What is a processor? “Well, this is a thing that controls almost all processes in a computer, the brain of a device,” many will answer, and the most surprising thing is that such a statement is not far from the truth. Even more surprising is that in our time, a person no longer needs to know what kind of processor is in his computer, laptop or smartphone. Even the most inexpensive technology is almost always fast enough, and the user does not need to think about the clock frequency or the number of cores - about everything that device manufacturers so furiously sculpt on flashy advertising posters (“Two cores! Three gigs! Gaming video card! ).
And this, in principle, is great - but exactly as long as there is no need to assemble the computer yourself. Then problems can arise. Which processor should you choose? How many cores do you need? What's the confusion with the names? The situation was aggravated by the fact that most recently AMD introduced the Ryzen line, which all the leading technology publications are now talking about.
And they say for a reason: the release of Ryzen is one of the most "useful" events that happened to the computer industry. In a global sense, because competition is returning to the market, and Intel, which dominates the minds of many consumers, has a dangerous competitor. And for ordinary users, the plus is that it will be a little cheaper to assemble a powerful computer for a variety of purposes.
is on your toes about what you need to know about the new line of AMD processors.
What's the salt?
But first, oddly enough, about the Intel line, simply because it will be easier to navigate in the new AMD chips this way. If we talk about the most popular processors of the company, the Intel linenot difficult to describe. There is a dual-core Pentium D. In the next most powerful model, Core i3, two more threads are added to the two cores - roughly speaking, two additional, "virtual" cores. Then comes the Core i5 - a quad-core processor without threads, and the older model closes the row, the Core i7 - it has four cores and four additional threads (there are 8 in total) or eight cores in the most powerful configurations. True, there are also Xeon processors, but we do not take them into account - they are almost never installed in home computers. Inside the lines, additional numbers are added to the main name, take Core i5 7600 as an example. The 7 here determines the generation - that is, this is already the seventh "reincarnation" of the processor. The remaining three numbers indicate power, clock speed - and this means that the i5 7600 will definitely be faster than the i5 7500.
This naming system is elegant. On the one hand, the more powerful the model, the higher the numbers - and it is easy for the buyer to understand: the higher the number, the more powerful the processor. On the other hand, the manufacturer does not need to introduce new names every time, creating confusion.
Therefore, it is not surprising that when releasing new processors, AMD went the same way. If earlier the company's chips were called something like Athlon X4 860K or FX-8370, now everything is much simpler: Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7. But in technical terms, AMD is taking a slightly different path - the company is betting on multi-core.
More cores are not synonymous with more powerful. Apple processors in the iPhone consist of three cores, but dozens of times ahead of the eight-core Chinese MTK in all respects. Therefore, in general, the same Core i5, Intel is more powerful and more expensive than one of the previous "eight cores" AMD - FX-8300.
Simply because the specific performance per core (in simple terms, the computing power of a single core) is much higher at Intel. In general, it all depends on the type of computation, but the reality is that many programs are simply not optimized to work with a large number of cores, and the processor in which a single core is more powerful will "win".
This is why, for a long time, Intel processors have been the de facto option for those who build a gaming PC. Most three-dimensional games simply do not use all these eight cores to their full, and therefore work on them much worse than on a "bouncy" quad-core processor.
So, when developing Ryzen, AMD went the right way: retained the "multi-core" processor architecture (do not waste the good!), But seriously increased the power of a single core. It turned out great.
What to choose?
As mentioned, the new lineup is divided into three families: Ryzen 3, Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7. The first, the youngest processors have not yet gone on sale, but all models with numbers “5” and “7” are already available for purchase.
Ryzen 5
The Ryzen 5 family is positioned as the ideal price / performance option for powerful gaming PCs and competes with the eerily popular quad-core Core i5. There are four models: Ryzen 5 1400, Ryzen 5 1500X (both four cores and eight threads, differing in clock speed), and Ryzen 5 1600 and 1600X (six cores and 12 threads).
The most successful among the line processors is the third model, Ryzen 5 1600. This is the case when it is worth overpaying a little: the difference between 1500X and 1600 in Russia is about 2.5 thousand rubles, but for this money you get two additional cores and four "extra" threads. The X-version of the processor will be of interest to fans of overclocking - it is more powerful, but in “home” conditions the difference between them will not be so significant as to pay an additional several thousand for it.
However, since it is the 1600X that leads the Ryzen 5 family, it should be compared to today's top Intel Core i5 chip - the Core i5 7600K. The results are interesting.
According to one of the most authoritative computer publications in the world, PCWorld, the 1600X not only keeps up with the Core i5 7600, but also simply destroys it in resource-intensive programs.
In the synthetic test Cinebench, which determines the processing power of chips, Ryzen 5 in multi-threaded mode is 80% faster than an Intel chip:
The situation is similar in the program for 3D-rendering of the Blender, and archived 7Zip program - processor AMD to quickly deal with the problems in both cases.
However, such results in general cannot be called a defeat, because in the Ryzen 5 1600X games, the Intel version, although very small, is inferior. Yes, the difference is not too significant, but in fact, Intel won several frames per second from AMD. True, it will be noticeable only to owners of flagship video cards and monitors with a refresh rate of 144 hertz. As an example - tests of one of the most "voracious" games to date, Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands.
As a result:
Ryzen 5 is the go-to choice for anyone considering upgrading and building a gaming PC. Especially the older models 1600 and 1600X turned out: only slightly inferior to the best Core i5 in games, they nevertheless show themselves more advantageously in programs that are demanding on the computing power of the system and multi-core. In general, you can play all modern games at maximum settings, and work. Plus a large number of cores and threads will provide a good reserve for the future - there are more and more programs and games optimized for multi-core every year.
Ryzen 7
Already by the name of the family, you can guess that the seventh Ryzen will compete with the Intel Core i7. His trump cards are eight cores and 16 threads, and, judging by the PC World tests, he manages them well: all in the same Cinebench, the top-end Ryzen 7 1800X is in step with the eight-core Intel Core i7 6900K. At the same time, an AMD processor costs half the price.
Even more surprising, the significantly cheaper Ryzen 7 1700 is not far behind both of them. With 4K-converting video in Full HD-format popular among editors and bloggers Adobe Premier version of AMD also handled quickly:
In games, the situation is the same: as in the case of Ryzen 5, Intel is still faster:
As a result:
The top Ryzen family can be called outstanding processors for professional purposes. There is no point in taking them for games - at a much higher cost, they do not outperform the Ryzen 1600 and 1600X too much in performance. But these are ideal processors for video processing, working with archives, huge amounts of data. At half the price of top-end Intel, in some programs and tests, the seventh Ryzen even bypasses them.>
