AMD’s New Horizon event is finally upon us and the first glimpse of the company’s new Zen architecture being demoed. While the VEGA graphics segment could be displayed as a surprise, it’s looking increasingly likely that the focus will be on the Zen platform. We’re going to publish live updates as the details unfold before conducting a more thorough analysis later on. Please remember the briefing begins at 3PM CST/9PM GMT and the official stream is provided below for your convenience.
21:00 – Geoff Keighley receives large cheers and discusses AMD’s ability to push new technologies forward
21:01 – Dr Lisa Su takes to the stage
21:02 – Zen designed to take technology in the CPU market to New Horizons
21:03 – Zen pushing the envelope on performance, efficiency and thermals
21:04 – Dr Lisa Zu discusses AMD’s history and RX 480, their first mainstream VR Ready graphics card
21:06 – Zen started 4 years ago from scratch, focused on IPC improves by 40% from previous generation
21:07 – Zen adapts to environment and gets better over time
21:09 – AMD met or exceeded initial Zen goals
21:09 – Performance information to be unveiled today versus i7-7700K
21:09 – Zen’s name came from engineers and chosen because it represents balance between high performance, new features and low power consumption
21:11 – Zen’s first CPU is called Ryzen!
21:12 – 8-core, 16-thread, beats 40% IPC goal, 3.4GHz or higher frequency
21:13 – 20MB cache, AM4 motherboard, Turbo clocks announced at launch
21:14 – AMI SenseMI, neutral net prediction and smart prefetch, instructions to learn anticipate data before needed and accounts for 1/4 performance
21:15 – Pure Power and Precision Boost detects utilisation required in milliseconds
21:16 – Extended frequency range, detects environment, eg cooling hardware and enable higher clock speeds as the system gets cooler
21:17 – Render Blend Demo, Ryzen 3.4GHz vs Core i7 6900K @ 3.2GHz base, 3.7GHz boost, who wins?
21:19 – Ryzen matches i7 6900K at base clock speed
21:19 – Ryzen uses 95W TDP and competes with i7 6900K 140W
21:20 – Ryzen CPU beats i7 6900K by about 10% in Handbrake transcoding
21:21 – Ryzen still to be fine-tuned and performance expected to get even further
21:22 – VR demo shown which combines real-world elements and VR world to build a PC
21:24 – Battlefield 1 shown running at 4K maximum settings comparing Ryzen and i7 6900K
21:25 – Both systems running Titan X (Interesting :))
21:25 – Prediction leading to slightly smoother performance on Ryzen
21:27 – Discussion begins about AMD’s new architecture being useful for development studios in applications like ZBrush
21:28 – CPU rendering real-time reflections with HDR, 153 million polygons without slowdown
21:30 – Now onto the eSports section! Demo showing AMD’s streaming technology, DOTA 2 ppd from Evil Geniuses
21:33 – 6700K at 4.5GHz “not powerful enough to stream and game at the same time” while Ryzen can
21:34 – Now it’s back to AMD’s CEO, Dr Lisa Su who summarises the current announcements
21:35 – Fantastic news, the launch is on track for Q1 2017!
21:37 – Ryzen CPU showing alongside the VEGA GPU architecture for the first time!
21:39 – Slight delay sorting out the game server in Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One DLC
21:40 – Game running in 4K, looks extremely smooth at well over 60 frames-per-second on a single card
21:31 – Geoff Keighley closes the show and announces a fantastic competition (we’ll link it when possible)
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