7 1700 | Core i7-6900K | Core i7-6800K | Core i7-7700K | Core i5-7600K | Core i7-6700K | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Zen | Zen | Zen | Broadwell-E | Broadwell-E | Kaby Lake | Kaby Lake | Skylake |
| Process Tech | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm+ | 14nm+ | 14nm |
| Cores/Threads | 8/16 | 8/16 | 8/16 | 8/16 | 6/12 | 4/8 | 4/4 | 4/8 |
| Base Clock | 3.6 GHz | 3.4 GHz | 3.0 GHz | 3.2 GHz | 3.4 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 3.8 GHz | 4.0 GHz |
| Turbo/Boost Clock | 4.0 GHz | 3.8 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 4.5 GHz | 4.2 GHz | 4.2 GHz |
| Cache | 20MB | 20MB | 20MB | 20MB | 15MB | 8MB | 8MB | 8MB |
| Memory Support | DDR4-2400 Dual Channel |
DDR4-2400 Dual Channel |
DDR4-2400 Dual Channel |
DDR4-2400 Quad Channel |
DDR4-2400 Quad Channel |
DDR4-2400 Dual Channel |
DDR4-2400 Dual Channel |
DDR4-2400 Dual Channel |
| TDP | 95 watts | 95 watts | 65 watts | 140 watts | 140 watts | 91 watts | 91 watts | 91 watts |
| Price | $499 | $399 | $329 | $1050 | $450 | $350 | $239 | $309 |
All three of the currently announced Ryzen processors are 8-core, 16-thread designs, matching the Core i7-6900K from Intel in that regard. Though Intel does have a 10-core part branded for consumers, it comes in at a significantly higher price point (over $1500 still). The clock speeds of Ryzen are competitive with the Broadwell-E platform options though are clearly behind the curve when it comes the clock capabilities of Kaby Lake and Skylake. With admittedly lower IPC than Kaby Lake, Zen will struggle in any purely single threaded workload with as much as 500 MHz deficit in clock rate.
- Ryzen 7 1800X - $499 - Amazon.com
- Ryzen 7 1700X - $399 - Amazon.com
- Ryzen 7 1700 - $329 - Amazon.com
- Amazon.com Ryzen Landing Page
- ASUS ROG Crosshair VI Hero - $254 - Amazon.com
- ASUS Prime X370 Pro - $169 - Amazon.com
- ASUS Prime B350-Plus - $99 - Amazon.com
- ASUS Prime B350M-A - $89 - Amazon.com
One interesting deviation from Intel's designs that Ryzen gets is a more granular boost capability. AMD Ryzen CPUs will be able move between processor states in 25 MHz increments while Intel is currently limited to 100 MHz. If implemented correctly and effectively through SenseMI, this allows Ryzen to get 25-75 MHz of additional performance in a scenario where it was too thermally constrainted to hit the next 100 MHz step.
XFR (Extended Frequency Range), supported on the Ryzen 7 1800X and 1700X (hence the "X"), "lifts the maximum Precision Boost frequency beyond ordinary limits in the presence of premium systems and processor cooling." The story goes, that if you have better than average cooling, the 1800X will be able to scale up to 4.1 GHz in some instances for some undetermined amount of time. The better the cooling, the longer it can operate in XFR. While this was originally pitched to us as a game-changing feature that bring extreme advantages to water cooling enthusiasts, it seems it was scaled back for the initial release. Only getting 100 MHz performance increase, in the best case result, seems a bit more like technology for technology's sake rather than offering new capabilities for consumers.
Ryzen integrates a dual channel DDR4 memory controller with speeds up to 2400 MHz, matching what Intel can do on Kaby Lake. Broadwell-E has the advantage with a quad-channel controller but how useful that ends of being will be interesting to see as we step through our performance testing.
One area of interest is the TDP ratings. AMD and Intel have very different views on how this is calculated. Intel has made this the maximum power draw of the processor while AMD sees it as a target for thermal dissipation over time. This means that under stock settings the Core i7-7700K will not draw more than 91 watts and the Core i7-6900K will not draw more than 140 watts. And in our testing, they are well under those ratings most of the time, whenever AVX code is not being operated. AMD’s 95-watt rating on the Ryzen 1800X though will very often be exceed, and our power testing proves that out. The logic is that a cooler with a 95-watt rating and the behavior of thermal propagation give the cooling system time to catch up. (Interestingly, this is the philosophy Intel has taken with its Kaby Lake mobile processors.)
Obviously the most important line here for many of you is the price. The Core i7-6900K is the lowest priced 8C/16T option from Intel for consumers at $1050. The Ryzen R7 1800X has a sticker price less than half of that, at $499. The R7 1700X vs Core i7-6800K match is interesting as well, where the AMD CPU will sell for $399 versus $450 for the 6800K. However, the 6800K only has 6-cores and 12-threads, giving the Ryzen part an instead 25% boost in multi-threaded performance. The 7700K and R7 1700 battle will be interesting as well, with a 4-core difference in capability and a $30 price advantage to AMD.
So, did it ever occur to the
So, did it ever occur to the reviewer that the a bit slower performance in some software (games included) is actually due to poor optimizations?
The industry used the last decade or so to specifically optimize for Intel.
Ryzen is fairly new by comparison, but it demonstrated that it got up to 30% increase in performance through simple patches in games.
Audacity and many other software like it are not optimized for Ryzen architecture.
They are taking advantage of every possible trick in Intel’s hand, and yet barely anything or none of it actually benefits Ryzen performance-wise.
Plus, the Infinity fabric in Ryzen is sensitive to RAM speeds.
2400 MhZ speed on RAM is simply inadequate for Ryzen… 3000 MhZ would be better as that would raise it’s performance by about 10%.
Other than RAM speeds, software optimizations are required to take advantage of Ryzen’s capabilities.
Otherwise, you might as well be comparing apples and oranges right now.
It actually shows that Ryzen via ‘brute force’ is highly competitive for all Intel’s products… just imagine what might happen if we get developers to actively support for Ryzen – of course, this will probably require time as devs usually optimize for hardware they are paid to optimize for – and as we know, both Intel and Nvidia have deep pockets to sway devs to support their own hardware specifically and make AMD look bad (when in reality, its anything but).