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Now that I'm looking through Ryzen options in January vs the Intel offerings (Yep.. Meltdown and stuff) I'm curious how people see Ryzen's value proposition considering Intel just started slapping cores on like they could have done years ago. Are the R7 1700 still worth it in their price range? How about the 1600? Or now that AMD dropped the MSRP of the 1800x to $349, how does it compare to an equally or near priced Intel build.

Discuss

There's only one thing wrong with RyZen: AMD will be launching RyZen+ in March and that is the only event known to modern science that could make RyZen less perfect!

Darn you AMD for innovating at such breakneck speeds!

Yeah, I'm wanting in on the Ryzen+ but I'd like to upgrade now. I don't even mind the possibility of using a Ryzen system that I can then turn around and sell off 5-6 months down the road. I've built 8 systems in the last week alone , so it's not hard for me to turn over hardware

If only the 2200G was out already, would make this whole intermediate upgrade thing a hell of a lot easier.

Welch wrote:

Yeah, I'm wanting in on the Ryzen+ but I'd like to upgrade now.

I'm looking at the specs of you current rig in your sig (sing it with me now). Are you being held back by that setup? Why do you want to upgrade?

End User wrote:

Welch wrote:

Yeah, I'm wanting in on the Ryzen+ but I'd like to upgrade now.

I'm looking at the specs of you current rig in your sig (sing it with me now). Are you being held back by that setup? Why do you want to upgrade?

Maybe Welch can't get enough of that new hardware aroma? I know it's always been a pleasant smell to me.

He did post:

Welch wrote:

I've built 8 systems in the last week alone

Isn't Ryzen+ socket compatible with current Ryzen? It'd be worthwhile to upgrade to AM4 and just plop in a new CPU when they come out if you really need to upgrade right now.

I'm personally kinda meh about the CPU space right now. I have a 6700K that runs at 4.5GHz without topping 75C and I just don't really see a reason to touch it at this point. I'd LIKE more cores, but until I can get some pretty decent clockspeeds on something with 8 cores that doesn't act as a space-heater I'll probably stick with what I have. I also have a penchant for building smaller systems (I won't even touch ATX at this point) so having something that can do what I want in a smaller case is of importance to me.

I should add; I do want and will purchase either a NUC or a Mac Mini or both with KL-G once they come out. They might even replace my current desktop. I'm gaming quite a bit less these days.

biffzinker wrote:

Maybe Welch can't get enough of that new hardware aroma? I know it's always been a pleasant smell to me.

Seconded.

But you haven't really lived until you've experienced the fumes of molten solder (preferably the old school lead-based kind) and flux first-hand!

I do plan to build a Ryzen system eventually. Probably in the first half of this year, but that could get pushed out. Like the gaming rig that I was gonna build last year (actually have the parts for it, but haven't gotten around to it yet).

just brew it! wrote:

But you haven't really lived until you've experienced the fumes of molten solder (preferably the old school lead-based kind) and flux first-hand!

I really need to bust out the solder station and build that Heathkit clock kit I bought last year. I love the smell of brain cells melting.

I do have an affinity for the smell of fresh PCB in the morning! I've soldered enough for a lifetime, the number of Dell SX280's I've recapped is enough to make me sick.

Yeah I need to build 2 more rigs tongiht actually. Hell it only takes me roughly 30 minutes or so to assemble one.

Yeah, the i5-2500k for even most gaming is still kicking ass, but I figured faster ram, more coarz! Would do nicely for some of the encoding and video editing I want to get into. Also would like to start doing more VM stuff on my machine for system testing without having to have a separate box.

Welch wrote:

I do have an affinity for the smell of fresh PCB in the morning! I've soldered enough for a lifetime, the number of Dell SX280's I've recapped is enough to make me sick.

Recapped a few things for myself and others, back during the capacitor plague.

Back in the day ('70s/'80s), assembled a lot of electronics from parts/kits that had to be soldered (including my first PC).

Welch wrote:

Yeah I need to build 2 more rigs tongiht actually. Hell it only takes me roughly 30 minutes or so to assemble one.

I think I freaked a couple of people out at the current day job about a year ago. Even though I was nominally software, I got drafted to help with a datacenter hardware upgrade. It involved swapping motherboards, boot drives, HBAs, and NICs in a pile of rackmount servers, flashing the BIOS, re-imaging the OS, and verifying that the upgraded server seemed healthy. The first one went slow while I figured out the gotchas... the second one went faster... and by the third one I had a rhythm down. They brought another guy in to watch me do one (with the goal of having him help with the backlog), but after seeing how fast I turned one around they said "uhh... we'll just let you finish all of these". Guess I kinda shot myself in the foot there...

R7 1700 user here. Were this rig to disappear, I'd use the same CPU in it's replacement.

