AMD RyZen and Vega: Update to mainboards, release and more

AMD introduces new chips that Intel and Nvidia can seriously compete with.


RyZen: New chipsets X370 and X300


After AMD unveiled RyZen with first information, the CES 2017 will be followed by new details on dedicated mainboards, supported interfaces and matching coolers. AMD also offered an update to the new GPU generation Vega, although concrete facts about upcoming graphics cards, their appearance dates and prices (both CPUs and GPUs) still remain under lock and key. Another exciting feature is Golem, which is the first to draw conclusions about the performance of the "large" Vega Radeon Instinct MI25 chip.


Vega: almost twice as fast as an RX 480


At the CES, AMD announced 16 new motherboards for RyZen, which contain new chipsets from the Promontory series. X370 and X300 supplement the already announced chipsets A320 and B350. They are starting in the course of the CES to the start - interesting is however for the time being probably only for OEM manufacturers. The 16 motherboards come from the manufacturers Asus, AsRock, BioStar, Gigabyte and MSI. RyZen or suitable Maiboards are to bring alongside PCI Express 3.0 for graphics cards still USB 3.1 of the second generation and M.2 slots for NVMe SSDs. Little is known about the differences in chipsets. A320 and B350 are intended for the later APU chips with integrated graphics (Raven RIdge), RyZen should work on corresponding boards - with the restriction that the graphics can be inactive. RyZen is a pure desktop processor - as in the case of Intel, the Xeon series.


Lesetipp: AMD introduces Ryzen and Vega


If you already have a cooler from BeQuiet for AMD processors with FM2 or AM3 socket, you can look forward to conversion kits. This has been announced by the manufacturer for models with their own mounting plate on the back of the board (backplate). Standard coolers according to FM2 or AM3 format are to remain compatible. Critical brackets are the same as before.


While RyZen was the focus, there were relatively few new AMD graphics cards with Vega architecture. To the successor of the Radeon RX 480 there is still no details on clock rates, number of computing units, price or release date. For this, AMD has placed the architecture itself in the foreground. As already reported, AMD is targeting the high-end market of current graphics cards with Vega, which so far belongs to Nvidia with graphics cards from the Geforce GTX 1070. Next-generation computing units (NCU, Next-Generation Compute Unit), which according to AMD offer significant clock speeds with increased power per clock, are to be provided for this purpose. Developers should be able to use the new HBM2 memory (High Bandwidth Memory) more effectively, the power consumption is also lower than GDDR5 (X).


As golem.de observed, the performance of the new graphics chip is quite promising. On a test system, the first-person shooter Doom in 4K ran with ultra-detail settings to around 70 FPS. This is almost twice as fast as on a comparable system with Radeon RX 480 and faster than an overclocked Geforce GTX 1080. The observation gives at least a first idea, as it is orderly Vega ordered. It will be decisive at what price AMD Vega will bring to the market. In the second quarter of 2017 it should be as far as possible.