AMD Ryzen - One year on, and what a year it has been

This is where it all began, with AMD releasing three 8-core/16-thread Ryzen chips - the 3.6 GHz Ryzen 7 1800X, 3.4 GHz Ryzen 7 1700X, and the 3.0 GHz Ryzen 7 1700. These chips, which were priced between $499 and $349, gave Intel chips priced at twice the price a run for their money in benchmark tests and real-world application.

These chips were later followed up by the 6-core/12-thread 3.6GHz Ryzen 7 1600X and the 4-core/8-thread 3.5GHz Ryzen 7 1500X.

This is when AMD released the Ryzen 5. In many ways the Ryzen 5 was a much bigger deal than Ryzen 7 because the mainstream processor sub-$300 market is about twice as big as the high-end market processor market, and entry to this allowed AMD to set its sights on the mainstream market where the volume is.

AMD released four Ryzen 5 chips, ranging from the $249 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 1600X down to the $169 4-core/8-thread Ryzen 5 1400.

Here AMD too aim at the professional market. The Ryzen PRO was the first processor to offer up to 8-cores/16 threads for commercial-grade PCs, and enabled up to 62 percent more multi-threaded performance on the Ryzen 7 PRO 1700 than other chips.

Ryzen PRO chips feature up to 8-cores/16-threads, up to 3.7 GHz Precision Boost clock speed, up to 20MB of L2+L3 low-latency cache, and featured AMD SenseMI technology. The chips also featured a built-in 128-bit AES encryption engine, and support for Secure Memory Encryption and Secure Boot.

Here AMD rounded off the Ryzen desktop processors lineup with the release of Ryzen 3, chips that targeted the mainstream desktop market.

Two chips were released:

Two Ryzen 3 chips have been announced today:

• Ryzen 3 1300X: 4-core, 4-thread, 3.5 GHz / 3.7 GHz, 8MB L2 cache, RRP $129
• Ryzen 3 1200: 4-core, 4-threads, 3.1 GHz / 3.4 GHz, 8MB L2 cache, RRP $109

For anyone looking for an overclockable, quad-core processor for under $150, the Ryzen 3 was the obvious choice of silicon.

A few months following the release of the Ryzen 7, AMD was at it again, this time with Threadripper high-end desktop processors.

• Ryzen Threadripper 1950X: 16-Core, 32-Thread, 3.4/4.0 GHz, $999
• Ryzen Threadripper 1920X: 12-Core, 24-Thread, 3.5/4.0 GHz, $799
• Ryzen Threadripper 1900X: 8-Core, 16-Thread, 3.8/4.0 GHz, $549

Thee processors continued to put a price squeeze on Intel. The Ryzen Threadripper 1950X cost $700 less than the equivalent Intel Core i9-7960X chip, and a whopping thousand dollars less than 18-core/36-thread Core i9-7980XE.

AMD Ryzen mobile processors are the fastest processor for ultrathin notebooks, with up to 44 percent more multi-threaded CPU performance and up to 161 percent more graphics performance than the competition.

• Up to three times the CPU performance
• Up to 2.3X the GPU performance
• Up to 58 percent less power consumption

AMD's unveiling of the Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G, both featuring built-in Radeon Vega graphics, will be the catalyst needed to shake up the entry-level and mid-range desktop PC market.

With some 30 percent of desktop PCs not shipping with a discrete graphics cards, these APUs - priced between $99 and $149 - bring a lot to the table.

AMD isn't sitting still, and will use 2018 to move Ryzen forward on many fronts:

• Second-generation Ryzen CPUs featuring AMD's first 12nm "Zen+" architecture are on the way, landing in April
• Ryzen PRO Mobile, designed for high-performance, premium commercial notebooks, is slated for Q2
• Second-generation Ryzen Threadripper chips are are slated for the second half of 2018