Perf/$ seems evenly enough matched between vendors in the $150~300 ballpark, with as-usual Intel having the single-threaded edge and AMD having the multi-threaded edge. Increasingly little software seems to be troublingly ST-bound, though. Since FF57, even web browsing is a decently wide workload (if you like FF). The only time the 1700's performance feels at all problematic is when trying to coax 100+ fps out of games that only go ~4-wide.

At ~$100, I think AMD has a solid win for most work (or will once the iGPU-equipped parts release). Too much software appreciates four real cores at this point. At the high end, the 8700K's performance is simply better than anything AMD can do with a Zeppelin die.

Meltdown shouldn't factor into it, IMHO. For the kind of hardware being bought new today and used for typical desktop stuff, it'll all be patched up stably within the month at very little performance hit. All bets are off when it comes to Spectre, but at the moment there's not much on that side of it that could inform CPU choices.

Compared to equivalent Intel offerings, this 1700 is extremely efficient under load, but loses at idle. I don't know how much of the new laptop-oriented idle efficiency tech is making it into the desktop 2_00G parts.

Stability-wise, AMD seems to have gotten most of the kinks worked out. The GCC segfaults are no more on current stock, and RAM is good to go up to at least 3000-ish. The remaining issue is the one with idle hangs (maybe twice a month IME) - the usual fix for it is boosting VSoC (as happens automatically if you run 2800+ RAM), but the voltages needed were higher than I was comfortable with, so I disabled global C-state control to fix it instead. This had surprisingly little effect on idle power consumption.

It isn't usually a point of comparison, but I think the 1700 non-X is uniquely good as a high-performance CPU with a better-than-average shot at staying reliable a long time. I'm tired of my CPUs dying and very skeptical of this stuff from both manufacturers that's running 1.3V or more all-core from the factory, and if voltage is constrained, throwing more cores at problems is great. On the VSoC side of it, though, this does restrict RAM to 2666 or lower and makes the idle hangs more likely to be a real problem.

I think with Ryzen+ you'll need to update the UEFI to make it work, which could make things awkward for new systems for a bit.

I'm very much starting to believe I should never be an early adopter of PC hardware o.o

It seemed like the early adopter tax was a bit higher with Ryzen than it is usually, but yeah it's often a good way to end up in trouble. I was really interested in setting up a Ryzen build also, but decided to put it off. Like JBI, I've got a pile of parts here completed unrelated to all that which I've never put together, so the fact it didn't happen is probably a good thing.

Undoubtedly the cost was higher, I don't think I'd consider the current situation for Ryzen to be a high cost like it was at the start. So long as you bought a reputable board that got AGESA updates quick. The smartest thing to do would be wait it out for Ryzen+ and buy an older Ryzen if they aren't that much better. However I've tried this with video cards in the past and got lucky once with my MSI 7850. I don't suspect I'll ever get that lucky again. Usually the window is short and by the time you get ready to pull the trigger they sell out and the few remaining parts are priced like water during the dust bowl era.

If the 2400G was available today, I'd probably buy myself a quality, basic, B350 to match it with 8GB of RAM. Use it until Ryzen+ came along and then push this system down to the wife who is also on a i5-2500 (non-K) or resell it to someone for office use.

I'm actually thinking about replacing my bombed motherboard with a Strix. Much better audio codec and NIC on it. Depends on fundage.

I gotta finish testing on the thing now that I can afford to send it in for RMA, heh.

If you've waited this long then you might as well wait a little longer.

I bought into Ryzen back in May, just as the AGESA 1.0.0.6a update was released for my X370 motherboard.

just brew it! wrote:

Like the gaming rig that I was gonna build last year (actually have the parts for it, but haven't gotten around to it yet).

I thought I was bad procrastinating over my (eventual) holiday gaming PC build. That was for just one month!

DancinJack wrote:

I'm personally kinda meh about the CPU space right now. I have a 6700K that runs at 4.5GHz without topping 75C and I just don't really see a reason to touch it at this point. I'd LIKE more cores, but until I can get some pretty decent clockspeeds on something with 8 cores that doesn't act as a space-heater I'll probably stick with what I have.

Over the summer I ran my 1800X workstation next to my OC'ed 3770K + GTX 1080 gaming rig. I have AC and the room is fairly large so overall room temps were fine. I've replaced the 3770K rig with one based on a 1950X but I'm not particularly worried about the room temps moving forward.

DancinJack wrote:

I should add; I do want and will purchase either a NUC or a Mac Mini or both with KL-G once they come out. They might even replace my current desktop. I'm gaming quite a bit less these days.

Hades Canyon NUC!

DancinJack wrote:

I also have a penchant for building smaller systems (I won't even touch ATX at this point) so having something that can do what I want in a smaller case is of importance to me.

While definitely not in the NUC class I am using a fairly small Carbide Quiet 400Q for my 1800X build. I can't go much smaller as I like using a 280mm radiator.

just brew it! wrote:

But you haven't really lived until you've experienced the fumes of molten solder (preferably the old school lead-based kind) and flux first-hand!

Already had the pleasure of smelling melted solder a few times in the past. Not something I really enjoyed.