AMD held a Tech Day event in San Francisco to lay out the pricing, specifications and its own internal benchmarks for its three leading SKUs. The Ryzen 7 1800X ($499), 1700X ($399), and 1700 ($329) all pack 8 cores and 16 threads at an outstanding price points.
The Zen (Ryzen code name) journey started over four years ago and took over two million engineering hours to get to the architecture announced today. Ryzen processors packing 4.8 billion 14nm FinFET transistors. AMD claims more than a 52% increase in instructions per clock over Excavator.
Reviewers are still unable to publish reviews at this time. So we can only give you what AMD is handing out. AMD’s internal benchmarks comparing the 1800X to the Intel Broadwell-E 8-core/16-thread Intel Core i7-6900K. AMD claimed it offers 9% more performance in the Cinebench R15 multi-threaded test (noted as nT) and matches the i7-6900K’s single-core score. That is at $499 price point, which is much lower than the i7-6900K’s $1,050. It has a 95W TDP.
| Ryzen R7 1800X | Ryzen R7 1700X | Ryzen R7 1700 | Core i7-6900K | Core i7-6800K | Core i7-7700K | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | Zen | Zen | Zen | Broadwell-E | Broadwell-E | Kaby Lake |
| Process Tech | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm | 14nm+ |
| Cores/Threads | 8/16 | 8/16 | 8/16 | 8/16 | 6/12 | 4/8 |
| Base Clock | 3.6 GHz | 3.4 GHz | 3.0 GHz | 3.2 GHz | 3.4 GHz | 4.2 GHz |
| Turbo/Boost Clock | 4.0 GHz | 3.8 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 3.6 GHz | 4.5 GHz |
| Cache | 20MB | 20MB | 20MB | 20MB | 15MB | 8MB |
| TDP | 95 watts | 95 watts | 65 watts | 140 watts | 140 watts | 91 watts |
| Price | $499 | $399 | $329 | $1050 | $450 | $350 |
AMD is goign after Intel hard with these prices and the direct comparisons. The flagship Ryzen 7 1800X will run you just $499, the 1700X at $399 and the 1700 at $329. For AMD’s own comparisons, they pitted the Ryzen 7 1800X against the Core i7-6900K from Intel, selling for more than 2x the cost. Both CPUs have 8 cores and 16 threads, the AMD Ryzen part has higher clock speedsto boot. If you care about performance per dollar, and these stats check out, you should be impressed and Intel should be scared.
AMD has a ton of new product launches coming this year, including Vega GPUs and Naples server CPUs in the second quarter. Ryzen mobile products with the Zen core arrive in the second half of the year.
Ryzen ships on March 2.
Ryzen CPU Pre-Order LInks:
- Ryzen 7 1800X – $499 – Amazon.com
- Ryzen 7 1700X – $399 – Amazon.com
- Ryzen 7 1700 – $329 – Amazon.com
Why is TDP for the Core i7 so high relative to the new AMD chips?
AMD has better use of finfet design is my opinion.
Now the TDP for the Kaby Lake based Core I7-7700K (4C/8T at 4.20 GHz Base, 4.5GHz Tubro) is at 91 Watts. AMD is takes on that SKU with Ryzen 7 1700 (8C/16T, 3.0 GHz base, 3.7 GHz turbo) which uses 65 Watts. The 1700 has the lowest TDP 8 core for a desktop CPU out at the time of this writing. Heck it even comes with Wraith Spire LED Cooler in the box.
Please note the Ryzen 7 1800X (8C/16T, 3.6 GHz base, 4.0 GHz turbo) is TDP: 95W and the Ryzen 7 1700X (8C/16T, 3.4 GHz base, 3.8 GHz turbo) is also at a 95 watts. The i7-6900K Processor (8C/16T 3.20 GHz base, 4.0 GHz turbo which goes head to head with the Ryzen 7 1800X has a TDP of 140 Watts and requires the use of a X99 chipset motherboard. All the AM part use the same socket and motherboards, so you have safer path to upgrade in the future.