(pre)Order AMD RyZen NOW!

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In just one day the new AMD processors have climbed up to the first, second and fourth place in Amazon.com's best seller list, even though deliveries won't start for at least a week.


The reason for this impressive marketing success is most likely the price, and also the 52% IPC improvement, instead of the promised 40%. At this point Intel is behind AMD on IPC (instructions per clock), so they'll probably release new generation(s) of processors sooner than previously planned.

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X and 1700X come without a cooler, and are performance/overclocking oriented, both with a 95W TDP and that automatic overclocking feature enabled.

The official RyZen 7 1800X review kit

My favorite is the AMD Ryzen 7 1700, which has a slightly lower performance, but requires less power, with a TDP of just 65W.

These three are the high end RyZen CPU models, featuring 16 PCI-Express 3.0 lanes for the video card(s) an a few more for other I/O devices like USB 2.0/3.0/3.1, SATA, LAN ...etc.


This means that AMD did very good market research and targeted one-card users, who represent the overwhelming majority of video card buyers. SLI and Crossfire are supported by the new AM4 platform, but require a specific chipset for allocating those lanes (dynamically?) to both video cards.

In the photo above, you see the ASUS PRIME B350-PLUS, which is a medium price AM4 motherboard (~100USD). If you look closely, you can see the first PCI-Express x16 slot having full 16 lanes worth of contacts, while the second PCI-Express x16 slot only has 8 lanes, which are also shared with the two PCI-Express x1 slots.

From the manufacturer's website we also find out important information about upcoming AMD APUs (7th gen, 28nm, NOT Zen-based!), which will be compatible with this mainboard:
  • there will be both APUs and Athlon CPUs on the AM4 platform
  • APUs and Athlon CPUs will have less PCI-Express V3.0 lanes: 8 for the main slot, 4 for the secondary slot and only 2 for the M.2. slot
  • APUs and Athlon CPUs won't support memory speeds higher than 2400MHz (they don't need more)
Even though these specs may seem slightly worse than Intel's offerings, you have to keep in mind that the most essential features are present and don't bottleneck the system's performance.
For example if you'll buy a 4 core 4 thread processor, you probably won't buy a video card that requires 16 PCI-Express lanes, because the processor's performance would bottleneck most games/apps anyway, even if it would have 16 PCI-Express lanes.

One more important thing to keep in mind when assembling an AMD RyZen PC: for improved stability it's recommended that you use 2 memory modules at up to 3200MHz (OC) or 4 modules at 2400MHz max.

Disclaimer: I get a commision whatever you buy through my affiliate links, so feel free to disconsider everything in this article and go for an Intel Kaby Lake CPU ;)

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