Rumor: No Six-Core AMD Ryzen CPUs At Launch

Megalith

Megalith

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At the risk of getting a resounding “duh,” as I haven’t been keeping up with Ryzen all too much, I will nevertheless point out this report that suggests it might be foolish to expect a six-core version of Ryzen any time soon. Heck, this article isn’t even in English and a poor Google translation may make it even worse than your typical rumor, but since there are existing murmurs and wishes of a six-core model, I suppose this may be relevant to at least some prospective buyers. Click here for the translated version.

Thai website zolkorn.com has gathered from "reliable" sources that the first Ryzen CPUs will only be offered with four or eight cores. The website’s staff was present at the Taipei Game Show, where Biostar presented its AM4 motherboards with X370 and B350 chipsets—if you ask the right people at such events, you may get some information after one or two beers.
 
Private_Ops said:
That got shot down quick. Why can't people just be happy AMD might actually have something worth while with Zen?
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You know what they say about premature celebration.

I wish the 8-core ryzen would beat the 10 core broadwell. But there is a difference between wishes and realistic expectations.
 
M76 said:
But there is a difference between wishes and realistic expectations.
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I agree but, it seems like every thread started about Zen turns into a flame fest.. it's like some people want AMD to fail.
 
Private_Ops said:
I agree but, it seems like every thread started about Zen turns into a flame fest.. it's like some people want AMD to fail.
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At this point it's mostly people being sick of the bs AMD keeps spouting. Bulldozer was a prime example of this. At some point you just stop getting excited because you're so used to disappointment. I'm still hopeful but meh.
 
Private_Ops said:
I honestly feel like that's the whole tech industry right now (opinion).
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That's because the desktop is dying and not important anymore. We have to see what AMD says the 31st. But for Intel desktop sales was down 9% for the year.
 
Shintai said:
That's because the desktop is dying and not important anymore. We have to see what AMD says the 31st. But for Intel desktop sales was down 9% for the year.
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So now it's not only gaming dying but the whole desktop? C'mon.

Without desktop there would be nothing. Everything of value is created on a desktop. Everything else lives off the desktop. If the desktop would die where would all the content creators create the content, or will android devs actually program apps on a phone or a tablet?

The market is shrinking but that's not the end of desktop. It's just a restructuring of the market, since the desktop is no longer relevant in the average home.
 
M76 said:
So now it's not only gaming dying but the whole desktop? C'mon.

Without desktop there would be nothing. Everything of value is created on a desktop. Everything else lives off the desktop. If the desktop would die where would all the content creators create the content, or will android devs actually program apps on a phone or a tablet?

The market is shrinking but that's not the end of desktop. It's just a restructuring of the market, since the desktop is no longer relevant in the average home.
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Gaming isn't dying, the desktop is. Gaming laptops is a huge market and specially the younger crowd buys them.
 
Shintai said:
Gaming isn't dying, the desktop is. Gaming laptops is a huge market and specially the younger crowd buys them.
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May be so but, I (and I'm sure many of us here) prefer our good old desktops. I still enjoy building a computer and doing cable management and such. Just hardware these days isn't as exciting. Everyone can water cool (AIO or custom), everything has RGB... same old story I guess.
 
Shintai said:
Gaming isn't dying, the desktop is. Gaming laptops is a huge market and specially the younger crowd buys them.
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And games are still developed on desktops, graphics artists still work on desktops, video editors work on desktops, sound artists work on desktops, cad engineers work on desktops, shall I go on?
 
Private_Ops said:
May be so but, I (and I'm sure many of us here) prefer our good old desktops. I still enjoy building a computer and doing cable management and such. Just hardware these days isn't as exciting. Everyone can water cool (AIO or custom), everything has RGB... same old story I guess.
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Oh I agree. I couldn't imagine gaming on a laptop either. But we are about equal to the people sticking with a land line instead of a smartphone.

M76 said:
And games are still developed on desktops, graphics artists still work on desktops, video editors work on desktops, sound artists work on desktops, cad engineers work on desktops, shall I go on?
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And just as many of those work on laptops. Its called the mobile workstation.
 
I expect there will be no 6 core die, but I expect there will be parts with disabled cores, probably not initially when they want top dollar selling full 8 core parts, but after the higher end sales slow and they bin some with bad cores, or even disable good cores to create a middle ground. Then there will be 6 core parts.
 
