2017-01-10

MojoKid writes:
AMD has a lot riding on Ryzen, its new generation CPU architecture that is supposed to return the chip designer to a competitive position versus Intel in the high-end desktop X86 processor market. Late last week, at CES 2017, AMD has lined up over a dozen high-performance AM4 motherboards from five hardware partners, including ASRock, ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte, and MSI. All AM4 motherboards are built around one of two desktop chipsets for Ryzen, the AMD X370 or X300. Motherboards based on the X370 chipset are intended for power users and gamers. These boards bring more robust overclocking controls and support for dual graphics cards, along with more I/O connectivity and dual-channel DDR4 memory support. The X300 is AMD's chipset for mini-ITX motherboards for small form factor (SFF) system platforms. The X300 also supports dual-channel DDR4 memory, PCIe 3.0, M.2 SATA devices, NVMe, and USB 3.1 Gen 1 and Gen 1. Finally, AMD representatives on hand at CES also reported that all Ryzen processors will be multiplier unlocked, hopefully for some rather flexible overclocking options. There will also be several processors in the family, with varying core counts depending on SKU, at launch.

Re:No surprise

By beelsebob



2017-Jan-10 08:54

• Score: 4, Insightful
• Thread

That depends entirely on what benchmark you're looking at.

If you're goal is to play GooSplatter 2017 at 3840x2160@144Hz, then staring at a benchmark that reports the frame rate of GooSplatter 2017's rendering engine, with representative scenes from the game is an entirely reasonable thing to do.

Don't assume that all people staring at benchmarks don't understand what each test is actually measuring.

I know I'm not alone...

By Jethro



2017-Jan-10 09:08

• Score: 4, Interesting
• Thread

...but when I hear of new technology in this arena, I don't really think "Ooh Dual Channel DDR400!" or "Finally USB 3.1!" or whatever.

I just want to get my hands on some of this stuff and build a new system with it. Or several.

I don't even need to replace any of my current computers. I just love building them, and getting to build stuff with new components (be they AMD- or Intel-based) is just fun.

The last system I built was my gaming rig, and it's the most powerful machine I've ever made. As soon as it was up and running I wanted to sell it so I could use the money to build another one.

Kinda wish I could do that for a living, really, but the market for Artisanal Hand-Crafted Desktops is kind of rough ):

Re:Just unlocked CPU multipliers...

By Kjella



2017-Jan-10 09:45

• Score: 4, Insightful
• Thread

and believe we should all be able to either choose CPUs that lack them, or disable them entirely (motherboard jumper anyone?) as we wish.

If anyone can enable it via malware, they've already totally rooted your PC. If there is a secret NSA knock from the outside, it'll just ignore the jumper. Even if you buy one of the CPUs that lack this feature, you don't really know if Intel has fused it off. If they reuse design blocks it's quite possible entire product lines that don't offer that functionality have it anyway. If you're that paranoid maybe the easiest is a to use a third party NIC? Install a hardware firewall to monitor your connection? Personally I think a hack like that would be way too valuable a secret to risk exposing by going after consumers. There's probably a ton of military, big industry and infrastructure servers that run Intel and full, virtually undiscoverable backdoor access to that would be an espionage gold mine.

Re:Hooray! New stuff for people like me

By Chris Katko



2017-Jan-10 10:33

• Score: 4, Informative
• Thread

My favorite part is how Intel CPU prices "magically" drop in price whenever AMD releases a new CPU.

Actually there's 5 chipsets

By slashmydots



2017-Jan-10 11:10

• Score: 3
• Thread

The summary is basically a lie. There's the X370, B350, A320, X300, and A300 chipsets. By the way, is anyone else concerned about the 8 lanes of PCI-E? Intel Z170 has 16-20 if I remember correctly.

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