AMD talks Ryzen hard launch, lifespan, overclocking plans and more

Shawn Knight

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AMD Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster at CES this week revealed a few additional details regarding the company’s upcoming Ryzen series of CPUs such as the fact that it’ll keep Ryzen around for at least four years – roughly the same amount of time AMD spent developing its Zen microarchitecture.

There’s a lot of excitement in the air and it’s not just because we’re in the middle of CES week. AMD hasn’t been competitive with Intel in what feels like ages, a realization that has allowed Intel to take its foot off the throttle in recent years. Its latest Kaby Lake processor series, for example, is hardly any better than the Skylake chips before it (and Broadwell before it and so on).

The hope among enthusiasts is that Ryzen is enough of a threat to force Intel to once again get serious about innovation. AMD is well aware of the situation and isn’t taking the opportunity lightly.

Jim Anderson, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s Computing and Graphics business, told PCWorld that they aren’t going to do a paper launch of Ryzen. It’s something they’ve done in the past but aren’t going to mess with this time around. Instead, Anderson said Ryzen chips will be available from day one.

The key word there is “chips” as in, multiple chips, not just the high-end eight-core, 16-thread model that AMD has been talking up in recent demos. What’s more, AMD product manager Jim Prior revealed to the publication that every Ryzen chip you can buy can be overclocked (assuming you have a capable motherboard, of course).

It’s also worth mentioning that only the high-end X370-based AM4 motherboards will support Radeon CrossFire / Nvidia SLI multi-card setups. AMD’s Rob Hallock said data has shown that those who buy mainstream PCs simply don’t get into multi-GPU setups. What’s more, the most popular Radeon cards for CrossFire are the highest-end (expensive) models which aren't what mainstream users will be going after.

As for Zen’s lifespan, Papermaster said they aren’t going tick-tock (in reference to the tick-tock release cadence that Intel had utilized for many years before abandoning it with Kaby Lake). Zen, he said, will be tock, tock, tock. Here’s to hoping that roadmap pans out.

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Actions speak louder then words, and the fact that AMD is skirting around ryzen so much, teasing it but never giving out release dates or prices, is telling.

Given that AMD has botched multiple launches in the last 3 years, the burden is on them to do a launch correctly for once. Somehow, I dont have faith in them to actually pull it off.
 
Actions speak louder then words, and the fact that AMD is skirting around ryzen so much, teasing it but never giving out release dates or prices, is telling.

Given that AMD has botched multiple launches in the last 3 years, the burden is on them to do a launch correctly for once. Somehow, I dont have faith in them to actually pull it off.

Agreed, right now would be perfect time to launch with all the negative Kaby talk.
 
Turns out the head of the talks for no mans sky now is the one telling everyone about how awesome Ryzen is.
 
So, David is going to put the beat down on Goliath..............er.............,. yet again. For the nth time.:D

Speaking for myself, I can't wait for the AMD guy to load one of these babies up in his slingshot, and blast Intel's CEO right between the eyes with it.:cool:

"Ryzen", that's supposed to be a hipster spelling of the deadly poison "Ricin", is it not?
 
AMD is like an Asthmatic child running the 1500meter race at school. Starts off well and has the heart of a lion but when it gets the finishing line falls flat on its face and realizes it just wasted another $10billion on RnD
 
Why are people being so negative in the comments? We all knew they won't give a launch date at CES, it's too early. They'll give a launch date when they know that the market will have the new motherboards and they'll have a decent stock.
It's not just about AMD here, it's about the entire supply-chain being ready together with the OEMs.
 
It's not just about AMD here, it's about the entire supply-chain being ready together with the OEMs.
That's a line of bull if I ever heard one. This is all about AMD, they will not release until they think they are ready. It has nothing to do with the rest of the supply-chain.
 
AMD is like an Asthmatic child running the 1500meter race at school. Starts off well and has the heart of a lion but when it gets the finishing line falls flat on its face and realizes it just wasted another $10billion on RnD

I think you're talking about Intel; I don't think AMD has that much money for RnD, for starters. Two words for you: Jim Keller.
 
Why are people being so negative in the comments? We all knew they won't give a launch date at CES, it's too early. They'll give a launch date when they know that the market will have the new motherboards and they'll have a decent stock.
It's not just about AMD here, it's about the entire supply-chain being ready together with the OEMs.
Good points all!

The trouble is, given AMD's recent poor performance in the desktop market, it may be getting difficult to get board makers and those OEMs on board with their portion of the necessary financial commitment . The idea that they might be, "throwing good money after bad", has to at some point, cross the minds of the honchos at Asus & Gigabyte, to name just two..

AMD does have a rather vocal, and dare I say it, annoying fan base. However, they're mostly "enthusiasts", which are a less significant part of the market, than they've convinced themselves they are.

This is just guess work and speculation on my part. But still I'd like to think, reasonable assumptions.
 
Amd needs to have a decent product. There gpus are good. But they lost me as a customer due to driver support. Nvidia has way better support. And intel isn't that much more spendy per performance.
 
AMD is like an Asthmatic child running the 1500meter race at school. Starts off well and has the heart of a lion but when it gets the finishing line falls flat on its face and realizes it just wasted another $10billion on RnD

I think you're talking about Intel; I don't think AMD has that much money for RnD, for starters. Two words for you: Jim Keller.

Ha, that's what I was thinking. Intel's R&D budget is more than the value of AMD.

