Weekend Open Forum: To Ryzen or not to Ryzen?

Julio Franco

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Staff member

AMD has always had the underdog thing going for them. They successfully played that card in the Athlon 64 days to compete with bigger rival Intel, but then for about a decade Core processors have enjoyed the ultimate advantage: being the better product.

With Ryzen, AMD has a novel product that's not only competitive in multiple levels, but projects to be a great platform to buy in the mid to long term. You've now read the reviews, you've seen the productivity and gaming performance benchmarks, but is that incentive enough to go with AMD's Ryzen on your next upgrade?

For this week's open forum we ask: are you planning a desktop upgrade or has Ryzen lured you into upgrading sooner to get access to all those cores on the cheap? Are you waiting for Ryzen-based APUs, mid-range R5s models, or laptop processors to come out first? Maybe your current PC is just fast enough? Let us know in the comments below.

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Still use my I7 930, slightly overclocked to 3.5Ghz and have it since 2010. I am planning to upgrade within 6 months, need to wait what else AMD has in reserve and if the gaming industry will adapt to Ryzen or not.
 
I'm in an odd place. I had a 5820k right now. It's about on par with Ryzen IPC wise but does have 2 less cores. For me though, 6 cores is enough for now. I'd be more inclined if Ryzen could overclock higher, I have a dud of a 5820k that can only got to 4 GHz.
 
Intel has the advantage of having a optimized, tested and reliable platform. Amazing it is for AMD to be back, I will wait for the next generation of intel and amd CPUs next year. the real battle would be there. AMD has many cores for the money but Intel still has the advantage in terms of budget and workforce and maybe they would release something would stop the momentum. In the mean time, I will still keep my i7 4770 and maybe get a better gpu or a NAS this year.
 
I have a i5 3570K since 2012. It's overclocked to 4.4GHz. I have played many games since, and what I learned with it is: i5 is not good enough for gaming anymore. If you have a i7 2600K you still are good to go, but with 4 cores/threads, there is only regret on the long run. Games like Battlefield 1 (in multilplayer), Crysis 3(specific map) and others makes any i5 to cry. Ryzen, imho, overall it's a superior cpu and I'm only waiting for the final stable BIOS and Windows drivers being released. In GNU/Linux it already do wonders. I also think Ryzen may shine on notebooks, where productivity is the big thing.
 
My i5 4690k and gtx 980 will do for now. honestly if I actually had the money I'd build a ryzen rig when the new amd video cards release but I know I wont have the money lol. if amd keeps this going they will surely be in my next build over intel though
 
Will probably build a budget rig this summer with the Ryzen platform if the 6 core offerings are competitive.
 
I built my current PC last year with a i7-6700k, so I'll be skipping out on first generation Ryzen for sure. However, that would not stop me from recommending it to people who I think would benefit from the extra cores and/or use more desktop based productivity programs.
 
Has Ryzen lured you into upgrading sooner than planned... No not really, not yet. I think I will wait for it to mature a bit before taking the leap. when I do get one, I will go for the 1700 as it will be a big step up from my FX8350 and I will overclock it as it seems to overclock well but from what I've read so far (here and on other sites), there is a shortage of boards at the moment due to bios issues and such like.
 
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On an i7-6700K at the moment. No need to replace it probably for the next 5 years if trends hold. That said, if I were doing a budget build (sub-$1000), Ryzen would be a no brainer.
 
Has Ryzen lured you into upgrading sooner than planned... No not really, not yet. I think I will wait for it to mature a bit before taking the leap. when I do get one, I will go for 1700 as it will be a big step up from my FX8350 and I will overclock it as it seems to overclock well but from what I've read so far (here and on other sites), there is a shortage of boards at the moment due to bios issues and such like.

Yeah, very hard to find an X370 board right now. They have enough CPU supply but the motherboard manufacturers can't keep up. You'd think they would have made as many motherboards as they did processors.
 
Yeah, very hard to find an X370 board right now. They have enough CPU supply but the motherboard manufacturers can't keep up. You'd think they would have made as many motherboards as they did processors.
Agreed, although I think manufacturers are holding supply back until their instabilities are sorted out as so many reviewers have had problems with the boards they have been given.
 
I think I can easily get another 2-3 years out of my 3770k, especially if undecided to overclock. Ill wait until both AMD's and Intel's next gen is out. I'm not really impressed by either company right now.
 
Nope. Quite happy with my I7-6700 (non-k) I bought last year. Not planning any major upgrade for some years.
 
Well... If my Motherboard would show up, I would probably put my Ryzen 1800x in it and be testing out if it beats my X5675 running at 4ghz. So yes I am still running my LGA1366 till Asus gets their game in gear.
 
Personally no as I already have a fairly recent Skylake build, nor run any games that use 8 cores / 16 threads, nor do I buy top end CPU's anyway of any brand. But had AMD launched the 4C/8T chip at a much lower price, a year ago, I would have seriously considered that vs an i5.
 
I despertly need new PC for productivity work but im thinhing of waiting Ryzen APU or go with Kaby lake, does anybody know what month to expext ryzen APUs?
 
Well, I bought stock in AMD back in January ... does that count?

Otherwise: I have an i7 6700k running nice in my current desktop, set up for productivity and gaming. I don't plan on actually buying a Ryzen until my current system really needs a better CPU to perform noticeably better in games - which I typically run with several open Word and Powerpoint documents, 20 Chrome tabs. (Yeah, I know. Filthy casual. I like gaming, but I like multi-tasking too.) Ryzen might actually help here - but I tihnk I'll get more bang for my buck by waiting a few months to replace my r9 290x in 2x CF with a Vega.
 
I think a lot of people, myself included, are going to wait to see the price/performance figures from the R5 1500X & 1600X before making a final decision.

Those two chips are the real competitors to the 7600/7700K when it comes to gaming, hopefully fewer cores will also mean a bit more overclocking headroom than the R7's.

A 6 core 1600X clocked at 4.2 or 4.3Ghz for $250 would be a pretty compelling purchase for gaming, 90% of the performance of a 5Ghz 7700K for $100 less.

I think I would find that pretty hard to resist.
 
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