Much is being said about AMD Ryzen and AMD VEGA, so we want to bring a brief summary about the things we know and do not know about the new processors and graphics cards from AMD.

During CES 2017 we were expecting either the official presentation of AMD Ryzen and AMD VEGA 10, perhaps. In the end we have been between one thing and another. We have not heard anything else about the AMD Ryzen, we have only seen motherboards for that processor and thanks to LinusTechTips, we could see a graphics card which apparently had a VEGA 10 graphics processor. This was an engineering sample, so it seems quite possible that it really was a VEGA 10 and was in the process of polishing.

This article is intended to be a compilation of what we know about the two new AMD products, some doubts that have been left us and clarify some of the information that is already taken for granted, but which, being logical, we must take with tweezers . We will start with AMD Ryzen, which apparently will be the first AMD product to reach the market and then the AMD VEGA 10 would have to arrive.

AMD Ryzen

What we know

The new processors from AMD are for the time being, the promise to bypass Intel processors. Ryzen really points ways, but it would not be the first time that an AMD product aims high, ending up being a good product, but far from expectations. The new processors from AMD are very interesting, since, among other things, they will offer auto overclocking, improving the performance of the processor automatically according to the heatsink.

Ryzen will have a version with a base working frequency of 3.4GHz +. This means that it could come out with a base frequency of 3.4GHz and would not have a Boost frequency, since this processor would increase the frequency in 25MHz scales up to a limit marked by an undetermined temperature, which would be conditioned by the heatsink. This means that the more powerful and efficient the installed cooler is, the more the processor frequency can go up. Which indicates that with liquid cooling it could increase power more than with an air-block heatsink and in winter it could allow more frequency than in summer.

AMD plans to launch a whole family of processors, of which we know nothing, but there will be a top of the range that will have eight cores and sixteen processing threads. Supposedly this is the processor that has to work at 3.4GHz +, but during CES 2017 we learned that the German media hardwaredeluxx had seen it at a private event, in its engineering version F3 working at a frequency of 3.6GHz in basic mode and arriving up to 3.9GHz. On Twitter, a response from Canard PC quickly jumped, who said that they had an F4 version, which had the same base frequency but a Boost frequency of 4GHz.

We also know that these new processors will support Dual Channel DDR4 RAM, will have native support for Thunderbolt 3 technology and all Ryzen processors will support overclocking. Something that has caught our attention is that it has support for a large number of PCIe 3.0 threads, supporting 2-Way x16 / x16 graphic configurations, something that Intel processors cannot currently do.

What we don't know

There are two things we do not know, the price and the departure date. We are totally unaware of the starting price of these processors. Some insist on putting it between € 400-600, but if we consider that it came to the market to compete directly with the Intel i7 6900K processor of the Broadwell-E family, the price seems quite illogical, since it would cost at least the half that of the Intel processor. We are going to be cautious and we will not give hope or create illusions that who knows if they can be fulfilled.

Something that is assuming a lot of cabal on the part of everyone is the release date of this processor. All kinds of accounts have been made and a large number of dates have been given, but the truth is that nothing is known about this. What we know is that it will be before the AMD conference at the Game Developer Conference. The GDC is held from February 27 to March 3 and a talk from AMD is scheduled on Ryzen processors, which according to the description, by the time of said conference, would have already been launched on the market.

This allows us to suppose several options, the first is a great AMD event for the official launch, the second is that the release on the market was announced days before or on the same day of arrival on the market of these processors, before the presentation in the GDC or directly none of this, one day we go to bed and the next day, the Ryzen are already on sale. The latter seems the least logical.

We do not know the nomenclature that AMD will use in these processors, but if we must pay attention to a leak from some time ago, it should be called the high-end SR7, the mid-range SR5 and the low-end SR3, something like Intel processors, although this nomenclature remains for the Summit Ridge APUs. We have no clue about this.

Chipsets for AMD Ryzen

As Zack would say in The Big Bang Theory: 'All thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs'. It is possibly the best simile we can find for the chipsets of the new AMD Ryzen processors. We have said that all Ryzen processors support overclocking, but overclocking is provided by the chipset and in this case, not all AMD chipsets support the overclocking function, therefore not just any chipset will do.

