Last year I talked about the up-hill struggle AMD was going to face in 2017.
For the 10 years leading up to it, their processors were not that good.
But that all changed this year with AMD’s Zen microarchitecture.
Get ready for a very positive video, because Ryzen managed to be even better than it was
hyped up to be.
I couldn’t have been alone in growing tired of Intel’s same old 4 core i5’s and i7’s
every year.
The same old 5% improvement per generation accompanied by what seemed like a 5% price
hike.
As a 3770k owner this should have made me happy, but instead it quickly got dull to
see progress grind to a halt.
But then Ryzen happened.
It doesn’t suit my style to be this…
POSITIVE about something.
But Ryzen is the product to deserve my praise.
It didn’t just bring AMD back from an impossible disadvantage.
It halved prices for every given performance level!
Its success surprised even intel, who despite having years to prepare was sent into a state
of shock, resulting in rushed and confused product launches to combat the AMD threat.
I have a hard time stating how essential Ryzen was!
We’re talking more cores, multithreading, lower power consumption, a scale-able multi-die
design, smaller fabrication process and higher performance, all of which Ryzen nailed first
time!
No lie, every time I’m on a train I load up a review of Ryzen just to smile at the
benchmarks.
It’s so good to see AMD back in the CPU race.
While Intel focuses on larger, expensive processors, Zen is a small, cheap one that can be glued
together for more performance.
This reduces waste and prices and can scale to any price point, from budget computers
up to high-end servers.
While Intel have been charging a huge premium for 8 core processors for years, Ryzen 7 can
offer a similar product for a mainstream price.
The Ryzen 5s were even more competitive- I was impressed enough with the 1500x, which
was like a slightly slower i7 for half the price.
It’s testament to how strong the lineup is that this CPU has been overlooked in favour
of the 1600 series.
12 threads for i5 prices- that’s the deal of the year right there.
It was only the Ryzen 3s that disappointed me, but it took Intel’s legendarily affordable
Pentium G4560 to manage it.
But even then, it’s a no brainer that a full-fat 4-core processor will age better.
Plus its single core performance is still…
good enough.
GOOD ENOUGH.
That’s an unofficial slogan I’ve given to Ryzen.
It doesn’t sound great, but I don’t mean it in a nasty way.
I mean that it’s… good enough.
Gone are the days of Bulldozer, where the benefit of more cores was cancelled out by
dire single-core performance.
Intel’s single core performance is still better!
No denying it.
But Ryzen’s single-core performance is still GOOD ENOUGH.
You’ll get higher FPS in CS:GO from an i5.
But Ryzen’s FPS is still GOOD ENOUGH.
On its own, being good enough wouldn’t be… good enough.
If given the choice between a 4 core Ryzen or a 4 core Intel, the Intel is a better choice,
because it is faster.
But they shouldn’t be compared since Ryzen offers more cores at any given price-point.
So while it’s GOOD ENOUGH now, it’ll be a better bet tomorrow!
Ryzen’s success is at least partly down to Intel’s delayed response.
At the time they had the 6000 series, which if dropped to the right prices could have
directly gone against the Ryzen series.
But Intel played it cool, keeping prices high, which itself was a blessing for AMD whose
product lineup began to gain marketshare.
‘Maybe Intel wants to retain the reputation for having a premium product’, I thought.
To make owners of 6000 series CPUs feel better about their investment!
But surely the high-core Skylake CPUs, released as part of the 7000 series, would wipe the
floor with AMD?!
No!
Instead the lineup was a complete mess, with confused features, high power consumption
and poor thermals.
Sure, there were good products to be found there but Ryzen still offered more for your
money.
It’s only been with the recently released 8000 series that Intel have offered a Ryzen-killer.
A combination of higher core counts and low-priced variants make it a direct threat to Ryzen.
The 6-core 8700k reclaims the performance crown from Ryzen 7 in all but the most multi-threaded
of workloads and sports fantastic single-core performance to boot.
Despite this, Ryzen has continued to do well, in part thanks to Intel’s limited availability
and expensive motherboards.
But regardless, Ryzen cannot directly compete with it in terms of performance, nor was it
designed to.
Instead, we’ve seen large pricecuts to the Ryzen lineup to tide consumers over until
its refresh early next year.
That’s right.
Early next year we’ll be seeing a Zen 1.5 released.
There’s not a lot of information about this right now, but I think it’s fair to assume
that we’ll be getting general performance improvements, considering the optimisations
that an extra year of development can bring about.
The Ryzen architecture is only in its first iteration, after all.
There are probably plenty of opportunities to squeeze some extra performance from it.
I don’t expect more cores- and frankly, don’t think it needs them.
Rather, improved single core performance is more likely to be the focus.
This is where Intel is ahead, and thanks to their refined processes allowing them to reach
up to 5 Ghz while Ryzen is limited to closer to 4.
If they can up this to a higher figure, introduce support for faster RAM and add those magical
optimisations then I’ll be happy.
There will also be a jump from 14 to 12 nm.
Smaller stuff has always driven advancements in computer technology, allowing them to fit
more stuff into things, as well as lowering power consumption and heat production.
Ryzen wasn’t bad for any of these things in the first place, but these kinds of improvements
are always welcome!
Especially in laptops.
For years AMD have missed a trick with their mobile stuff.
I’m sure that many of you see value in having a second, portable gaming system but are put
off by price premium that goes along with it.
And as the only company to make decent processors and graphics cards, it makes sense that AMD
combine the two to provide us with affordable budget gaming laptops.
The existing Ryzen 2500 and 2700u could make this a reality, but unfortunately so far have
only been put in expensive systems that are priced similarly to laptops with more powerful,
dedicated graphics cards.
Of which it can’t, and isn’t intended, to compete with.
SHAME.
I really hope to see some good mobile products from AMD in 2018.
But that’s for next year.
For 2017 at least, AMD have been highly competitive.
I haven’t even mentioned Threadripper, AMD’s secret weapon which strapped 2 Ryzen 7’s
together to offer 16 cores and 32 threads of performance.
And then EPYC is like 2 threadrippers joined together!
Where does it end?!?!
Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do with all that power.
It’s good to know it’s possible for when the games and applications I use begin utilising
it.
But right now, for the average user, I think they’d favour faster cores than even more
of them.
So: Ryzen: better than we could have hoped for, but AMD can’t stop there.
They have a viable product for years to come, but it would be a shame to let Intel eat away
that advantage and to do nothing about it.
Intel’s counter so far has been underwhelming, almost as though they didn’t have secret
tech waiting in the wings for AMD’s eventual comeback.
But 2018 looks to be the year of the Coffee Lake and I sure hope that Ryzen’s refresh
is up to the challenge.
At least until Ryzen 2 arrives.
Not bad for the underdog.