MY FOREHEAD HURTS - RYZEN

OK then ...

Many, many people still making idiot mistakes, still quoting stuff like they know what they are talking about and still quoting crap that is simply not the case at all. All the cues are there already but for some reason people are blind to them.

Let us take one simple comment I saw on Tom's Hardware in the Ryzen 1700X review I have seen over and over again elsewhere ...

Some people have correctly stated that more cores will be needed in gaming in the future while naysayers without the intellect have stated that this will be years away ... if ever?!

If ever ... I just love some of these statements.

Games are coded based on what the mainstream is .. not the top end so sorry to all those that base, ,and even buy, everything on the top end. It is just simple economics.

Everyone has been purchasing Intel 4 core CPU's, that may or may not be hyper-threaded, and have done for years and simply because 6 and 8 core CPUs were not worth it if you were just gaming.

Right now two things are happening and the first is that the 8 core Ryzen's have been selling ... a lot. You also cannot base things on what your bloody friends do or say ... gaming is a global thing. The second thing is that more and more gamers are streaming and so much so that even Google and YouTube are trying to cater for those that want to stream there games.

That is two very good reasons for the Ryzen 7's and games being coded for more than four cores already and before I get to the next and best reason of all...

Every single rumour out there, forgetting the fact that gaming consoles already use 8 cores, is stating that the up and coming XBox Scorpio is going to use Ryzen cores as well as a Vega GPU.

That was Ryzen cores.

Did no one notice how quick game developers came out and said that they were both excited and working with Ryzen in mind? Did no one realise why this was?

Yeah ... when consoles are on their way they already have games being coded for them, which is why there is always a few titles available at launch. The Nintendo Switch not withstanding. Which only had two ... or one and a quarter from the sounds of it?

The XBox Scorpio is supposed to be coming out this year, 2017, and before the end of the year and we are already a few months into this year. Games do not get coded in a few months, not even indie bloody titles, lol.

Which likely means that games are already well into development for Ryzen.

Though none of this matters to myself personally.

I do not build a PC to play games on with three year old titles in mind and nor have I ever and nor will I ever do this. I really do not see how anyone does ... unless they are these die hard fanboys for old titles that just keep on playing them, not matter what.

The only game in recent memory that had me play through it far more than any other is Alien Isolation. Played through that around 6 times and the next closest title to that was three times and Call Of Juarez Gunslinger. The first was over atmosphere and the latter because playing it on its hardest setting, no cross-hairs at all, was a fun challenge. So fun I did it twice, lol.

As much as I loved, ,and completed, games like Skyrim, Fallouts, Dragon Age Inquisition and The Witcher 3 ... I have never been tempted to play them again. With the exception of Deus Ex Human Revolution that was far shorter than those others so did not mind going through it two, might have been three, times.

But I will get excited about the future RPG's along with other titles ... if they look good though of late that looking good a year or so before launch has not amounted to much. Despite all the raving about nVidia's latest GPUs, pre 1080 and 1070.

If things go according to plan I am building a Ryzen PC with a Vega card in a couple of months time when Vega is released. This might now get pushed back a little because of the news that a 12 and 16 core Ryzen might be coming. Something I thought would happen if I am honest but as there was absolutely no talk about this, or foresight, ,from any of the tech professionals I thought it was not going to happen.

I should know better than to ignore my instincts based on what tech journalists are or are not talking about!

Whether I go this route for more than 8 physical cores I am not sure right now. It would all rather depend somewhat on clockspeeds as well as RAM speed scaling, as is being noted with Ryzen 7.

Despite the whiners as well as those speaking about things they do not have the intellect to speak of I for one am very happy with what AMD have released. Because for the next 3 to 5 years things are going to be extremely interesting. Not 'might be' but 'will be'.

I thought it would be good to get on the AM4 platform as the next iterations of Ryzen should be pretty good. New node and new architecture alone are two areas where things will improve.

