It's official. Eight-core Ryzen 7 chips will start at just $329.

[Thunderball]

But it really isn't. The single threaded performance is more than fine in almost anything that isn't a game. I'm sure someone will come up with sane answers for the mystery, but in the meanwhile you can't really go wrong either way. In any realistic scenario, someone buying a CPU with 8 physical cores for gaming purposes probably isn't playing his/her games on FHD, then the bottleneck goes to the GPU anyway and the current difference virtually doesn't matter anymore.

For most people though, if all you want is gaming performance, ignoring everything else in the universe, the 7600K is simply a better purchase.

If you're playing games you dont need 8 physical cores. If it's a work PC with some gaming capability - sure it will work just fine, just like FXes used to do.

[stormgust]

If you're playing games you dont need 8 physical cores. If it's a work PC with some gaming capability - sure it will work just fine, just like FXes used to do.

You also don't need the single threaded performance of an i7-7700k (or any of the newer intel generations for that matter), because that hasn't been the limiting factor for quite a while now.

[Thunderball]

You also don't need the single threaded performance of an i7-7700k (or any of the newer intel generations for that matter), because that hasn't been the limiting factor for quite a while now.

You dont really have a choice if you have a modern GPU (or a multiGPU config). You need 8 threads and that single threaded performance.

[Gray_Matter]

- Coffee mainstream will be 6c, 6900k is 8c
- 6900k is HEDT (X99), Coffee will be ~Z370

your claim is beyond ridiculous

I incorrectly assumed that there would be an 8 core Coffee Lake processor as well. The point remains the same. You are comparing an 8 core processor to a 6 core processor. Better to compare it with a 6 core AMD so I would wait to see how that processor performs.

Coffee Lake is same arch and process (just more refined) as Skylake and Kaby

Exactly. Broadwell has 3.4 billion transisitors. IIRC, Kaby has more than double that. Cram all of those extra transistors into the same die and see how that effects OCing.

been hearing this mantra for 10 years now

and it is moving along .. veeery slowly .. buying an 8c/16t CPU now for gaming hoping it will get properly utilized within its lifespan in your mobo is incredibly dumb

I didn't say that. I said that the future is multi-core. There are questions to how long that move will take. I am not saying the a person who is going to replace their PC in 2 years should get a 8c processor now for gaming. Everyone knows what they need from their PC.

Mainstream multi-threaded gaming is going to be a bit like the 64 bit adoption. It hung around for a while and all of a sudden there was a massive movement across to it. It just takes a big release from Unity and you will get a bucket load of games suddenly supporting multiple threads.

I seem to be missing something here, though. Why would someone want to pay a big chunk extra for a CPU that gives them 180 FPS as opposed to 170 FPS? Most games are GPU bound at higher resolutions.

[Life-Binder]

You are comparing an 8 core processor to a 6 core processor. Better to compare it with a 6 core AMD so I would wait to see how that processor performs.

you are the one who brought up the 8c (6900K)

I said that the 6c mainstream Coffee will be considerably cheaper than the HEDT X299 Skylake-X .. and it will be for very obvious reasons

8c is irrelevant because I will not buy an 8c CPU for pure gaming in any foreseable future (not even an Intel one).. even buying an 6c atm is banking more on future-proofing, not current games


and yes I will also compare it to the 6c 1600X, where i am 95% confident now the 6c Coffee will beat it in all games while also clocking higher, but costing more (but not as much as HEDT .. aka still affordable to myself) .. but of course I wont actually buy anything till seeing the reviews

[Gray_Matter]

You can't, but it doesn't change the fact that it's inferior. It's not cheaper and gets worse performance. Now unless they pull some magic out of their hats with the r3/r5 versions of the chips, there's even less of a reason to purchase AMD unless they restructure their pricing.

Worse performance for games. Yes. But I don't just game. For me it's a godsend.

Back to my comment. You said that only 5% of people game at higher than 1080p on Steam. What sort of bottlenecks would you see with a Ryzen 7 at 1080p?

[stormgust]

You dont really have a choice if you have a modern GPU (or a multiGPU config). You need 8 threads and that single threaded performance.

But don't the ryzen 4k tests shows, that even ryzen has enough single threaded performance to feed those GPU's?

[Gray_Matter]

It's not a failure by any means, it's just another FX: great for workstation tasks, sucks for gaming. On the plus side we have a decent platform and actually low power draw/temps.

