I want a new gaming rig

[Barrister]

So whats the latest scoop on AMD Ryzen processors?

Better than other AMD processors have been in the last decade, but still only really competing on low price, not performance.

[Berkut]

That doesn't make any sense Beebs.

There is no "price versus performance" trade off when it comes to CPUs - for any given price, both CPU manufacturers provide a CPU that scales in performance.

So that kind of comment just doesn't make sense.

The question is whether or not at some particular price, the AMD offering performs better than the Intel offering, all externalities considered, and under what particular use case it is being used for...

Obviously the answer might change based on the price point, or based on the use case.

AMD for the last several years has NOT been able to successfully compete with intel for gaming at the typical gaming price points. Supposedly Ryzen is supposed to change that.

Poking around the internet, there doesn't seem to be much consensus yet on the answer...

[viper37]

The question is whether or not at some particular price, the AMD offering performs better than the Intel offering, all externalities considered, and under what particular use case it is being used for...

There are some small problems with the current batch of AMD Ryzen 7 processors, I don't know if they are fixed in the Ryzen 5, but it's affecting gaming performance under certain circumstances.  There is a workaround by disabling some setting in your BIOS, and Microsoft has acknowledge there is a problem under Windows 10 (and not 7) and they are working on it with AMD.

So I would expect that withing 3 months, there will be some Windows update and BIOS update that will make things better as well as improvements in the next rounds of game patches.

Right now, what you need to know is that for the exact same price the AMD cpu is better.  However, if you take AMD's top CPU valued around 500$ agains Intel's top CPU valued 1000$, Intel is better by about 20%.  To some gamers, that is extremely important.

If you ask my opinion... 20% seems impressive, but you would likely not notice the difference.  At some point, even if your computer could render 300 frames a second on a 1080p game, it needs to be slowed down so your eyes can see the fluid movement, not as fast forward blur.  Where you will notice the difference is on 4k gaming on a very big screen, or a combination of screens.  When you have dual-triple GPU setups.  And even then, it's the GPU handling most of the load, not the CPU.  That means, even if you have a 1000$ CPU but pair it with a 250$ video card, your GPU will be a bottle neck in high-end gaming and you will waste your money.
However, if you buy 2 or 2 1000$ Nvidia GPU and a 1000$ intel CPU with a 800$ tri-sli motherboard, then you're on to something. 

AMD for the last several years has NOT been able to successfully compete with intel for gaming at the typical gaming price points. Supposedly Ryzen is supposed to change that.

And it has.  Intel has drop the price (a little) on its mid-range CPUs and push forward the schedule for introducing its next generation of CPUs.

Poking around the internet, there doesn't seem to be much consensus yet on the answer...

Bottom line:
Everything not gaming related, AMD is the champ.
Gaming on DX11, Intel has a lead.  At a similar price-point, not much, but enough to say it's the king.
Gaming on DX12, AMD has a lead, by a bit, at a similar price-point.

I expect performances in games, especially DX12, will increase in the near future, as AMD works with game developpers to tweak the performance in Vulkan and DX12 APIs.

Ryzen 7 1800x is sold for 470$US while the Core i7-6900k is sold at 1000$.

Some benchmarks here for DX11 games:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/amd-ryzen-7-1700-review-performance-and-verdict-page-2

There's one app using multi-threading (near-simultaneous use of cores) and it shows a clear advantage to AMD.

[Berkut]

I think the $250 price point is a bit more interesting. The $500 CPU price point is a pretty small slice of the gaming world.

I think the Ryzen5 1600 ($190) and Ryzen 5 1600X ($250) against the i5-7500/7600 is the much more interesting battle. And it seems that Ryzen is about even in gaming, and much better in most everything else, with reason to believe that the gaming performance will improve considerably as the systems are better optimized.

I am very intrigued.

[Tamas]

What about single core performance on the AMD?

[Berkut]

What about single core performance on the AMD?

From what I've seen, it is lagging Intel, which explains part of the reason the gaming results are a little underwhelming if your gaming system is CPU constrained.

I am a fan of Toms Hardware, and I started there. They are not terribly kind to the AMDs, so I mostly stopped considering them.