M76 said:
And games are still developed on desktops, graphics artists still work on desktops, video editors work on desktops, sound artists work on desktops, cad engineers work on desktops, shall I go on?
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Desktops are more affordable, upgradeable and will always have higher performance than any laptop could ever have.
Did I mention you can't upgrade a laptop (you know what I mean before somebody says "but you can add more ram bluh blah bluh").

Not to worry, Desktops are here to stay.
 
That wouldn't be a wise move. AMD can't compete with Intels absolute highend, but especially the desktop i5, i7 and 6core X99 seems to be their main targets. So not offering a 6 core themselfs right from the start doesn't make much sense imo.
 
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Private_Ops said:
That got shot down quick. Why can't people just be happy AMD might actually have something worth while with Zen?
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That wasnt his point though. He snarked at the OP about the importance of total unknown hardware.

Anyway, who's not happy about Zen? I'd be thrilled for anything that makes my next Intel upgrade a little cheaper. Over the moon!
 
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Private_Ops said:
That got shot down quick. Why can't people just be happy AMD might actually have something worth while with Zen?
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Just about everyone except Intel stockholders are cautiously hopeful that Zen delivers. I would be more than happy if AMD could curbstomp Intel in IPC and Frequency. That would motivate Intel to get back on top of their game instead of this bullshit 20% IPC over six years we have seen thus far.

Just as I hope Vega curb stomps nVidia's next product. I, like so many here, want AMD to succeed and the entire industry to be massively competitive.

That said, given AMD's past releases and marketing hype, I don't have a lot of optimism. I'll be pleasantly surprised if AMD can match Haswell on IPC and clock(overclock) as well, and come in at 30% lower price than Kaby for equivalent performance. This is AMD though, so I'm pretty sure they will fuck it up somehow.
 
Jim Kim said:
Desktops are more affordable, upgradeable and will always have higher performance than any laptop could ever have.
Did I mention you can't upgrade a laptop (you know what I mean before somebody says "but you can add more ram bluh blah bluh").

Not to worry, Desktops are here to stay.
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You don't have to tell me that, but it seems there are some ready to bury it already.
 
I don't really think there's that much of a place for 6 cores. At one time you could say, "Hey, it's more than 4!". But now if you want more than 4 you're likely to just go 8, and if 4 is enough then you're probably happy with it's price point.
 
Look at how poorly games scale on Intel CPUs with more than 4 cores.

4 Cores for the semi-intense users (like gaming) and the 8 core part for the really high-end... business-level media encoding, servers, etc.

I can see this coming true.
 
htpc_user said:
I don't really think there's that much of a place for 6 cores. At one time you could say, "Hey, it's more than 4!". But now if you want more than 4 you're likely to just go 8, and if 4 is enough then you're probably happy with it's price point.
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The 8C / 16T should be > 2 times the price of the 4C / 8T so there is some room. I mean I could see a $275 to $350 6C / 12T. With the 8C / 16T being a $499 product.
 
I want to believe.
(Fox Mulder had this poster in his office - it was for UFO's. However, I have heard promises from AMD before. I'm hoping they deliver this time)
 
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Amd needs to get more government contracts if they ever want to compete with intel, there is no way of becoming a monster company without them. I plan on building a zen rig regardless (it’s my nature to tinker) but reality is “it is what it is”
 
competition is good. lets hope AMD DOES succeed for all our sake. It will drive both sides.
 
Folterknecht said:
That wouldn't be a wise move. AMD can't compete with Intels absolute highend, but especially the desktop i5, i7 and 6core X99 seems to be there main targets. So not offering a 6 core themselfs right from the start doesn't make much sense imo.
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The 8 core is going to compete against Intel's 6 cores. AMD still not going to be competitive core for core with Intel.
 
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Maybe the 8 cores are binning better than expected and they just don't have enough defective ones for the 6 core chips.
 
DrLobotomy said:
Maybe the 8 cores are binning better than expected and they just don't have enough defective ones for the 6 core chips.
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Wow. A comment that finally has something to do with the actual article, rather than just discussing the merits/failings of AMD in general.

I would guess your comment is likely close to the truth -- which is a good thing -- though, truthfully, it may not really indicate all that good a binning, but just savvy marketing prior to utilizing lower bins later on or plans to release the 6 core models via OEM's like Dell or HP later on.

Offering 6-core chips at the outset would likely do more to cannibalize the sales of 8 core parts and bring down overall pricing, than it would help recoup in additional sales.