In all honesty the only negative point right now is the dual core RAM and the PCI-E lanes, though I am not entirely sure this is an issue. AS unlike so many armchair experts I cannot see into the future and am not sure whether those PCI-E lanes of 16x will be swamped by the next generation of cards?

Dual channel RAM is not really an issue as long as its frequency keeps increasing but will it get to a point whereby it cannot be increased? Which means to feed data faster you have no choice but to go quad channel, at which point you need a new motherboard.

But if a new motherboard is not need until, say, Zen 4, for arguments sake, and this is 3 years or more away then ... it is a non issue.

Oh I also find it hilarious that every single person that states that Ryzen is NOT a gaming CPU, even the ones trying to make excuses for it. Really?! I mean, REALLY?!

I wonder if they then go and play games on an XBox or a Playstation at 30 frames per second after hitting that return button and stating that Ryzen is not a gaming CPU because 140 frames and not 180 frames per second.

Now if I was a dedicated console owner I would get pretty irate at all these snobs going on about differences of ten or even twenty frames per second when there close to or above 100 frames per second by a fair old margin.

In fact I am amazed that console owners have not ripped into these people just yet.

I also mentioned about optimisations of current and slightly older games in a recent post on AMD's Ryzen? Yeah ... do not really care about that either ... unless it happens to be a game that I will go back to AND it is getting less than 40fps minimum.

Why?! Unless you are MMO'ing and doing it for money ... just, WHY?!

I also find it hilarious that everyone is scrambling to get Ryzen 5's performance metrics from Ryzen 7's, lol. Really?!

Oh dear.

You might get it right, you have a 50/50 chance, or you might get it wrong but you have no way of knowing. That is NOT, however, what some of them are stating. The are stating that they have tested by switching off cores and stating this is what will happen. I do not know and I do not care as outside of going for a 6 core Ryzen I have no interest.

I am aware, however, that there is no way of knowing how the cores will overclock and no way of knowing how the shared cache memory will make a difference. Will there be more cache memory available to cores because the other cores that would otherwise share this memory are no there? Or would it be that it remains the same depending on how cores are switched off, or failed in the production process? Who knows? I presently do not and I am damn sure no one else does.

Buuut ... if they get it right and there is no difference watch how all of them that predicted no change will crow about it, which will likely lead to irate people telling them to feck off and go and design CPU's as they are obviously engineers? Lol.

I get so annoyed when I read some of the comments. Hands over my face with my uttering "Oooh for the love of God, man!" Lol.

I am doing something I find funny ... I am going to hold off buying a laptop until they come out with Ryzen APU's. I do not bloody know why? Lol.

Well I have always been aware that despite all the crap everyone talks about then CPUs come out they fail to see that ... if something is faster in just one single thing then anything else that is slower comes down to a software issue.

Sorry but that's it and that's all.

If it was a hardware issue then it would show in every single thing tested and I imagine that, without bothering to go back and check, this would be the case with AMD's previous bulldozers. Not quite as bad as everyone made out but clearly slower in everything ... CLOCK FOR CLOCK.

This is not the case with Ryzen and so things are very, very different.

Yet I have very literally and a long time ago lost count of the number of remarks like "AMD has failed again" and "It is bulldozer all over again". Oooh boy, oh boy.

There is an old saying ... you cannot see the wood for the trees.

If you want to remain blind then go and be blind. Do NOT go around on the Internet trying to blind others because .. the Internet is NOT forgiving and it may come back to bite you in the arse?

EDIT: Oh and some so called tech journalists and reviewers might want to seriously change their tone too ... because what I hear a lot is "Oooh Ryzen was supposed to be sooo good at gaming and it is SOOOO NOOOT!"

Your giving out the wrong impression, maybe intentionally without having to actually state it, when that is simply NOT the case at all.

I for one never expected ANY Ryzen CPU to beat out the fastest Intel CPU on any level ... but it has or come close on all of them.

I expected 35% improvement but hoped they, AMD, were being honest when they stated a 40% improvement and we got over 50% improvement. It has worked out better than I had hoped so I actually find all of the negativity somewhat surprising, if I am perfectly honest.