The AMD Zen and Ryzen 7 Review: A Deep Dive on 1800X, 1700X and 1700
by Ian Cutress on March 2, 2017 9:00 AM ESTThe Ryzen Die
Throughout the time leading up to the launch of Ryzen, AMD reaffirmed its commitment to at least +40% IPC improvement over Excavator. This was specifically listed as a goal relating to performance, at an equivalent energy per cycle, resulting in a 40% increase in efficiency. At the Tech Day, AMD listed an overall 2.7x (or 270%) performance per watt improvement, split into the following:
Obviously a number of benefits come from moving the 28nm TSMC process to GloFo’s 14nm FinFET process which is used via a Samsung license. Both the smaller node and FinFET improvements have been well documented so we won’t go over them here, but AMD is stating that Zen is much more than this as a direct improvement to immediate performance, not just efficiency. While Zen is initially a high-performance x86 core at heart, it is designed to scale all the way from notebooks to supercomputers, or from where the Cat cores (such as Jaguar and Puma) were all the way up to the old Opterons and beyond, all with at least +40% IPC.
The first immediate image out of the presentation is the CPU Complex (a CCX), which shows the Zen core design as a four-CPU cluster with caches. This shows the L2/L3 cache breakdown, and also confirms 2MB of L3 per core with 8 MB of L3 per CCX. It also states that the L3 is mostly inclusive of the L2 cache, which stems from the L3 cache as a victim cache for L2 data. AMD is stating that the protocols involved in the L3 cache design allow each core to access the L3 of each other core with an average (but range) of latencies.
Over the next few pages, we’ll go through the slides. They detail more information about the application of Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT), New Instructions, the size of various queues and buffers, the back-end of the design, the front-end of the design, fetch, decode, execute, load/store and retire segments.
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nt300 - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
The Ryzen 7 1700 is definitely the gaming choice IMO. The CPU that does well in gaming and amazing at everything else. Windows 10 hasn't been properly optimized for ZEN, so any Benchmarks and Gaming Benchmarks are not set in stone.A2Ple98 - Monday, May 22, 2017 - link
Actually Ryzen isn't for only gamers, is mostly for streamers and professionals. The cores that aren't used for gaming, they are used to encode the video you are stream. As for pro people, they get almost a i7-6900K for half the price.Sweeprshill - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Does not seem to be proper English here ?Sweeprshill - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
n/m can't edit comments I supposent300 - Saturday, March 11, 2017 - link
Wrong, ZEN is a new design and quite innovative. Just like the past, AMD has let this industry for many years. More so when they launched the Athlon 64 with the IMC which Intel claimed was useless and a waste of die space. That Athlon 64 at 1000 MHz less clock speed smoked any Intel chip you put it against.My point, ZEN is new, and both ZEN and Intel chips are unique in there own way, might share some similarities, but nevertheless they are different.
nos024 - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Nope. Ryzen will need to drop in price. $500 1800x is still too expensive. According to this even a 7700k @ $300 -$350 is still a good choice for gamers.2011-v3 still offers a platform with more PCIe3 lanes and quad memory channel. I thought about an 1800x and 370 mobo combo, but that costs similar to a 6850k with x99.
Sorry, ill stick to intel this time around. Good that ryzen caused a ripple in price war though.
Gothmoth - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
gamer... as if the world is only full with idiotic people who waste their lives playing shooter or RPG´s.nos024 - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Ikr? Whatever makes your world go round man.brushrop03 - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Well playedAndrewJacksonZA - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
lol