Feb 23, 2017 11:02 AM EST
AMD recently unveiled the Ryzen 7 CPU, which comes in three variants. The new chipsets are expected to compete with the Intel Core i7 in 2017 after these were shown to perform well against existing CPUs.
Based on a report by Eurogamer, the AMD Ryzen 7 is an eight-core/16-thread processor. The top-end model, the Ryzen 7 1800X ,is priced at $499, the Ryzen 7 1700X costs $399, while the Ryzen 7 1700 costs $329. The new chipset will perform against the Intel Core i7 6800K, i7 6900K and i7 7700K.
AMD provided various enhancements that made the Ryzen 7 more powerful than its predecessor, increasing its instructions per clock (IPC) by 52 percent. The top-tier Ryzen 7 1800X was shown to match the Intel Core i7 6900K in terms of single-core performance, and being better in multi-core performance by nine percent. The Ryzen 7 1700X also performed better than the Intel Core i7 6800K and 6900K in terms of multi-core performance.
The AMD Ryzen 7 1800X and 1700X has a 95W TDP, while the 1700 has a 65W. AMD apparently aims to put pressure on the market by selling the new chipsets at very competitive prices. The California-based company also aims to showcase more chipsets that will compete with many Intel processors, such as the Core i3 and i5, writes The Verge. The upcoming AMD stack was previously leaked, revealing that there will be new processors with more cores, threads and power.
Users who plan to use the AMD Ryzen 7 will need a new motherboard based on the new AM4 platform. It will now be easy to upgrade rigs with the new platform. There are five unique chipsets that will be involved, namely the X370 which supports multi-GPU setups, the B350 which pares back PCI express lanes, and the A320 which removes overclocking. Small form-factor setups will include the X300 and A/B300.
The AMD Ryzen 7 has double the total cores and threads that the Intel Core i7 7700K has, although both are priced similarly. The Ryzen 5 is rumored to feature six-core/12-thread and four-core/eight-thread variants, while the Ryzen 3 will be the most affordable, ranging from $129 to $149. Overall, the Ryzen chipsets promise to provide excellent power efficiency, high performance and aggressive pricing, although it lacks a dedicated on-die GPU.
The three AMD Ryzen 7 variants are already available for pre-orders. The official launch will be on Mar. 2, 2017. More updates and details are expected soon.