News

First AMD Zen Benchmarks Were an April Fools Prank

UPDATE: We have now been informed from a kind reader that this was an April Fools joke, so please disregard the benchmark images below

AMD has been lingering behind in the enthusiast CPU market and really struggled to compete with Intel’s flagship products. This isn’t a shocking revelation when you consider AMD is still using the FM2+ socket to house its current processor line-up. Thankfully, Zen is upon us and the first major socket change in a considerable amount of time. We’re all hoping that AMD can become competitive again and Zen really helps bring innovation forward in the stagnant CPU market. AMD’s President and CEO, Lisa Su provided a small insight into Zen’s performance numbers and suggested they will bring a 40 percent IPC boost over the current line-up. Up to this point, all performance benchmarks have been kept under wraps and any numbers revolved around pure speculation.

However, images provided by Bits&Chips clearly illustrate the performance differences between a Octacore AMD Zen CPU and competing products. The CPU’s FP32 Ray-Trace score outperforms the i7-4930K but it’s not as impressive as the CPU hash results. This means the architecture might implement a weaker FMA.

On a more positive note, DDR4 bandwidth performance is impressive and competes with the i7-6700K. The CPU Hash is significantly better than the i7-5820K and even surpasses a 20-core Xeon. Only time will tell if AMD’s latest processors can offer similar performance to Intel products and instigate a pricing war. Currently, the i7-6700K is extremely expensive for a 4-core CPU and there needs to be some competition to drive innovation. I cannot wait to get my hands on AMD’s AM4 motherboards and finally see if they’ve come up with the goods. The basic data we have so far and information from AMD is promising but it’s always unclear until the testing has been completed from independent sources.

Do you think AMD will be able to have a much stronger foothold in the CPU market once Zen releases?

John Williamson

Disqus Comments Loading...

Recent Posts

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 Possible Price Revealed

According to a new report, the GeForce RTX 5090 GPU will be very expensive. It…

10 hours ago

AMD Krackan Processor with 6 Zen 5 and Zen 5c Cores for Budget AI Laptops Leaked

A new AMD processor in the form of an engineering model has been leaked in…

10 hours ago

SK Hynix Begins Production of First 321-Layer NAND Chips

SK Hynix has claimed to be the first company to mass-produce 321-layer NAND memory chips.…

11 hours ago

Trust Gaming GXT 609 Zoxa 2.0 PC Speakers

SOUNDS GREAT – Full stereo sound (12W peak power) gives your setup a booming audio…

15 hours ago

PowerA Wired Controller for Nintendo Switch

Special Edition Yoshi design Ergonomic controller shape with Nintendo Switch button layout Detachable 10ft (3m)…

15 hours ago

Logitech G Saitek PRO Flight Rudder Pedals

Fluid Motion: These flight rudder pedals are smooth and accurate that enable precise control over…

15 hours ago