Despite the wise acquisition of ATI’s Radeon graphics card division and some interesting diversification on the APU market, AMD has been playing second fiddle to market leader Intel for over a decade. But things have been looking up for the underdog as of late: the company’s Ryzen series of CPUs is a bona fide hit with both critics and consumers.
Is now the time to invest in an upgrade for your CPU, and possibly a compatible motherboard to go with it?Short answer: Yes. AMD’s improved strides with the latest CPU models make them well worth the money for an upgrade, especially if you can match them up with your existing components. But since the Ryzen chips are new and AMD’s combined APU platform is due for an upgrade, bargain hunters should probably wait a few months.
Ryzen Gives Great Performance Improvements
The Ryzen class of processors was launched earlier this year on the AM4 socket, itself only introduced in September of 2016. At the moment there are only seven CPUs in the line, four in the mid-range Ryzen 5 branch and three in the high-end Ryzen 7, but entry-level Ryzen 3 and super-high-end Ryzen Threadripper chips are coming alter this year.
At similar price points and market segments, Ryzen is closing the gap with Intel’s Core series processors. The current top-of-the-line model, the Ryzen 7 1800X, can’t quite get a knockout victory over Intel’s comparable Core i7-7700K. But with eight processor cores to Intel’s four, it’s notably better at multitasking, and its single-task performance isn’t so far behind that it’s an automatic non-contender (as some previous AMD designs have unfortunately been).
With the insane 16-core Ryzen Threadripper CPU expected to come out in the summer of 2017, AMD will have some potent competition and an aspirational top-of-the-line…
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