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

an 11,000 word review by Gamers Nexus: AMD Ryzen R7 1800X Review: An i5 in Gaming, i7 in Production | GamersNexus - Gaming PC Builds & Hardware Benchmarks

CountMike said:

Still very short list and even shorter supply. Only top (and expensive) X370 platform seems to be close to what's needed for this series (R7) of processors.
Something like this: Access Denied would be a total waste of R7 processors, it' more suitable to go with R3.

Wow, that's a pretty weak looking board. And only one GPU slot. Definitely looks like a bare essentials board for a low end system. That said, I'm sure they'll be better boards out in the supply line soon.

sygnus21 said:

Wow, that's a pretty weak looking board. And only one GPU slot. Definitely looks like a bare essentials board for a low end system. That said, I'm sure they'll be better boards out in the supply line soon.

Yes, I can't even see a point of selling it now when processors meant for it (future APUs) are still months away.

Cliff S said:

an 11,000 word review by Gamers Nexus: AMD Ryzen R7 1800X Review: An i5 in Gaming, i7 in Production | GamersNexus - Gaming PC Builds & Hardware Benchmarks

Yet another review citing disappointing game performance with the 1800X. All quotes taken from the conclusion page....

For gaming, it’s a hard pass. We absolutely do not recommend the 1800X for gaming-focused users or builds, given i5-level performance at two times the price.

For clarity, an Intel i5-6600 is $219 vs. the $499 R7 1800X AMD chip. And an i5-6600K is only $239.

And the reviewer is absolutely right in his statement when countering AMD's claims when they say games are going to be optimizedfor their chips in the future. While this may be true, the review reminds us....

AMD defends its position by indicating the ISVs need to begin supporting their product, and has provided us statements from StarDock and Bethesda relating to this. To these statements, we’d remind folks that games take a long time to develop. Buying a CPU now in the hopes that games will better leverage 16T CPUs in a few years is a risky move – particularly with Bethesda’s track record for game optimization.

The review also states AMD fudged the gaming workloads...

When there were gaming workloads, AMD inflated their numbers by doing a few things:

In the Sniper Elite demo, AMD frequently looked at the skybox when reloading, and often kept more of the skybox in the frustum than on the side-by-side Intel processor. A skybox has no geometry, which is what loads a CPU with draw calls, and so it’ll inflate the framerate by nature of testing with chaotically conducted methodology. As for the Battlefield 1 benchmarks, AMD also conducted using chaotic methods wherein the AMD CPU would zoom / look at different intervals than the Intel CPU, making it effectively impossible to compare the two head-to-head.

And, most importantly, all of these demos were run at 4K resolution. That creates a GPU bottleneck, meaning we are no longer observing true CPU performance. The analog would be to benchmark all GPUs at 720p, then declare they are equal (by way of tester-created CPU bottlenecks). There’s an argument to be made that low-end performance doesn’t matter if you’re stuck on the GPU, but that’s a bad argument: You don’t buy a worse-performing product for more money, especially when GPU upgrades will eventually out those limitations as bottlenecks external to the CPU vanish.

With that, I'll remind that this is a new chip with a new architecture, and there are bound to be growing pains. Couple that with the fact that there aren't many (if any) games out there that can take full advantage of 8 cores, let alone 12 or 16. That said, it's still a bit disappointing AMD couldn't garner better performance in gaming being this isn't their first rodeo in the CPU chip business. And, let's not forget.... they're also in the GPU gaming business and are highly competitive with NVidia. Let's hope AMD sorts this out before this turns into a loud thud.

My two cents

Intel has been heavily favored by game developers until now. Even benchmarks were made for mid level segment of Intel CPUs.

kipper said:

You all might be interested in what John Taylor at AMD reports on Ryzen as for Gaming performance.......

"As we presented at Ryzen Tech Day, we are supporting 300+ developer kits with game development studios to optimize current and future game releases for the all-new Ryzen CPU. We are on track for 1000+ developer systems in 2017. For example, Bethesda at GDC yesterday announced its strategic relationship with AMD to optimize for Ryzen CPUs, primarily through Vulkan low-level API optimizations, for a new generation of games, DLC and VR experiences.

Oxide Games also provided a public statement today on the significant performance uplift observed when optimizing for the 8-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 CPU design – optimizations not yet reflected in Ashes of the Singularity benchmarking. Creative Assembly, developers of the Total War series, made a similar statement today related to upcoming Ryzen optimizations.

CPU benchmarking deficits to the competition in certain games at 1080p resolution can be attributed to the development and optimization of the game uniquely to Intel platforms – until now. Even without optimizations in place, Ryzen delivers high, smooth frame rates on all 'CPU-bound' games, as well as overall smooth frame rates and great experiences in GPU-bound gaming and VR. With developers taking advantage of Ryzen architecture and the extra cores and threads, we expect benchmarks to only get better, and enable Ryzen excel at next generation gaming experiences as well.

Game performance will be optimized for Ryzen and continue to improve from at-launch frame rate scores."

John Taylor, AMD.

That's all fine an dandy, but....

• These chips need to play nice with the games that are out now, not just those that might be released in the future.
• That games will eventually be optimized to take advantage of Ryzen's tech today is simply not around the corner. Games take years to develop and be released. Even patching current games takes time to develop, and in patching (for AMD's sake), that'll just be a stop gap a may not provide the full experience AMD and it's fans expect.
• Unfortunately, in my opinion, the only way for AMD's chip perform on par or surpass Intel in the gaming department is for games to be developed with these chips in mind. Again, this is a long process and by the time that happens, both AMD and Intel will have new hardware. By then the playing field may be completely different with AMD once again playing catch up as Intel will have then become more price competitive.

Not a hater, just looking at things realistically. I do like the fact the AMD put out these chips because it forces Intel's hand, especially if they (AMD) succeed.