Intel should be very worried about AMD's Ryzen 7 processors

Exciting times ahead? My 4.6GHz unlocked I7 CPU runs at .8 GHz most of the time. I can hardly wait to get a faster cpu! I want to insert a sarcastic smilie here but this website editor won't let me. :-(

Mystere said:

AMD does this every 6-8 years. They spend a bunch of money to create a new architecture that beats Intel, but then they sit on it for years and let Intel decimate them. AMD just can't afford to create new architectures very often, and Intel has their Tick-Tock cadence which cycles the platform much faster than AMD can.

So yeah, enjoy the cheap, fast CPU's while you can, as Intel will likely have a response within a year. And then it will take another 6-8 years before AMD is able to afford to cycle.

Actually, this has only happened once before, with the Athlon/A64. What happened then was the result of poor management decisions--they tried to do what Intel always does and they tried to milk the A64 architecture for as long as possible as opposed to concentrating on R&D to keep themselves ahead--and as you say, on the high-end they fell by the wayside. AMD's current CEO, MIT's Lisa Su, is the opposite of those old AMD managers, and is responsible for the company's current positioning with all of its products . I think AMD is back for good and has a bright future so long as Su, or people like Su, are running AMD. Good management is essential.

waltc said:

AMD's current CEO, MIT's Lisa Su, is the opposite of those old AMD managers, and is responsible for the company's current positioning with all of its products . I think AMD is back for good and has a bright future so long as Su, or people like Su, are running AMD. Good management is essential.

You, WaltC are in fact Lisa Su herself and I claim my $5!

Anyway Intel already did drop prices did they not? Or at least reshuffle brand names so i5 becomes i3 and you can overclock an i3 and so on. I may have misunderstood that bit TBH.

alkaufmann said:

Exciting times ahead? My 4.6GHz unlocked I7 CPU runs at .8 GHz most of the time. I can hardly wait to get a faster cpu! I want to insert a sarcastic smilie here but this website editor won't let me. :-(

Yes, it's true...no matter when a person buys a cpu or what they pay for it, someday someone will launch something better that costs less... It's inevitable, really, in all aspects of consumer computer tech.

lx07 said:

You, WaltC are in fact Lisa Su herself and I claim my $5!

Anyway Intel already did drop prices did they not? Or at least reshuffle brand names so i5 becomes i3 and you can overclock an i3 and so on. I may have misunderstood that bit TBH.

Well, I haven't been keeping up with cpu pricing all that closely, but the price drops from Intel will have to be huge--on the order of 50% for rough cpu performance equivalency--to become competitive with AMD's Ryzen high-end prices. Plus, AMD's value-oriented Ryzen cpus won't ship until 2nd and 3rd quarter, and in many of those categories Intel will have to reduce pricing even further than 50% since in several of those AMD-budget categories Intel doesn't make a comparable-performing cpu (what Intel sells at those budget prices currently will have to be priced much lower than the upcoming Ryzen budget cpus in order to sell.) Basically, the price drops and product positioning Intel will have to undertake will not be subtle...we'll all recognize them when we see them.

How big is this market though? It is just for hobbyists right?

I mean no business ever gets servers with AMD (perhaps but I've never seen one in the last 20 years although I'm a bit isolated from normal IT concerns as I work with AS400 and IBM haven't done a new processor since POWER8 in 2012) so that leaves OEM PC's and guys who build their own.

Either they sell to OEM or it is all a colossal waste of time as the few 1000's (or 100,000's or whatever) of hobbyists just won't be enough to support chip development.

Am I missing something here?

waltc said:

Actually, this has only happened once before, with the Athlon/A64. What happened then was the result of poor management decisions--they tried to do what Intel always does and they tried to milk the A64 architecture for as long as possible as opposed to concentrating on R&D to keep themselves ahead--and as you say, on the high-end they fell by the wayside. AMD's current CEO, MIT's Lisa Su, is the opposite of those old AMD managers, and is responsible for the company's current positioning with all of its products . I think AMD is back for good and has a bright future so long as Su, or people like Su, are running AMD. Good management is essential.

It may not be her choice. The fact of the matter is, if you're pricing your product well below the competition, and the competition has far greater volume, the competition will simply have far more resources to compete with you.

Being a bargain processor means they can't afford to do this as often as Intel does.

AMD's server cpu's are called Opteron's and prior to core 2 they did spank that ass, Intel ass.Attachment 122485

I think I had an Opty 170 with BH-5 ram, 9800 pro and a 40GB(wow) spinner at a woping 7200rpm, of course with an Abit NF-7S, I think.....

Never used any sever with an Opteron. I have managed many servers over the last 20 years. I know they exist, but they aren't widely used.