More Rumors, Including Pricing Leak for AMD Zen CPUs

[Guest_Jim_*]

With AMD's new Zen CPU architecture set to be released in just months, it is only to be expected that more rumors start leaking out, covering performance, features, and pricing. Like any rumor though, none of this needs to be true, but it is still intriguing to hear about the Zen flagship CPU having a price of $499, while competing with or outperforming the $999 i7 5960X from Intel. This flagship is to be an 8-core CPU with 16 threads, and the latest engineering samples put it at a 3.2 GHz base clock and 3.5 GHz turbo clock. This is up from previous engineering samples, so we will see where the final product lands.

This will not be the only 8-core/16-thread Zen CPU though, with the next one down supposedly having a price of around $349. Naturally it will have lower clocks, supposedly a 3.0 GHz base and 3.2 GHz turbo. Both of these CPUs will be labeled SR7, indicating they are the highest performing of the series, while SR5 and SR3 labels are for lower-end Zen-based CPUs. These lower-end CPUs are to release some time after the SR7 chips.

The above rumors can all be found at WCCFtech but this next batch, and some more, can be found at the AMD subreddit. They include that because Zen is a System On a Chip (SOC) design, the BIOS or UEFI will be built into the CPU. That will require all overclocking to be done via the AMD Overdrive software, and therefore from within the operating system. It also means that a CPU will keep its settings when transferring it from one motherboard to another. AMD's Hyper Threading equivalent is called SMU and is supposed to be the as efficient as Intel's technology. There are some issues with the testing samples, and while a workaround exists, it is dragging down performance by 30-40%. Also it looks like bug fixing will continue right up until the chips are being sampled to partners.

Until Zen launches and makes its way into consumer computers, it is impossible to say how much of this information is true and how much is false. At least the wait will be over before too long.

Source: WCCFtech and Reddit

Back to original news post

[Waco]

Perhaps they have an ace up their sleeve if they're pricing it that high.

[Bosco]

I hope this truly happens, it would be so refreshing to see prices lowered on CPU's for a change.

[SpikeSoprano]

I hope this truly happens, it would be so refreshing to see prices lowered on CPU's for a change.

For sure, Intel has had it way too good because of no competition from Amd these last 5 years.

[slick2500]

 

I hope this truly happens, it would be so refreshing to see prices lowered on CPU's for a change.

For sure, Intel has had it way too good because of no competition from Amd these last 10 years.

 

Fixed.

Intel has been ahead of the game since 2006 when the Intel Core cpus came out.

[SpikeSoprano]

 

 

I hope this truly happens, it would be so refreshing to see prices lowered on CPU's for a change.

For sure, Intel has had it way too good because of no competition from Amd these last 10 years.

 

Fixed.

Intel has been ahead of the game since 2006 when the Intel Core cpus came out.

 

LOL, I was trying to be kind to amd, but it would be great if they could get back in the game, nothing lowers cpu prices better then competition, lately were seeing this happen with video cards.

[Guest Guest]

I really hope the Zen pans out like others have said competition is good for the consumer. I do hope the overclocking rumors are wrong because I would prefer to do my overclocking from the bios itself and not from within Windows. I find that if a CPU will fully boot into Windows overclocked you have a good starting point to find your max overclock.

 

Now if you only have the option to overclock from Windows through software if the CPU crashes your whole system could get messed up software wise. Lets face it Windows does not like things like this happening and will most likely get corrupted if a CPU crash has a few times because of software only overclocking.

 

But I am rooting for the Zen CPU if it performs and sell well it hopefully forces Intel to lower their prices because I am going to be in the market for a new CPU within a year.

[slick2500]

Or it will be like the socket 939 days and we will see $1,000+ AMD high end desktop cpus.

 

Sent from a galaxy far far away.

[Bosco]

We will start seeing more info here soon, things look promising, we shall see.