AMD Ryzen Threadripper release date, UK price and specifications

AMD’s Ryzen processors are aimed at gamers and PC enthusiasts who want a high-performance CPU. Ryzen processors are available for desktop PCs, and will soon be in laptops and servers. For desktop PCs, the more affordable Ryzen 3 range is coming and a super-high-end 16-core monster dubbed Threadripper is coming this summer.

We’ve reviewed the Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 but there are more processors in each range. We’ve summarised the lineup along with their prices in the table below.

The flagship eight-core Ryzen 7 1800X costs only £499 ($499) – half the price of Intel’s eight-core i7-6900K. However, it’s the mid-range chips which are likely to be the big sellers, and the Ryzen 5 1600X is almost twice as fast as the Intel Core i5-7600K in the multithreaded Cinebench R15 test. 

It’s obvious how the naming scheme is designed to help buyers: Ryzen 7 = Intel Core i7, and Ryzen 5 = Intel Core i5. Ryzen 3 is here and three Ryzen Threadripper CPUs will launch this summer too. 

Ryzen Threadripper release date: 10 August

Two Threadripper chips (1950X and 1920X) and the new Socket TR4 motherboards go on sale 10 August. 

You can buy them from Scan, Overclockers UK and other retailers. 

The Threadripper 1900X will go on sale 31 August.

What is Threadripper’s price?

Threadripper is a range of high-end processors aimed at real PC enthusiasts. 

So far three CPUs have been unveiled:

Ryzen Threadripper 1950X

• 16 cores, 32 threads
• 3.4GHz base, 4.0GHz boost clocks
• US$999 / £999

Ryzen Threadripper 1920X

• 12 cores, 24 threads
• 3.5GHz base, 4.0GHz boost clocks
• US$799 / £799 

Ryzen Threadripper 1900X

• 8 cores, 16 threads
• 3.8GHz base, 4.0GHz boost clocks
• US$549 / £549 (anticipated UK price)

This means that the AMD vs Intel battle is really hotting up as Intel has announced its  Core i9 range of CPUs which top out with an 18-core chip with 36 threads – even crazier than the Threadripper 1950X.

Threadripper chips won’t work with the AM4 socket. Instead, like Skylake X in the Intel camp, it will use a new platform with a choice of X390 or X399 chipsets.

Gigabyte and other manufacturers already have pre-orders live.

The range of Threadripper chips is said to be much larger than the current Ryzen 7 and 5 CPUs (see the leaked table below).  WCCFTech previously detailed what was thought to be the entire Ryzen 9 lineup. They have the same 44 PCIe lanes as the Core i9 chips.

However, these appear to be incorrect given the official announcement of three Threadripper models whose numbers don’t appear below – and of course the fact they’re not called Ryzen 9.

Ryzen 3 release date: 27 July

Two Ryzen 3 processors went on sale 27 July, and you’ll find their key specs in the table below.

Both are quad-core and the Ryzen 3 1300X costs £124.99. The Ryzen 3 1200, the entry-level CPU in the entire Ryzen range, costs just £104.99.

They have all the same SenseMI technologies as the Ryzen 5 and 7 chips, but the Ryzen 3 1200 has only 50MHz of XFR. The 1300X, because it is an ‘X’ model, has a 200MHz XFR boost.

Both chips come with the new Wraith Stealth cooler. Read our Ryzen 3 review for more.

AMD Ryzen prices and specs

You can buy Ryzen chips from Overclockers UK and other retailers.

Here are some of the other things you need to know about:

• CrossFire SLI will be available only on X370 motherboards
• Every Ryzen chip can be overclocked
• Overclocking is supported only on motherboards with X370, X300 and B350 chipsets
• Motherboards support plenty of the latest features including NVMe and DDR4 RAM
• You can’t install a Ryzen processor in an older AM3+ motherboard – it needs an AM4 socket
• Current Ryzen chips don’t include graphics processors like most of Intel’s chips

What about Ryzen processors for laptops?

Laptops with Ryzen processors will launch in the second half of the year, and these have the codename Raven Ridge:

Sever versions, called Ryzen Pro, will launch sometime between July and December 2017. They are codenamed Naples.

Right now, Ryzen is just a CPU, but AMD will also launch Ryzen APUs (accelerated processing unit – a CPU with a built-in graphics processing unit in one chip). The APUs are essentially made for those who don’t have or intend to buy a separate graphics card. Rumour has it that the Ryzen APU processors will have comparable graphics performance to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles – not bad going.

Ryzen requires a new motherboard because it is compatible with the new AM4 socket which includes DDR4 memory support.

Also read: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 & 1070 vs AMD Radeon RX 480.

What is AMD Ryzen?

AMD has been making processors for a long time and Zen is the name of the new ‘core architecture’ around which a whole family of products will be based. One of these is the newly announced Ryzen processor. This is not a single CPU, but rather a range (just like Athlon back in the day). Ryzen CPUs will be available for desktop PCs, laptops and even servers.

The x86 Zen architecture is built on a 14nm FinFET manufacturing process. Essentially, this means that Ryzen processors are able to do a lot more work per clock cycle – 40 percent, in fact. This is the key, or one of the keys, to competing with Intel processors. Previously AMD could only compete on performance at a much higher power consumption, because it needed to use a higher clock speed to do the same amount of work as the equivalent Intel Core CPU.

With Ryzen, AMD is claiming that an 8-core, 16-thread chip is 10 percent faster than an Intel Core i7-6900K in various benchmarks, such as Blender and Handbrake. Importantly, these tests were run with the Intel chip using its Turbo Boost speeds, while the Ryzen chip had its boost disabled. So there’s more performance on tap, and that is exciting and not just for AMD fans.

Intel is about to launch the next-generation chip, the seventh-generation Core processors (codenamed Kaby Lake). This shouldn’t worry AMD, though, since early indications are that the Core i7-7700K is no more efficient than the 6900K in terms of performance per clock cycle: it is simply more power efficient. An incremental improvement, at best.

Ryzen, meanwhile, is 40 percent more efficient than the Excavator chips it replaces. To be specific, it is able to process 40 percent more instructions per clock cycle – this is the ‘40% More IPC’ in the slide below.

One of the way it does this is by using a smaller manufacturing process: 14nm. This is nothing new – Intel has been using this process for a while now. On top of this change is what AMD is calling SenseMI. 

SenseMI has five components:

• Pure Power – more than 100 embedded sensors with accuracy to the millivolt, milliwatt, and single degree level of temperature enable optimal voltage, clock frequency, and operating mode with minimal energy consumption;
• Precision Boost – smart logic that monitors integrated sensors and optimizes clock speeds, in increments as small as 25MHz, at up to a thousand times a second;
• Extended Frequency Range (XFR) – when the system senses added cooling capability, XFR raises the Precision Boost frequency to enhance performance;
• Neural Net Prediction – an artificial intelligence neural network that learns to predict what future pathway an application will take based on past runs;
• Smart Prefetch – sophisticated learning algorithms that track software behaviour to anticipate the needs of an application and prepare the data in advance.

Arguably the most interesting part of the Zen architecture is its ability to support ‘Simultaneous Multi-Threading’, a technology that’s been used in Intel’s CPUs for years under the name Hyper-Threading. This allows a single core to have multiple threads, such as an Intel Core i7 having four cores and eight threads.

Also read: AMD Radeon RX Vega rumours