AMD's Zen may be here 1/17/17 and cost just $220

[sophisticles]

http://techreport.com/news/30987/rumor-zen-release-date-clock-speeds-and-pricing-revealed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBXk-VSJ7UI

I don't know what to make of this, as I pointed out in the comments section over there this would mean that AMD is planning on selling a dual module 8 core 16 thread Zen cpu for a minimum of $220 and a maximum of $290. When you consider that according to the above video the same cpu is a bit faster in a Blender benchmark than an 8 core 16 thread Broadwell-E (6900k), which incidentally costs $1000, it seems very unlikely that AMD would sell a cpu that is capable of outperforming it for between 1/5 and 1/3 the price.

On the other hand, I follow cpu pricing over at Microcenter as a sort of bellwether of what's coming, in recent days the prices of Skylake cpu's have tanked, with a 6700k selling for just $260 (it was a $400 cpu when it was first released) and a 6800k going for just $330 (these were going for over $500 not too long ago).

I had taken those trends to indicate that Kaby Lake was almost here, as usually the price of current cpu's drops significantly to clear space for new products, but now I'm not so sure.

IF the rumoured prices for Zen are close to accurate, there is another possibility: that the 8 core 16 thread part is not in fact the top of the line cpu in the Zen family. There were reports at least a year ago that the server Zen's would have 16 cores 32 threads and feature an integrated R7 class gpu with integrated 16GB of ram, could we possibly see a crazy 12 core 24 thread with integrated R7 and 4gb integrated ram to compete with the high end Intel E class chips?

2017 may just turn out to be the most exciting year in a very long time, for those in the market for a new system.

Hell I don't need a new system but a sub $300 8 core 16 thread cpu is very enticing.

I find it hard to believe.

[jagabo]

It's bad news. AMD would have to be idiots (and they're not) to sell CPUs much cheaper than comparably performing Intel CPUs. This pricing means they expect the CPUs to perform (on average) in the range of i5 and midrange i7 CPUs. Of course, that's a big improvement for them. But it doesn't put them in the drivers seat.

[usually_quiet]

I don't need a high-end desktop CPU, so I'll be looking at the 4-core Zen CPUs when they arrive as well as a Kaby Lake i5. I truly hope the 4-core Zen CPUs will be comparable in features and price and the selection of MATX motherboards for them will be decent.

[themaster1]

I like the fact they're low tdp (<100W; much better than FX), but for the pricing i don't believe a word.. we'll see

[jagabo]

And don't forget -- AMD is always late. Multiplying their timeline by 2 is usually pretty accurate. If they say something will be available in 3 months you can assume it will really be 6 months.

[sophisticles]

It's bad news. AMD would have to be idiots (and they're not) to sell CPUs much cheaper than comparably performing Intel CPUs. This pricing means they expect the CPUs to perform (on average) in the range of i5 and midrange i7 CPUs. Of course, that's a big improvement for them. But it doesn't put them in the drivers seat.

So you believe the pricing rumors but not the performance claims? I'm the exact opposite, I believe the performance claims because of the video I posted and because Scott Wasson, the guy that started techreport.com years ago and left to go work for AMD posted on his Twitter account that he was "really happy to see Zen matching Broadwell for IPC. Per-thread performance is the key to everything":

https://twitter.com/scottwasson/status/766321503990259712?lang=en

This jives with the above video and with expectations overall, Zen slightly faster than Haswell, slightly slower than Skylake and slower still than Kaby Lake.

The Intel 8 core 16 thread Haswell-E's clocked at 3ghz was about 50% than a 4ghz 4790k in well threaded apps, so a 3.2 ghz 8 core 16 thread Zen with IPC that matches Broadwell should be close to 50% faster than a 6700k in well threaded apps.

The price seems like it have to be a mistake but there is another possibility, that AMD decided to take a page out of the old Wintel playbook, the strategy that effectively killed off "Big Iron".

If you recall, MS and Intel back in the 90's waged a war on the RISC/UNIX systems that cost an arm and a leg, had licensing terms that make MS' look like a girl scout created them and were power suckers by using the "good enough" argument; basically selling Xeons that ran Windows that where nearly as fast but cost a lot less in terms of hardware and software licensing, they effectively killed the UNIX mainframes and created the small server/cluster/cloud computing market.

Maybe AMD thinks they can pull an Intel, sell chips that are slightly slower per clock but have twice the cores, use less power and cost 1/3 what Intel sells comparable cpu's for.

I know, wishful thinking on my part, but if in January 17th (a Tuesday) they are available in Microcenter at sub $300 then that following Sunday I am building a new system based on Zen. I've already put aside $500 bucks to give myself a belated Christmas present.

[TreeTops]

Please keep us posted.

[jagabo]

So you believe the pricing rumors but not the performance claims?

I'm saying that AMD won't release comparable performing CPUs at 1/2 the price if Intel's. If they release processors in the $200 to $300 range they will be quad core CPUs -- 8 core CPUs with half the cores disabled because of low yeilds. And their cost/performance ratio will be maybe 10 percent lower than Intel's.

Maybe AMD thinks they can pull an Intel, sell chips that are slightly slower per clock but have twice the cores, use less power and cost 1/3 what Intel sells comparable cpu's for.

AMD can't afford to do that.

[Gravitator]

WCCFtech	           SR7	   SR7   SR5   SR3
Microarchitecture	   Zen	   Zen   Zen   Zen
L2 Cache	           4MB	   4MB	 3MB   2MB
L3 Cache	          16MB    16MB  12MB   8MB
Cores	                     8	     8	   6	 4
Threads	                    16	    16    12	 8
Power	                   95W     95W   65W   65W
Core Clock	           3.2	   3.0   TBA   TBA
Turbo Clock	           3.5	   3.2   TBA   TBA
Alleged* MSRPs            $499	  $349  $249  $149
Launch	               January January March March

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-8-core-35ghz-cpu-spotted/

[sophisticles]

WCCFtech	           SR7	   SR7   SR5   SR3
Microarchitecture	   Zen	   Zen   Zen   Zen
L2 Cache	           4MB	   4MB	 3MB   2MB
L3 Cache	          16MB    16MB  12MB   8MB
Cores	                     8	     8	   6	 4
Threads	                    16	    16    12	 8
Power	                   95W     95W   65W   65W
Core Clock	           3.2	   3.0   TBA   TBA
Turbo Clock	           3.5	   3.2   TBA   TBA
Alleged* MSRPs            $499	  $349  $249  $149
Launch	               January January March March

http://wccftech.com/amd-zen-8-core-35ghz-cpu-spotted/

This chart makes no sense, there is a $150 difference between 2 processors that are identical except for a 200mhz difference in clock speed?!? Does anyone believe that?

Then we have this:

http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-zen-sr7-processors-coming-january-17th-2017-capable-5g...-speeds_188159

That claims the tops of the line processor will cost $450, can overclock to 5ghz and perform the same as a Core i7-6850K (6C/12T) in the Cinebench benchmark while the video I posted earlier claims that it matches an 8C/16T i7 and that dude that works for AMD claims it matches Broadwell-E's IPC.

The only thing they seems to agree on is a January 17th launch.

I guess time will tell.