Why are people being so negative in the comments? We all knew they won't give a launch date at CES, it's too early. They'll give a launch date when they know that the market will have the new motherboards and they'll have a decent stock.
It's not just about AMD here, it's about the entire supply-chain being ready together with the OEMs.
Good points all!

The trouble is, given AMD's recent poor performance in the desktop market, it may be getting difficult to get board makers and those OEMs on board with their portion of the necessary financial commitment . The idea that they might be, "throwing good money after bad", has to at some point, cross the minds of the honchos at Asus & Gigabyte, to name just two..

AMD does have a rather vocal, and dare I say it, annoying fan base. However, they're mostly "enthusiasts", which are a less significant part of the market, than they've convinced themselves they are.

This is just guess work and speculation on my part. But still I'd like to think, reasonable assumptions.

The only AMD fanboys left are the die hard ones, probably attributes to why they are so annoying. No one really wants to route for anything aiming to be 2nd best. You knew that when AMD announced they were no longer competing with Intel when Roy Read was CEO that they were essentially giving up the market. You at least have to run in the race to be rooted for as an underdog.

Why are people being so negative in the comments? We all knew they won't give a launch date at CES, it's too early. They'll give a launch date when they know that the market will have the new motherboards and they'll have a decent stock.
It's not just about AMD here, it's about the entire supply-chain being ready together with the OEMs.

People are impatient. If you ask me AMD shouldn't give any concrete release date other than the quarter they've already given. I would much rather they just say "hey guys their out" one day. This gives Intel zero chance to react and it also means reviews will be done compared to Intel's current pricing model.

Amd needs to have a decent product. There gpus are good. But they lost me as a customer due to driver support. Nvidia has way better support. And intel isn't that much more spendy per performance.

2014 wants its comment back. Seriously though, AMD and Nvidia have switched place on the drive front. AMD has had better drivers in 2016.

Don't really get the "Intel isn't that much more spendy" comment, given AMD's processors only go up to about $220 and Intel goes up to about $1,700, both being non-server.
 
Ha, that's what I was thinking. Intel's R&D budget is more than the value of AMD.

The only AMD fanboys left are the die hard ones, probably attributes to why they are so annoying. No one really wants to route for anything aiming to be 2nd best. You knew that when AMD announced they were no longer competing with Intel when Roy Read was CEO that they were essentially giving up the market. You at least have to run in the race to be rooted for as an underdog.



People are impatient. If you ask me AMD shouldn't give any concrete release date other than the quarter they've already given. I would much rather they just say "hey guys their out" one day. This gives Intel zero chance to react and it also means reviews will be done compared to Intel's current pricing model.



2014 wants its comment back. Seriously though, AMD and Nvidia have switched place on the drive front. AMD has had better drivers in 2016.

Don't really get the "Intel isn't that much more spendy" comment, given AMD's processors only go up to about $220 and Intel goes up to about $1,700, both being non-server.
Um a good i7 for 300?
 
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Ha, that's what I was thinking. Intel's R&D budget is more than the value of AMD.


The only AMD fanboys left are the die hard ones, probably attributes to why they are so annoying. No one really wants to route for anything aiming to be 2nd best. You knew that when AMD announced they were no longer competing with Intel when Roy Read was CEO that they were essentially giving up the market. You at least have to run in the race to be rooted for as an underdog.



People are impatient. If you ask me AMD shouldn't give any concrete release date other than the quarter they've already given. I would much rather they just say "hey guys their out" one day. This gives Intel zero chance to react and it also means reviews will be done compared to Intel's current pricing model.



2014 wants its comment back. Seriously though, AMD and Nvidia have switched place on the drive front. AMD has had better drivers in 2016.

Don't really get the "Intel isn't that much more spendy" comment, given AMD's processors only go up to about $220 and Intel goes up to about $1,700, both being non-server.

Amd doesn't support cards from 2012. Nvidia does. All that matters. In fact nvidia support goes even farther back.
 
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Amd doesn't support cards from 2012. Nvidia does. All that matters. In fact nvidia support goes even farther back.
As an owner of a 6xxx series AMD GPU, I'm not surprised they dropped support when they did. The 7xxx bumps it to 4 years old and then theres an enormous break with an entirely new core design.

It makes sense to drop support then, for it's the last of that generation and there's very few cards in play for the considerable driver team resources it'd take to update drivers for an entirely different core instruction set for a small minority of users...

4 years isn't bad support for a GPU, Intel are far worse for example (eg. no fully functional drivers ever released for a product of similar age (such as no openGL support whatsoever) for win10 for any 2nd gen i3/5/7 iGPUs...)
 
As an owner of a 6xxx series AMD GPU, I'm not surprised they dropped support when they did. The 7xxx bumps it to 4 years old and then theres an enormous break with an entirely new core design.

It makes sense to drop support then, for it's the last of that generation and there's very few cards in play for the considerable driver team resources it'd take to update drivers for an entirely different core instruction set for a small minority of users...

4 years isn't bad support for a GPU, Intel are far worse for example (eg. no fully functional drivers ever released for a product of similar age (such as no openGL support whatsoever) for win10 for any 2nd gen i3/5/7 iGPUs...)
4 years for a top of a line card at the time that can still play every game out there? Yeah ide say thats bad business. Its not the consumer fault they changed technology. Yes smart move for making drivers easier bad move for losing customers like me. I know im not the only one mad about it. Oh well sales will tell down the road.
 
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