How on earth does it suck for gaming? Is it as fast as other processors? Of course not but it no slouch.

[Vash The Stampede]

Level1Tech had some things to say and it seems that it's a little early to pay attention to benchmarks. That said, it doesn't seem like AMD was ready for RyZen's release at all.

[Thunderball]

But don't the ryzen 4k tests shows, that even ryzen has enough single threaded performance to feed those GPU's?

Nope, those tests show a GPU bottleneck.

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How on earth does it suck for gaming? Is it as fast as other processors? Of course not but it no slouch.

It's more expensive than a 7700K and is slower than a 4690K. How is it good for gaming?

[Fascinate]

Man i just realized microcenter is selling the 6700k for 259.00.....ugh lol.

I dunno, for 375 bucks i can get a 6700k and z170 motherboard out the door. That makes this a bit tougher now lol.

[Deleted]

I think the 1800x needs dual cpu support, though complexity early in product cycle would have been an issue.

There doesn't seem to be much reason to buy a 1700x/1800x if all you do is game/stream. Clock speed (7700k atm) wins over 8c/16t and will do for the next couple/few years. If there are faster Ryzens coming (genuine 5Ghz on big air, like kaby) then the cpus would be a lot more equal for gaming. The SMT issue could be a chipset drivers problem but I've only seen reviews with the z variant.

I'd also qualify this with, if you only plan to game at 60hz it probably won't make much difference, driving resolution is largely gpu; but system ips really kicks in as the limiter when the frame rate increases, and the cpu needs to start to i/o a lot more semi-random physical instructions.

Part of the problem is legacy graphical api's, I'm of the opinion that dev support for dx12 should stop, vulkan and metal should bond under one massive low level api love in (open ofc, altruistic apple?), and we have all environments addressed in the same manner.

I want to see what future Ryzen can do on a tweak board with xfire vegas and vulkan, for that reason alone I'll build a 1700 into a small content delivery server (KB) when BIOS's/manufacturing and drivers are a bit more fleshed out. Not too keen on firing up a RAM drive on the platform at the moment I'm sure we'll see the AM4 platform latency come down as these issues get resolved, it's the first live iteration after all

[Gray_Matter]

It's more expensive than a 7700K and is slower than a 4690K. How is it good for gaming?

Again. That doesn't make it suck. "Suck" implies that it can't do the job very well. If you want to play games and do something else with the PC that needs multiple threads then it's not going to be crap at games.

[Thunderball]

Again. That doesn't make it suck. "Suck" implies that it can't do the job very well. If you want to play games and do something else with the PC that needs multiple threads then it's not going to be crap at games.

Gaming PCs are gaming PCs, they usually are not used for anything else. Workstation tasks are a completely different story.

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I think the 1800x needs dual cpu support, though complexity early in product cycle would have been an issue.

There doesn't seem to be much reason to buy a 1700x/1800x if all you do is game/stream. Clock speed (7700k atm) wins over 8c/16t and will do for the next couple/few years. If there are faster Ryzens coming (genuine 5Ghz on big air, like kaby) then the cpus would be a lot more equal for gaming. The SMT issue could be a chipset drivers problem but I've only seen reviews with the z variant.

Dual CPUs impossible with current memory architecture, that requires redesigning both a chipset and the CPU. Clock speeds are result of architecture tradeoffs. SMT issue is most likely also an architecture problem: Intel had similar problems, for example Sandy Bridge i7s had better gaming performance with HT disabled.

Part of the problem is legacy graphical api's, I'm of the opinion that dev support for dx12 should stop, vulkan and metal should bond under one massive low level api love in (open ofc, altruistic apple?), and we have all environments addressed in the same manner.

I want to see what future Ryzen can do on a tweak board with xfire vegas and vulkan, for that reason alone I'll build a 1700 into a small content delivery server (KB) when BIOS's/manufacturing and drivers are a bit more fleshed out. Not too keen on firing up a RAM drive on the platform at the moment I'm sure we'll see the AM4 platform latency come down as these issues get resolved, it's the first live iteration after all

Absolutely false. One of the main features of DX12 is combating CPU overhead by offloading all the possible tasks to the CPU and directly preventing GPU from waiting for the CPU (async compute). Successful accomplishment of those task requires a well designed memory interface, which is the main problem of the whole AM4+Ryzen CPU ecosystem: not only it's only 2 channel (compared to the Intel's X99s 4 channel), but it also has problems keeping up with the frequencies of DDR4 memory.

