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Over the weekend, a caryatid of leaks spilled critical information on how AMD's Ryzen volition compare with Intel'due south Core i7 family, and how the chips will supposedly be priced. All of this information should exist taken equally preliminary and with a substantial grain of salt given the websites involved in leaking it and their records (WCCFTech'due south in particular) of playing fast and loose with the truth. This is rumor, not fact, and should be treated equivalently.

That said, these rumors are at least plausible. According to VideoCardz, which leaked the performance data, these numbers reflect a CPU without Turbo Mode, patently running at a flat iii.4GHz. The RAM used was DDR4-2400, and not great DDR4 at that — timings were set to 17-17-17-39 2T. The motherboard was an MSI A320 lath (pregnant a budget model) rather than a high-finish product. Clearly AMD felt these fries were close plenty to shipping production to represent Ryzen, but there were obviously a few bug still to exist sorted out. Furthermore, VC used Passmark, a synthetic test with express value for telling us how performance volition await in the real world. Caveats aside, let'due south examine the information.

These figures look plausible plenty to me to be worth writing about, even if I wouldn't depict any business firm conclusions on them. Synthetic tests don't always translate well to the real-world, and the CPU in question is clearly an early core.

But what these figures show almost chiefly is an AMD that's once again in a position to compete with Intel. CPU pricing volition determine how much truth is in that statement, but permit'southward be honest for a moment — it doesn't toll Intel annihilation like $400 to build a vi-core processor and it certainly doesn't cost $yard to build an viii-core chip. These are price bands Intel has maintained solely to heave its own revenue. Even if yous believe accusations of Intel acting in bad religion to ho-hum the speed of performance improvements are unfounded (and I do), there's no arguing that the company'due south price structure is optimized to earn itself the well-nigh corporeality of money, not to push college CPU core counts into markets that could plausibly apply them.

And speaking of rumors on pricing…

Pricing, positioning details

WCCFTech is challenge to have the full suite of AMD SKUs for its viii, six, and quad-core parts. Co-ordinate to the site, AMD will have a set of "Ryzen 3" parts with quad-cadre chips (no SMT), while "Ryzen v" fries volition a mixture of six-and-viii-core parts, all with SMT. The viii-core chips will be "Ryzen seven" models, and all of them will carry SMT as well. Supposedly all Ryzen cores will accept a TDP between 65W and 95W.

I am uncertain as to the validity of the entire SKU lineup and so will non accost it in further detail. What's more than interesting are iii specific claims WCCFTech makes almost the "Ryzen 7" production family.

Ryzen-SKUs

If these figures are remotely in the ballpark, Intel is in for a world of injure. The fleck nigh closely resembling the Ryzen tested to a higher place is the Ryzen 7 1700X, a iii.4GHz chip with a 3.8GHz Turbo. The results to a higher place suggest (tentatively!) that AMD'due south $389 core will land betwixt the Core i7-6800K ($441) and the 6850K ($628). Meanwhile, the top-end Ryzen 4GHz bit will country at $500 — less than half the price of Intel'due south current viii-core CPU family. That $389 cost betoken could accident the quad-core Core i7 out of the water at an equivalent price and should be advantageous against the "centre" of Intel's HEDT lineup.

I suspect Intel will concur its fire and avoid changing its production lines further until it sees how Ryzen actually stacks up in representative suites of benchmarks. Simply these results could mean we're about to run across a competitive CPU market once more for the first time in a half-decade. AMD doesn't need to lucifer Intel at every cost point or SKU to build a compelling product; it simply needs to offering a CPU that compares well with Intel in overall price/functioning. Ryzen looks similar information technology could be shaping up to do just that.