So, the smart move is probably to stock the failed 8 core bins for now, then sell them off later on through big OEM's -- or sell them as a cheaper "special edition" part to enthusiasts that might potentially be able to have 1 or 2 more cores unlocked (even if there might be occasional glitches or it might require extra cooling and/or voltage to function properly when doing so). Essentially, allowing people to do just like a lot of us did back on the old Phenom II 960T (which was also an OEM only part....).

If AMD does their marketing correctly and a fairly large percentage of the chips can unlock at least one or more cores and have them function reasonably well (with added cooling, etc) then they may be able to sell a "special edition" at a slight higher margin -- as a lot of the crowd around here will often pay a bit more for something if we think we are taking a gamble on getting more than we are actually paying for (i.e. two possible "free" cores, if we can unlock them).
 
Duh? We knew Ryzen cores were in groups of four, so it goes to follow there wouldn't be any six core variants.
 
Shintai said:
That's because the desktop is dying and not important anymore. We have to see what AMD says the 31st. But for Intel desktop sales was down 9% for the year.
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absolutely

jprpcgaming.jpg

numbers are in million

While Europe and North America still spend the most on what JPR calls "high-end" PC gaming hardware, the Asia Pacific region is now the biggest and fastest-growing market for gaming PCs overall. The £9 billion that region spends on gaming PC hardware is up 9.61 percent annually, thanks to "an entrenched PC gaming culture, large population, and a lack of significant console traction," according to JPR.
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https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017...-gaming-pc-market-grows-faster-than-expected/


of course Intel is down, aside from mobile they haven't done anything but yawn inducing for several generations

Intel's biggest competitor is itself at the moment
 
Private_Ops said:
I agree but, it seems like every thread started about Zen turns into a flame fest.. it's like some people want AMD to fail.
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I'm only up to this post, but so far I haven't seen any flaming. I know there's people who are decidedly in one chip camp or the other, but I think most of us want AMD to rock it, but we've been down this road many times. I switched to Intel 10 years ago when I bought an e4300 (still running in my server), because it was a way better product. I don't recall exactly when Bulldozer came out, but i do recall it being a huge disappointment. Then there was the last generation of GPUs where marketing made claims that were simply not true (again, I use nvidia now, but I've got absolutely no allegiance to nvidia).

Bottom line is until this thing is reviewed, I believe NOTHING. Same goes for Intel CPUs. Sure I'm hopeful (and if I was in the market to buy a CPU right now, i'd be hopeful on this one), but right now all we have is a controlled Doom demo and a bunch of BS from marketing and we should always be skeptical of those snake oil salesmen...god knows at my last company we thought our marketing peeps were FOS.
 
Shintai said:
That's because the desktop is dying and not important anymore. We have to see what AMD says the 31st. But for Intel desktop sales was down 9% for the year.
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I don't know the reason for that but I can come up with a hypothesis or 2.
1. Companies are upgrading machines less frequently, because they don't really need more power. My last company went from 3-4 year replacement 2-3 years ago.
2. Companies are delaying upgrades, to align with their Windows 10 roll out later this year/early next year (and that is going to start in that time frame, if it hasn't already

As for what people on [H] are doing, we're irrelevant. Very few people are building their own computers. We do it, but almost everyone else is either buying a laptop or buying a prebuilt desktop from Dell, HP, et. al.

Even when i upgraded in 2015, it wasn't because I needed to....I did it because I wanted to, and I had a now ancient i860.
 
nilepez said:
I don't know the reason for that but I can come up with a hypothesis or 2.
1. Companies are upgrading machines less frequently, because they don't really need more power. My last company went from 3-4 year replacement 2-3 years ago.
2. Companies are delaying upgrades, to align with their Windows 10 roll out later this year/early next year (and that is going to start in that time frame, if it hasn't already

As for what people on [H] are doing, we're irrelevant. Very few people are building their own computers. We do it, but almost everyone else is either buying a laptop or buying a prebuilt desktop from Dell, HP, et. al.

Even when i upgraded in 2015, it wasn't because I needed to....I did it because I wanted to, and I had a now ancient i860.
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At my company half of the computers are still X58, they're 5 years old, they managed to do the last big upgrade just before X79 came out.

But the same goes for home as well. There is no need to upgrade that frequently. Advances are so slow that you can get away with skipping three or four generations. That wasn't the case 10 years ago.

Just look at my upgrade history my last upgrade cycles were 3 years, and even then I didn't upgrade because I needed, I upgraded because I wanted to. I could still play all the games with the X58 I've purchased 7 years ago. That wasn't the case at the early 2000s every upgrade was crucial, so I can run games at decent settings, and not just games, I needed newer and newer CPUs for other things as well.
 
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