Has anyone here built/bought an AMD Ryzen system?

[Quintillus]

Not many forum topics here these days, and I'm curious about this one, so why not?

Has anyone bought/built an AMD Ryzen desktop? Their high-end ($320 - $500) 8-core line came out in March, and their mid-range 4 ($170 - $200) to 6 ($220 - $250) core line came out a week or two ago, and overall they seem like really good value compared to Intel's CPUs IMO, with few weaknesses, and those they do have not being major. Definitely way more competitive than AMD's previous offerings.

While I'd definitely go with a Ryzen CPU if I built a new computer at this point in time, so far I don't actually need an upgrade (from my Core i5 2500k), and thus I haven't yet. Still, wondering if anyone else has.

In short, for what Intel charges for a high-end quad (7700K) or entry-level hex core, I can get an 8-core for AMD that is almost as good in single-threaded applications as well (and better than my 2500K), whereas what Intel charges for a mainstream quad (7600K) will get you a hex-core for AMD instead. And the Ryzen 5 quads are also competitive with their direct Core i5 competitors, if not as obviously superior as their higher-end cousins. But they still have two threads per core, versus one from Intel at that price point.

I believe the low-end series is due to come out later this quarter. Not sure of its configuration yet, but looking forward to it; I suspect it may make quad-core the entry level instead of the dual-core Intel offers with its i3 and Pentium processors.

Mobile processors are due in the second half; my guess is third quarter. That could also be a nice shake-up if quad-core becomes standard in laptops.

 

[Zelig]

My HTPC/home server is build on a Richland APU platform. Will update that when Ryzen APUs get released. Also lets me up the RAM to 32GB, 16GB is getting pretty tight with the VMs I run.

I don't know how much value there is to quad-cores in laptops as standard... they're already readily available if you want a higher-TDP budget model, which is the real limiting factor.

Intel has the 25W i5-7442EQ quad at 2.1 GHz (2.9 turbo). Compared to the 28W i7-7567U (3.5 GHz, 4.0 turbo), you're giving up about between 30-40% performance for single and dual-threaded tasks. At best, for a fully parallel workload, you're less than 20% ahead.

 

[Quintillus]

You may be right about duals being sufficient in laptops for most people. I don't even have a quad-core laptop, other than my work one, yet. But with so many phones having 6 or 8 cores, it seems odd that most laptops still are dual-core.

I hadn't heard about the 7442EQ; I see it just came out a few months ago. It is interesting as the first lower-power quad I'm aware of from Intel. My thinking was that AMD already has a 65W octocore, the 1700 at 3 GHz (base; 3.7 GHz turbo). If you cut that by half you're at a quad core 32.5W which is right about where laptops used to be before they switched to 15W/45W standard (with a few around 28W). Integrated graphics will kick it up a tad, but the old 35W standard may still be reachable at near 3 GHz, and that would be a decent amount better than Intel's 45W quads while still being a good amount more powerful than the 7442, even after accounting for Kaby Lake's better IPC.

Another possibility is that if AMD has slighly higher TDP quads, they may still offer more midrange TDP triple-cores to improve yields, as they did about five years ago, which could hit a sweet spot.

Regardless I hope that now that AMD has a competitive CPU architecture again, they can get in a wider range of notebooks. The thin-and-light space is almost entirely Intel currently, as is the high-end... but with Ryzen combined with their superior-at-reasonable-price-points integrated graphics, it seems like the time will be right for AMD to get more design wins later this year.

 

[Zelig]

6-8 cores in phones are largely worthless though. The A10 is not a heterogeneous design, and mops the floor with only two performance cores.

Windows does support big.LITTLE fine... I guess there might be room for an x86 design with non-equal cores.