AMD unveil first RYZEN processor, launching Q1 2017

Finally the AMD RyZen platform has been officially unveiled with AMD’s New Horizon press event in Austin, Texas. Some specs are  officially here, and while the reveal was pretty short, we got some pretty solid details before the official launch early next year.

The name was unveiled pretty quickly into the event, but leaked many moons ago. Ryzen will first launch on Desktop with AMD bringing it to other platforms in the future.

The first Ryzen processor to launch will be the 8-core/16-thread chip that has been rumoured and leaked for so so long.

AMD’s President and CEO Dr Lisa Su announced the main specs for the first Ryzen desktop CPU. The new 8-core/16-thread CPU will feature a base clock of 3.4GHz and boost clock that will be announced closer to launch. 20MB L2+L3 Cache, and of course the new AM4 platform that will launch along side Ryzen.

The new architecture was demoed to match the performance of the Intel 6900K with a quick Blender test and beat it using Handbrake for transcoding (by maybe 10-percent). All while using only 94 TDP compared to the 140 TDP on the Intel chip.

More importantly; AMD left the Ryzen chip running at Stock 3.4Ghz clockspeed, and the Intel chip running at 3.4Ghz base with 3.7Ghz Turbo. All other speces for both machines were identical, bar the motherboards of course.

Lisa Su also revealed some new AMD features that will be included with the new Ryzen architecture.

SenseMI is new technology from AMD embedded in the CPU that provides better performance in areas never seen before, at least as it was detailed on stage.

Features like Extended frequency range when using more efficient cooling and precision boost will provide instant overclock automatically when possible.

 

AMD were very keen to give us a slight demo of their new hardware and made it clear that everything is still ago for a Q1 launch next year. We got a sneak peak at the new Vega GPU platform, but only a small demo of it running the new Battlefront Rouge One DLC at 4K Ultra settings along with the new Ryzen processor.

It’s great to see such great performance numbers directly from AMD, and while all demos should be taken with that popular pinch of salt. Competition can only lead to great things. Now let’s all look forward to the launch of Ryzen early next year,

Craig O'Sullivan

Creator of Geektech.ie Passionate about Technology and always looking for that next cool gadget or app

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