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AMD Launches Ryzen PC Chips With A Price And Performance That Will Anger Intel

Aaron Tilley ,  

FORBES STAFF 

AMD is coming out swinging against longtime competitor Intel with the launch of Ryzen, its latest PC processors based on the company's Zen chip architecture.

On Wednesday, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chipmaker announced details for three central processing units (or CPUs) under the Ryzen 7 brand that beat Intel's top PC chips in both price and performance.

The Ryzen chips all feature 8 cores and 16 threads. They come in three tiers:

• Ryzen 7 1800X running at 3.6 GHz or up to 4.0 GHz for $499
• Ryzen 7 1700X running at 3.4 GHz or up to 3.8 GHz for $399
• Ryzen 7 1700 running at 3.0 GHz or up to 3.7 GHz for $329

Using the popular CPU benchmark tool Cinebench, AMD pitted the three processors against comparable Intel PC chips, and the initial results look promising:

• Benchmarks show the Ryzen 7 1800X performs 9% better than an Intel Core i7 6900K. Perhaps even more crucially, however, that top-of-the-line AMD chip costs half as much as Intel's: $499 for AMD versus $1050 for Intel.
• The 1700X performs 39% better than Intel Core i7 6800K, based on Cinebench's figures. The 1700X will cost $399, versus $425 for Intel's i7 6800K.
• Finally, the Ryzen 7 1700 achieves a 46% performance boost over Intel Core i7 7700K, and costs $329 against Intel's $350.