AMD Ryzen 5000 Series / Zen 3 Launch

[smitty3268]

There was a result that can be compared to Tiger Lake, the single-thread Cinebench, where Zen 3 is faster by 6% than the best Tiger Lake, both running at the same clock frequency of 4.8 GHz.

So the IPC of Zen 3 is better than of Tiger Lake, so that Rocket Lake (March 2021) will need to reach at least 5.3 GHz in order to match the Zen 3 of 4.9 GHz in single-thread performance.

Yeah. It's worth noting that Cinebench is probably a little friendlier towards AMD than some other benchmarks, so take that 6% IPC lead with a grain of salt.

On the other hand, rocket lake is likely to have a bit lower IPC than Tiger Lake due to being backported to 14nm (likely meaning smaller caches/resources on chip), and will have to overcome that with even higher clock rates (which they will probably achieve).

However, it's not out for another 6 months, and by then it's entirely possible AMD could even have some kind of Zen 3+ refresh coming out soon after, so holding off for that possibility is pretty foolish. You either need to upgrade now, or you don't - there will always be another processor coming out in 6 months that might be better.

[bridgman]

Today I would buy Core i3 10100. Local computer store doesn't sell 4300G. 3200G is unavailable.

I wouldn't expect to find Renoir in your local computer store since we aren't selling them into retail yet. The 3200G and 3400G should be pretty widely available though.

[AdrianBc]

I agree that AMD processors made very good progress, but if we want to be realistic then it is worth mentioning that there is a non-negligible probability of Intel being faster throughout the majority of year 2021 (the last 3 of 4 quarters of the year) because of Rocket Lake.

There is a good chance for Intel to reach at least 5.3 GHz, maybe even 5.4 GHz, with Rocket Lake (even if the current engineering samples were clocked lower).

If that would happen, Intel would be again better in single-thread performance and gaming, but they would remain much slower for software compilation or any other professional applications, at least until 2022, because not even Alder Lake would be better for multi-threaded applications.

[ms178]

I've been burned with going the 2700 + X370 route for the PC of my father, hence no Zen 3 upgrade for him (if AMD / ASUS would provide such BIOS support that option would have been more appealing at least).

I also don't get that people are applauding AMD to become the new Intel. They have earned their place through hard work, sure, but 20% more IPC for a lot more in price is not progress in my eyes (just look at the insane 299 $ for the 5600X). And as I am not an AMD shareholder, I want simply the best bang for my buck, and there is definetly nothing exciting to see here from AMD (or Intel lately) which would make me buy their new stuff. I even sidegraded my personal system to a Xeon E5-2678V3 this summer as the platform problems with AM4 and my crappy R5 2600 sample made me mad and got for the same price better performance, cooler temperatures and a more stable platform.

[ms178]

There is a good chance for Intel to reach at least 5.3 GHz, maybe even 5.4 GHz, with Rocket Lake (even if the current engineering samples were clocked lower).

It is insane that Intel even does such a backport for a 2021 product, I very much doubt the power consumption and efficency levels will be competetive to Zen 3.

[mlau]

There was a result that can be compared to Tiger Lake, the single-thread Cinebench, where Zen 3 is faster by 6% than the best Tiger Lake, both running at the same clock frequency of 4.8 GHz.

Can you please post the link to this? Most of intels benchmark "wins" are due to its really complex boosting behavior (to me it looks like they designed it around the more popular bechmarks used aroud the internet); I'd really like to see the perf of the tiger lake cpu at a fixed clock..

[brent]

Even in the best case I can't imagine a solid win for Intel with Rocket Lake. With Zen 2 vs Comet Lake, Intel still had a significant lead in gaming. That's unlikely to come back. Even if they manage to backport Tiger Lake with no compromises (which seems implausible) and achieve > 5 GHz clock speeds, it likely won't be a solid blowout. Will they be able to match and maybe slightly top AMD's performance (in gaming/single-threaded)? Probably. I'm sure Intel will push boost clocks as far as possible with no regards to power consumption. But we likely aren't going to see them significantly improve upon Zen 3.

[Raka555]

I am getting DeJaVu of the 2005 era.
Intel had to push their Pentium 4 processors to very high temperatures and power usage to keep pace with the Athlon X2's that AMD had at the time.
Everybody also doomed Intel ...

Next thing, Intel released the Core2 Due, that was miles ahead of AMD. It took AMD more than 15 years to close that gap.

Everybody seems to forget how expensive the AMD Athlon FX processors were ...
AMD will over charge for their processors as well, the moment they know they have the upper hand.

Lets see if history is going to repeat ...

BTW I still have a Core2 Due E6600 and an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ from that era. Both in working condition and still usable.

[skeevy420]

I wouldn't expect to find Renoir in your local computer store since we aren't selling them into retail yet. The 3200G and 3400G should be pretty widely available though.

That's literally why I said "F It" and am holding off until AM5 or whatever the post-AM4 socket is called. Some of us actually want these beefy, badass APUs and it sucks that they're only available in laptops and prebuilt systems.

JS987 This isn't the best answer, but you can find Ryzen 5 Pro systems with the 4000 series APUs for around $500 USD. Because of my unique situation, a ZoL user, I'm going to have to look into buying my system from somewhere like there and upgrading it to suit my needs because AMD doesn't sell Pro APUs to the public and, AFAIK, the Pro APUs are the only APUs to have guaranteed ECC memory support.

[skeevy420]

I am getting DeJaVu of the 2005 era.
Intel had to push their Pentium 4 processors to very high temperatures and power usage to keep pace with the Athlon X2's that AMD had at the time.
Everybody also doomed Intel ...

Next thing, Intel released the Core2 Due, that was miles ahead of AMD. It took AMD more than 15 years to close that gap.

Lets see if history is going to repeat ...

BTW I still have a Core2 Due E6600 and an Athlon 64 X2 4200+ from that era. Both in working condition and still usable.

I'm not. There has to be a reason that Intel is focusing on GPUs more and more and I suspect that it's a combination of AMD APUs usually have better graphics capabilities and there's only so much they can do with x86 so they need another revenue stream. So copy AMD and release CPUs with decent performing GPUs built-in and start releasing standalone GPUs because, especially since Zen for AMD and Skylake for Intel, businesses and people need new GPUs more than they need new CPUs every year or two.