But when I asked around, and looked elsewhere, there are some very differing views, and once you get into some details, I think Ryzen looks a bit more interesting. From the guru3d review, for example:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-5-1500x-and-1600x-review,1.html

Before we start-up the review, there has been a lot of chatter on the web on 1080p game performance, CCX interlink latency and bandwidth and/or clock frequencies being responsible and so on. The fact is that week after week Ryzen processor performance has been increasing thanks to BIOS updates and software optimizations. Pair it with good and reasonably fast memory (say 2933 MHz) and you will have a kick-ass value processor. Many of you have been following the news on memory latency. A new BIOS (AGESA 1004 based firmware) update ensures better performance and takes a notch of memory latency. We have been testing with this update and can confirm a drop in that memory latency and thus the overall performance. We'll show you that later on in the article.

This is a pretty in depth review of the 5 series if anyone is interested.

The Toms review seems, to me, to be overly dismissive of Ryzen.

The guru review however, seems almost like an ad for them.

[Berkut]

Tamas, here are the results of the Guru 3d single core perf test:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-ryzen-5-1500x-and-1600x-review,10.html


The Ryzen 1600X does quite nicely against its price point competitor, the i5-7600.

[Tamas]

Unless you limit yourself to AAA action titles I think you should treat single core performance as critical. Paradox games for example are very CPU-heavy and they only use a single core.

[Berkut]

I don't think Paradox games will tax any modern PC, regardless of which CPU you pick.

And take a look at the benchmarks - even in single CPU tests, the Ryzen is doing just fine.

[viper37]

Unless you limit yourself to AAA action titles I think you should treat single core performance as critical. Paradox games for example are very CPU-heavy and they only use a single core.

If you are currently owning an older generation Intel and want to upgrade, you will have to change:
- the motherboard
- the memory
- the CPU (obviously!)

Considering this the minium investment, you're in for 1000$, at least.  Since you would likely also buy/change a SSD, upgrade the hard drive, likely buy a newer video card, we're talking something in the range of 2000$.

Paradox new engine, for their future games, is a 64 bit engine that supports DX12 and Vulkan (it's fully multi-threaded).

Then, if you think about it, does it makes sense to spend 2000$ to play today's game that you play very well on your current hardware, or do you upgrade for the future?

If what you want is just a bit more speed for today's game and don't care about what happens next year, ok, Intel is of much better value to you.
If you think of the future in game developments, as more&more titles come supporting multi-threading and more memory use (64 bit, DX12 and Vulkan), then I think it's wise to consider AMD as a possible solution instead of rejecting it out of hands.

Galactic Civilizations 3 is a game that could compare to EU4 in terms of scope. It's a turn-based strategy game, not a AAA action title.  It's a 64 bit engine that supports multi-threading.  The more cores you have, the faster it gets.  In such a game, you would likely see AMD coming ahead of Intel.

If you want a taste of what is coming in terms of improvement, take a look at Ashes of the Singularity:
http://www.tweaktown.com/news/56937/amd-tweaks-ryzen-30-improvement-ashes-benchmark/index.html

[Berkut]

Well, I am looking at a complete system overhaul. I think the only thing I can save is my case and power supply.

If I go AMD, I am thinking:

Processor:
Ryzen 1600X  250
MB
Some flavor of B350: 125
Memory
16GB/3000: 120
GPU
480X of some kind: 200


I am looking at a budge definitely under $1000.

[Tamas]

Well, I admit that I would be very reluctant to buy an AMD rig, on purely subjective matters as well. In my long history of using and owning PCs, I have only had one AMD CPU and it was the machine I had most problems with. Then their Radeon video cards are also usually the one with driver problems with games, so the whole company just rubs me the wrong way.

Good luck with it Berkut, though, sounds like it should be a good investment, if it works.

[Berkut]

I had an AMD machine many years ago, and it was perfectly fine.

Not any better than an Intel once bought or anything (but it was cheaper for the power then).

I haven't had one in forever, because they've largely failed to compete for many years now.

I would like to buy one for one tangible reason, and one less tangible -

1. Because I think for a given price, I can get more performance, and
2. Because the market really needs a viable and competitive alternative to Intel.

[viper37]

Then their Radeon video cards are also usually the one with driver problems with games, so the whole company just rubs me the wrong way.

That's not really true.  Depending on the games, Nvidia can be very buggy.  Especially for SLI configurations.  And DX12 performance just isn't there yet with Nvidia.

[viper37]

Some flavor of B350: 125

I'd say go for the X370. You have more customization options and better overclocking capabalities, as well as dual PCI-E slots.

Something like this, would fit your budget

I just bought a MSI B350 Gaming pro for the office (it was the cheapest one available for a Ryzen, all Asrock seemed b.o. in Canada) and I regret my purchase.  I really don't like this board.  I don't know if it's MIS, Amibios or the chipset, but there's something wrong with this.