Friday, November 18th 2016
AMD's Zen Rumored for January 17th Launch; 8 Cores With 16 Threads for $300
As we inch ever closer to AMD's Zen launch, more and more information seems to be slipping through the cracks. This time, MAXSUN, an AMD China partner (poised to provide customers with AM4 platform motherboards) is the source of the proverbial leak, with information that, if true, is sure to stir the pot of bubbling Zen excitement even more.
According to MAXSUN, Zen's initial release date is pegged for January 17th, which, if true, would probably mean a product announcement around CES 2017 (scheduled from the 5th of January through the 8th) - at the same time as Intel is expected to fully unveil their Kaby Lake parts. The company also reports a second release window at March 2017, which lends further credence to AMD's expected staggered launch of Zen-based processors, first for the High-Performance-Desktop (HEDT) market, and trickling down from there. MAXSUN also confirms the pricing scheme we reported yesterday, with regards to the companies' SR7 processors (the top-of-the-line parts in the Zen line-up, and whose naming scheme I think isn't the final one) - the company states these are expected to be priced at around 1500-2000 Yuan SKU ($250-$300).Performance levels for the price are reported to be not too shabby - that AMD's best performing offerings (8 core, 16 thread chips) would be competitive with Intel's $1089 i7-6900K, an equally 8 core, 16 thread offering (like AMD demonstrated with it's Blender test on-stage, though clock-speeds for the Intel processor were normalized at Zen's 3.0 GHz engineering sample). Taking those performance levels with a grain of salt, the value proposition does seem to be considerably high, especially if Intel's Kaby Lake performance improvements do end up being as rumored.MAXSUN also seemingly confirmed expected, finalized clocks for AMD's next processors, quoting an improvement from the 3 GHz on Zen's engineering samples, at 3.15-3.30 GHz base clocks and 3.5 GHz boost; the company also reports that Zen can be easily clocked to 4.2 GHz on conventional means, and up to 5 GHz with LN2. All in all, rumors being worth what they are, it is definitely an exciting time to be a PC enthusiast. Let's just see if AMD will deliver, or crash and burn like it has done in the past.
According to MAXSUN, Zen's initial release date is pegged for January 17th, which, if true, would probably mean a product announcement around CES 2017 (scheduled from the 5th of January through the 8th) - at the same time as Intel is expected to fully unveil their Kaby Lake parts. The company also reports a second release window at March 2017, which lends further credence to AMD's expected staggered launch of Zen-based processors, first for the High-Performance-Desktop (HEDT) market, and trickling down from there. MAXSUN also confirms the pricing scheme we reported yesterday, with regards to the companies' SR7 processors (the top-of-the-line parts in the Zen line-up, and whose naming scheme I think isn't the final one) - the company states these are expected to be priced at around 1500-2000 Yuan SKU ($250-$300).Performance levels for the price are reported to be not too shabby - that AMD's best performing offerings (8 core, 16 thread chips) would be competitive with Intel's $1089 i7-6900K, an equally 8 core, 16 thread offering (like AMD demonstrated with it's Blender test on-stage, though clock-speeds for the Intel processor were normalized at Zen's 3.0 GHz engineering sample). Taking those performance levels with a grain of salt, the value proposition does seem to be considerably high, especially if Intel's Kaby Lake performance improvements do end up being as rumored.MAXSUN also seemingly confirmed expected, finalized clocks for AMD's next processors, quoting an improvement from the 3 GHz on Zen's engineering samples, at 3.15-3.30 GHz base clocks and 3.5 GHz boost; the company also reports that Zen can be easily clocked to 4.2 GHz on conventional means, and up to 5 GHz with LN2. All in all, rumors being worth what they are, it is definitely an exciting time to be a PC enthusiast. Let's just see if AMD will deliver, or crash and burn like it has done in the past.