AMD plans to release three chipsets for processors and apparently two special ones for APUs. The X370 and B350, belonging to the high and mid-range, respectively, offer support for overclocking and the X300, apparently intended for APUs, apparently also has support for overclocking. The two entry level chipsets, such as the A320 for CPU and the A300 for APU, do not have overclocking support.

It stands out from the chipset that only the X370, for the advanced range will have support for CrossFireX / SLI configurations, not supporting the rest of the chipsets. Something that strikes us is that the CPU chipsets, the X370, B350 and A320 will have native support for USB 3.1 Gen 2 natively, while the X300 and A300 designed for APUs will not have this type of support.

AMD VEGA 10

What we know

So far the information is very diffuse in this regard, but we already know some little things. What we know is that finally AMD will not launch an RX 490 with VEGA GPU as we all first believed, but now it has been reported that it will be a new family of graphics cards. The highlight of the VEGA 10 is that they use HBM2 memory, leaving GDDR5 aside.

The great advantage of HBM2 memories resides in that these memory units are directly integrated into the processor's encapsulation, contrary to what is usual, which is that they are outside surrounding the graphics processor. This is a great advantage as it greatly improves the performance and speed of data transfer. Currently the maximum that can be installed of these memories is two units of 4GB each, adding a total of 8GB.

AMD, regarding these graphics cards has reported that they are not only designed for gaming, they will be graphics cards that are also compatible with professional work and computing. This means that the same graphics card could be used for video rendering, for gaming or for artificial intelligence systems and imitation of neural networks. The idea is not the same graphics card, but the GPU, with different versions, can be used for these three functions, with slight modifications. Although it gives us an idea of ​​the great power of this graphics card.

Little else we know about these new graphics cards. The highlight is that we saw it at CES 2017 thanks to LinusTechTips who showed us an engineered graphics card. This graphics card apparently has a VEGA 10 chip, because as you can see in the image, the memory solders do not appear, which clearly indicates that it uses HBM2 integrated in the GPU itself. The graphics card is somewhat larger than what will be on the market, since as seen in the image, it has a special USB port for measuring temperatures and consumption, to test that everything is going correctly.

The images do not give us much more information, really. But at least we have confirmation that there is a VEGA 10 graphics card, although we do not know their frequency or if the one shown will be the top of the range or will be a slightly lower version of it.

What we don't know

There are more things we don't know than we do. We intuit, from the recent information and leaks from AMD, that VEGA 10 will be a complete family of graphics cards, but ruling out a special graphics card between families cannot be ruled out right off the bat either. We assume at this point that it will be the Radeon RX 500 Series family of graphics cards, although we cannot confirm this.

We do not know the working frequencies of these graphics cards, therefore we still do not know the real power of them. We have seen that it is capable of moving a game like Doom in 4K resolution with a fairly stable rate of 60FPS, which is very good. We will see when the real performance comes to market and where it is located. On the situation, we see that according to a leak in the benchmark of the game Ashes of the Singularity, it would be ahead of the NVIDIA GTX 1080 in many cases. We do not know if the graphics against which it competes are stock versions or with modification by manufacturers such as ASUS or Gigabyte, among others.

One of the big unknowns is consumption and temperature. The current RX 400 Series have problems in consumption and temperature, something solved with the Crimson ReLive drivers, which has given them new life and made them rise in the graphics rankings. According to AMD, the VEGA 10 would have a consumption of 225W and there will be a VEGA 10 with a double GPU which would have a consumption of 300W. This on paper, then it remains to be seen when these go on the market, how they will work.

Another great unknown is when they hit the market. The latest information speaks of a market launch days before or during Computex itself. There is information that talks about a market arrival in the first half of the year, but all are assumptions, for now, until they are confirmed by AMD.

Conclusion

We, like everyone else, have a lot of faith in these AMD graphics cards and processors. We sincerely hope that they can compete directly with Intel and NVIDIA. The reasons are very simple, a reduction in the prices of Intel processors and NVIDIA graphics cards, which will allow users to have better equipment for less prices, whether they want to opt for Intel, NVIDIA or AMD. The expectations right now are very high and who knows if tomorrow, when these AMD solutions arrive on the market, they will be fulfilled or not, but for now, we must have hope.