[moremana]

Uhm the 7700K is cheaper than the 1700x and a lot cheaper than the 1800x, and the 1800x is already behind the 7700k by quite a bit.
So there is no reason whatsoever to go for AMD when building a new gaming rig.

This, and the only thing close is the vanilla 1700, now if they iron out some of the bugs in the boards, then, maybe just for the cores. Thats down the road as we all know AMD chipsets have a hard time with stability.

Im hoping, and waiting for the 4/8 and 6/12 cores. These 8/16 core chips just dont appeal to me. But you never know, especially in this industry.

[Gray_Matter]

Man i just realized microcenter is selling the 6700k for 259.00.....ugh lol.

I dunno, for 375 bucks i can get a 6700k and z170 motherboard out the door. That makes this a bit tougher now lol.

It's a very good processor. It doesn't quite have 8 cores (which I need) but is still a great processor. I have one that I use for testing.

[Deleted]

I seem to be missing something here, though. Why would someone want to pay a big chunk extra for a CPU that gives them 180 FPS as opposed to 170 FPS? Most games are GPU bound at higher resolutions.

Well currently you have to pay a chunk *more* for the 1800x which then gets you somewhat close to the 7700k in gaming. A 1700 *might* overclock to the 1800x level for roughly the same price but then we're talking stock 7700k here - overclock it and it'll beat anything AMD by a fairly large margin.

So if all you care about is gaming then AMD is currently a bad choice.
I don't think this will change with the R3/5 either as they have an even lower base clock and I reckon they won't be amazing overclockers either, just like their R7 brethren.

If of course you do have applications that benefit from having 8/16 cores things are different.

[Artorius]

If you're playing games you dont need 8 physical cores. If it's a work PC with some gaming capability - sure it will work just fine, just like FXes used to do.

It was never about needing it. What I wrote was "In any realistic scenario, someone buying a CPU with 8 physical cores for gaming purposes probably isn't playing his/her games on FHD".

People buying a 8/16 CPU for gaming aren't doing it because they need it. They're doing it because it's either their hobby, simply because they want to buy the high-end product and money isn't a problem, because they'll be using other things that simply aren't possible in the mainstream platform or because they think doing so will future-proof them for a long time. People doing this kind of builds are also usually pairing those CPUs with whatever is the strongest graphical setup available and are most likely playing their games on UHD or something else as demanding.

Being honest you don't even need 8 threads. There are like 5 games that make any meaningful usage of the extra threads past 4 threads, even that unlocked i3 would be able to keep-up just fine in almost any game available.

[Gray_Matter]

Gaming PCs are gaming PCs, they usually are not used for anything else. Workstation tasks are a completely different story.

Are you trying to tell me that if you want to play games and also do video encoding then you are going to buy 2 PC's, a gaming one and and workstation one?

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Well currently you have to pay a chunk *more* for the 1800x which then gets you somewhat close to the 7700k in gaming. A 1700 *might* overclock to the 1800x level for roughly the same price but then we're talking stock 7700k here - overclock it and it'll beat anything AMD by a fairly large margin.

So if all you care about is gaming then AMD is currently a bad choice.
I don't think this will change with the R3/5 either as they have an even lower base clock and I reckon they won't be amazing overclockers either, just like their R7 brethren.

If of course you do have applications that benefit from having 8/16 cores things are different.

If you want your PC only for gaming then of course, why not go for the best bang for buck.

Let me turn this around a bit. Lets say that the 1500X comes out in a couple of months, is 10% slower than a 7700K and 20% cheaper. It offers better value for money. That 20% difference isn't going to effect your gaming at 1080p. What would be the practical reason for taking a 7700K? Where does that extra 10% performance become necessary in current gaming terms?

[ovm33]

Let me turn this around a bit. Lets say that the 1500X comes out in a couple of months, is 10% slower than a 7700K and 20% cheaper. It offers better value for money. That 20% difference isn't going to effect your gaming at 1080p. What would be the practical reason for taking a 7700K? Where does that extra 10% performance become necessary in current gaming terms?

You're correct. It doesn't matter. R5 1500 is where things will get real interesting.