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AMD Ryzen Improves IPC by 52%, not 40%
AMD Ryzen 7 desktop chips are now available for pre-order, and will be released generally on March 2nd. The cheapest "Ryzen 7" 8-core chip will be $329, but has 16 threads just like the $399 and $499 versions (there had been some concern that it might not have multi-threading). Ryzen 3 and 5 series quad-core and hex-core chips will be released later.
AMD held a "Tech Day" to share details about its new chips. Over the past year or two, AMD has said that their goal was to improve instructions per clock (IPC) by 40% with Zen/Ryzen. Now they are saying that they have achieved that... by improving IPC by 52%. It's an impressive number that would not have been possible had Ryzen's predecessor, the Bulldozer architecture, been competitive with Intel's CPUs (on single-threaded performance). However, keep in mind that comparisons between Ryzen and Bulldozer or certain Intel Core i7 CPUs are still based on information provided by AMD.
The 8-core design features 4.8 billion transistors and "200 meters of wiring".
YouTuber removes footage of Ryzen Overclock World Record
YouTube tech pundit Austin Evans uploaded a video earlier today containing footage of AMD's Ryzen launch event. Shortly afterwards, the video was made private, then replaced with a re-edited version of the piece with a couple of changes. A section in which Austin outed the Vega video card by name was edited and overdubbed with the description "a really cool graphics card".
Another section of the video showed an overclocking competition held at the event with a number of well-known LN2 overclocking experts seeing just how far they could push the new Ryzen chips. This whole section was removed, including footage of "a Ryzen chip" running at just over 5.1GHz, followed by the OCers celebrating as a run on Cinebench's R15 multi-threaded performance test set a new world record.
Comments on the video asking why the video was replaced and uploaded confirm that the Vega mention and OC section were removed. Austin Evans did not explain exactly why these changes were made, merely saying "YOU SAW NOTHING" in the comments section.
The 5.1GHz figure is from my memory. I think it might have been 5.16GHz more exactly, but I'm not completely sure about that and obviously can't verify it from the original video.
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Thursday February 23 2017, @07:09PM
I'm not one to initially adapt a new processor, but I look forward to buying a new notebook computer in late 2018 with an AMD Ryzen processor and AMD Vega graphics card. I imagine that they'll both have decent Linux drivers by then.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 23 2017, @09:27PM
Yes. Too bad they won't go past 4 cores in the laptop, but it should have 8 threads.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 23 2017, @11:17PM
I imagine that they'll both have decent Linux drivers by then.
Only if AMD doesn't write them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Friday February 24 2017, @02:01AM
I'm not one to initially adapt a new processor, but I imagine that [AMD Ryzen and Vega will] have decent Linux drivers by [2018].
I am not normally one to initially adopt a new processor or technology for many reasons:
I have for years made a point of running technology a generation or two behind "cutting edge" for these reasons, with much success.
BUT
Right now, my main workstation has an AMD FX-8300 chip which is not the slowest chip by any means, but lags for important things I do like media encoding, data crunching, and compiling software. And it looks to me like an AMD Ryzen CPU with appropriate motherboard and RAM can not help but be immensely better than any FX/AM3+ no matter how tuned and polished the FX and no matter how fresh and untested/unmatured the Ryzen/AM4. It just looks like no contest to me.
Of course, my FX-8300 + Motherboard + RAM was as I recall about US$300 altogether, a year ago. For a Ryzen 7 1700X + comparable Motherboard & RAM it looks like I'll be out more like US$700.
What the heck, it's only money. I can use the old FX chip/board to build another decently fast system for someone. Looks like the chips and boards will be available from Newegg on March the 2nd. I already ordered the DDR4 RAM.
Just this one time I will be on the leading instead of trailing edge of something.