The discussion around AMD Ryzen will likely continue for months to come, partly due to the fact that the CPU market will be shaken up from top to bottom, but also because only three of many Ryzen CPUs were actually released yesterday. These all came under the Ryzen 7 series, and featured the 1800X, 1700X and 1700. Thankfully, some exciting mid-range Ryzen CPUs are also on the way.
See the verdict on Ryzen here.
The problem with the Ryzen 7 series is that starting at around $330, they're not exactly price-friendly, although in multi-threaded tasks they offer more performance than equivalent Intel CPUs in many tests. In the case of the Ryzen 7 1800X, it costs half the price of the Core i7 6900K, yet proved to be faster in many benchmarks.
There are cheaper Ryzen CPUs on the horizon, though, and these are where AMD will really eat into Intel's market share. The Ryzen 5 series is widely expected to do battle with Intel's mid-range CPUs in the 7000 series such as the Core i5-7600K. Yesterday, AMD confirmed the existence of two models in the Ryzen 5 range for the first time and even more interestingly, it appears the flagship Ryzen 5 processor is faster than some rumors reported.
Instead of having a base clock of 3.3GHz and turbo frequency (single core boost) of 3.7GHz under load, AMD confirmed that the Ryzen 5 1600X will actually have the same boost frequency as the Ryzen 7 1800X at 4GHz - not a lowly 3.7GHz as some rumors have suggested. The base clock is higher too, at 3.6GHz compared to the earlier-reported 3.3GHz.
This is great news as it means a lot of extra performance in both lightly-threaded applications including games and also in multi-threaded tasks too. The key point here, though, is that the Ryzen 5 1600X is slated to cost just $259. This is just a stone's throw from Intel's Core i5-7600K, which has fewer cores and threads and $100 less than the Core i7-7700K, which has two fewer cores and four fewer threads than the six cores and 12 threads of the Ryzen 5 1600X.
The mid-range and low-end will likely be a key battleground for AMD, as in all honesty, the Ryzen 7-series is meant to compete with Intel's X99 platform and Broadwell-E CPUs such as the Core i7-6900K. Even more importantly, AMD will have an advantage over multiplier-locked Intel CPUs, which are numerous below the $300 mark, as all of AMD's Ryzen CPUs can be overclocked.
With the Ryzen 7 1700X performing similarly to the earlier leaked performance numbers above, if the Ryzen 5 1600X, also shown in the graph performs as shown, it could be faster than the Intel Core i7-7700K.
While yesterday's launch is certainly interesting, it's the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 ranges that will ultimately decide how history judges Ryzen and is also where the key sweet spots for many enthusiasts will lay. Personally, the Ryzen 5 1500X and 1600X are shaping up to be the most balanced CPUs in the Ryzen range and if you are considering building a Ryzen system, I'd definitely suggest waiting till they're released. This is likely to be in Q2 this year, so anytime from April onwards.
