Ryzen Launch Detected! AMD is Back

March 02, 2017: AMD’s highly anticipated Ryzen CPU was officially launched and lives up to the hype. It delivers a very good value at an unbeatable price: $499 for the highest-end Ryzen 7 1800X. That’s half the price of its closest Intel competitor.

The failure of Bulldozer made AMD lagging behind for years, left the high end market to Intel and pursuing on an ARM CPU for servers. In fact, the last time AMD had a truly competitive CPU, George W. Bush was still the President of USA. It's a long time ago, in the galaxy far, far away :D

Ryzen is very different from its predecessor. The AMD FX (Bulldozer) CPUs used a technique called clustered multithreading (CMT) that shared key components of the chip; they were built on an uncompetitive 32nm, and later 28nm process.

With Ryzen, AMD rebooted its CPU design, adopted a technique called simultaneous multithreading (SMT), which virtualizes CPU resources. Ryzen CPUs are built on a state-of-the-art 14nm process by AMD’s spun-off fab, Global Foundries.

The appearance: AMD FX, and AMD Ryzen chip

AMD FX on the left has more pins than the AMD Ryzen on the right

AMD has already said Ryzen exceeds its goal of a 40-percent increase over previous designs—in fact, it has hit a 52-percent increase in clock-for-clock performance over the Piledriver cores. But the most important you want to know is how well it does against Intel.

Well, reviews and benchmarks already flooded the web...Check it out!

“Based on my analysis of AMD Ryzen, I can confidently say that Ryzen desktop is the real thing and AMD is back in desktops, back with a vengeance.” Forbes - AMD Ryzen Desktop: AMD Said It Would Be Awesome And It Is – Pat Moorhead

“Ryzen is going to rock for some time to come. AMD's new Ryzen CPU family is off to a great start.” Hothardware: Marco Chiapetta

“AMD’s Ryzen 7 1800X is a good chip at a great price and its putting Intel on notice. AMD is back and the 1800X is the first step in the perennial underdog’s plan regain market share from Intel and build confidence in its products.”  SemiAccurate: Thomas Ryan

“AMD fans have something to rejoice about, and CPU buyers have some tough decisions to make. Regardless if you are a fan of either camp or an impartial observer, competition is always a good thing for the consumer, so I guess we all win!” Tweaktown

“Consider where AMD was coming from and look at what they have achieved with Ryzen, it’s nothing short of amazing. I’m excited to see AMD delivering competitive high-end CPUs and it’ll be interesting to watch how well they can refine the Zen architecture over the coming years.” Techspot

“The overall performance of the 1800X is breathtakingly impressive, and it’s a feeling that we’ve not seen with an AMD CPU in a very long time.” – HardwareZone Malaysia

“To sum it up – Ryzen is Amazing!” – Goldfries

“All in, Ryzen 7 solidly puts AMD back into the mindshare of enthusiast PCs. The Zen architecture is definitely much more exciting than Intel's incremental Kaby Lake and proof that AMD is able fight Intel head to head in terms of innovation.” – HardwareZone Singapore

“Ryzen is certainly shaping up to be the disruptive force we're all hoping it can be” – PC Authority