AMD’s 8-Core Ryzen CPUs to be Available in Early March, Not as Cheap as You Think

More details on AMD Ryzen release date and pricing have surfaced on the web. Rumor has it that the 8-core Ryzen CPUs will be available in early March, followed by quad-core parts a few months later. However, the new chips will be priced higher than some of you might have expected.

New rumors come via the Chinese Chiphell forum, and while the credibility of the source can not be verified it claims to have confirmation from a lot of other insiders who are involved with the new Ryzen CPU.

Ryzen Presentation Scheduled for Late February, Launch Expected in March

According to latest rumor roundup, the development of the CPU is finished, and last delays are caused by bugs in the BIOS of the motherboards. The official Ryzen presentation is scheduled to take place at the end of February, with the availability of the new processors planned for the first week of March.

This is in line with a previous report from AnandTech which suggests that AMD is set to launch its Ryzen CPU ahead of GDC 2017, which runs from February 27 through March 3. Following the launch, the company is expected to deliver a GDC session entitled “Optimizing for AMD Ryzen CPU” where it will introduce game developers to the finer details of the new Zen architecture.

The rumor from China further claims that the availability will be restricted to the eight-core, 16-thread processor. This is the same chip which AMD showcased at CES 2017 for the Doom demo. The Ryzen engineering sample was running at 3.6GHz base clock and 3.9GHz turbo frequency. The final version of the chip is said to be clocked at a slightly higher 4.0GHz frequency.

The octa-core Ryzen CPUs will be released under the Summit Ridge platform. Models with four cores and eight threads will be available later, more likely in July.

If a previous report is to be believed, AMD has already begun sampling its quad-core Ryzen CPUs which are set to rival Intel’s Core i5 and i3 chips on desktops. These chips will have a base clock of 3.4GHz or higher, with power consumption rated at around 45W.

All Ryzen CPUs Are Multiplier Unlocked, Pricing Higher Than You’d Think

AMD is expected to launch Zen processors in three distinct tiers: SR7, SR5 and SR3 – just like Intel’s Core i7, i5 and i3 product lines. The SR7 will be the top-of-the-line series including the eight-core processors that support 16 threads.

Irrespective of the core count however, all AMD Ryzen CPUs will come with an unlocked multiplier making them overclocking ready out of the box.

As for the pricing, the Ryzen CPUs won’t be as cheap as you might expect, according to the source. No information on Ryzen pricing is available yet, but we expect the eight-core CPUs to cost somewhere between $580 and $720.

Whether, and how far, these rumors are true, only time will tell. We’ll update you as soon as we have more information about the Ryzen CPUs. Stay tuned!