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Buying a Ryzen motherboard: Which Chipset, Manufacturer and RAM is right for you?

X370, B350 or A320: The AMD Ryzen is becoming ever more attractive to PC hobbyists for its significantly cheaper price than at release. We reveal which motherboard chipset you should get.

Ryzen motherboard

The Ryzen 1800X is the flagship of the new AMD processors. It will not be fun for users to use without a motherboard, though.

AMD Ryzen CPUs are a good choice for gamers, as the CPUs performed very well in tests. The performance is great, and the price is also appealing. For PC hobbyists, it is important to find useful combinations of board and motherboard, as well as RAM and graphics cards. AMD have three chipsets, on which basis users can choose matching motherboards. That would be the models X370, B350 or A320. This excludes boards for SFF systems (Small Form Factor) with an A300 chipset (X300 and A300). It is a less popular format, which is often found in office computers or mini PCs. The latter also applies for the A320. Although, through the focus on classical desktop systems, the chipset is, in our opinion, not left out.

The order of the chipsets corresponds to the descending request profiles of different users. The X370 is therefore tailored towards enthusiasts and the A320 to the simple average user. All motherboards for AMD Ryzen processors rely on an AM4 socket, just as with the previous generation of AMD processors and APUs (Advanced Processing Unit; Processors with integrated graphics). The X370 chipset does not support processors with integrated graphics, only the B350 and A320 can do this. It will be interesting when AMD releases processors from the Raven Ridge series in the beginning of 2018, which require video output on the board for each integrated graphics unit.

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The amazing story of the processor that was born in the shadows and defeated Intel: AMD Threadripper

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This is not a story about big resources and budgets to develop a glorious product. This is the story of a group of CPU enthusiasts made up of semiconductor engineers and marketing people from AMD who started a secret personal adventure that would end up being what we know today as AMD Threadripper.

AMD Threadripper

It all started in 2014. At that moment, AMD was in serious trouble since the latest Intel‘s CPU platforms were light years away from AMD’s in terms of performance, and sales were disappointing. The same thing happened with APUs, which were AMD’s big bet for years and where Intel was and still is a tough rival.

To the public, the brand was focused on what it had been most successful at in recent years: GPUs with its Hawaii architecture (RX 200 Series) and its Jaguar architecture that would power the most important consoles on the market, including Sony’s PS4 and Microsoft’s XBOX One.

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AMD FreeSync vs. G-Sync: is AMD FreeSync a Efficient and low-cost Variable Refresh Rate Technology?

You probably remember that our first experience with FreeSync was, to say the least, disappointing. We would like to remind you that behind the name FreeSync lies AMD’s answer to Nvidia’s G-Sync, that is to say a technology for the handling of variable display refresh rates. The idea behind this concept is that it helps to improve the game-play experience by providing an increased sensation of fluidity. How is FreeSync doing these days you might ask? As long as the proper monitor is used, it actually works quite well and costs quite a bit less than G-Sync!

AMD FreeSync

After much fanfare in January 2014, the arrival of the first FreeSync compatible monitor had to wait until March of 2015. And, unfortunately, their performance was far from impressive. On paper, the advantages offered by this technique of monitor management were many fold, starting with the fact that it relied on an open technology standard which is much less costly than that of Nvidia’s G-Sync. However, entry-level monitors which didn’t provide the required fluidity left us feeling disappointed with the whole concept.

Adaptive-Sync, FreeSync and G-Sync

Under the banner of these three terms, or brands if you prefer, lies the technology for the management of variable refresh rates (VRR). A classic fixed refresh rate of 60 Hz will offer an imperfect visual experience when playing video games. As each image is different, it follows that the time required for the calculation of each image also differs. This discrepancy results in synchronization problems. While a higher refresh rate, of 144 Hz for example, decreases the impact of the problem it does not eliminate it entirely. The graphics card might miss a display cycle, spend too much time waiting for the next cycle or disregard a cycle entirely, all of which will result in image breakup (tearing).

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The evolution that AMD’s Ryzen has had since its launching

Introduction

The new AMD’s Ryzen processors’ performance took everybody by surprise by taking us back to those times when the competition between AMD and Intel was much harder and when users were always introduced to better products at more attractive prices.

I do not know if it is already too late for AMD to go back to the position it had almost a decade ago, but Ryzen has undoubtedly given us back the hope for a less monopolized and more open PC world. Right now, no one doubts that Ryzen processors are a technical success, but it is too early to tell if they are also a commercial success since AMD does not provide sales figures. Today we will go over the progress that the product has made in the past few months, although it could not escape some controversy.

AMD’s Ryzen

Software and programs optimization

Although x86 is a well-known architecture that has been around for some time, there is always room for resource optimization and performance improvement. All of this is usually done on several software levels where every one is equally, or even more important than the others.

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Guide: AMD´S RYZEN Processors Questions and Answers

AMD´S RYZEN processors have been with us for a while now and thanks to the tests and analyses that we have been able to do, their possibilities, the value that they offer and practically all their technical issues are very clear to us.

We know many of you have hesitations about this new generation of processors, and that they are due above all to the differing results that have been recorded by different kinds of analyses, although there are also other secondary causes equally important, such as the habitual misinformation produced by some sources blinded by a certain favoritism and which affects even some well-known media.

To illustrate this last point, a simple example will do, and it is that in their analyses some sources began to negatively assess the fact that RYZEN does not include an integrated GPU. Yes, and they stayed that way to their liking.

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AMD Ryzen 7 1800X vs Intel Core i7-6900K under Sniper Elite 4

We have here the first reliable performance test of an AMD Ryzen CPU, specifically the Ryzen 7 1800X, with 8 Zen cores and 16 threads at a Base/Turbo frequency of 3.60/4.00 GHz with a TDP of 95W and a price of 499 dollars, which was faced with the Intel Core i7-6900K, consisting of 8 Broadwell cores with 16 threads at Base/Turbo frequencies of 3.20/4.00 GHz with a TDP of 140W and a price close to 1021 dollars.

https://ulite.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/AMD-Ryzen-7-1800X.jpg

To fight this duel, the game Sniper Elite 4 was used accompanied by a CrossFire configuration of two Radeon RX 480. For the test to reflect the most reliable performance possible, the character was positioned exactly at the same point on the map with the camera focusing on the same point, revealing how, with both PCs running the game at 4K resolution, the Ryzen 7 1800X is a 6.6% faster, while the average running game translates to be a 6.7% more powerful average, not bad having 45W less TDP and costing practically half.

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First RYZEN 7 1700X performance tests beat the Core i7 6850K

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The VideoCardz guys have made a complete round of performance tests of the RYZEN 7 1700X, a processor that will make place just under the AMD series, that as we know will be the RYZEN 7 1800X.

Such processor counts with eight cores and sixteen threads at a base frequency of 3,4 GHz and 3,8 GHz in turbo mode, which can be increase if combined with a motherboard with a B350, X370 o X300 chipset. Its price has been leaked and it will be $389.

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We Show You the New Architecture of the Upcoming AMD Radeon Vega

Even though the graphics cards market has been moving quite a lot in the recent year 2016, especially since September until now, with the launch of the new Polaris 10 and 11 graphic cores by AMD Radeon, and the Pascal cores by NVIDIA, the market continues to exploit basically a similar architecture. This is something Radeon Group plans to change with the upcoming Vega graphics cards, which will implement new components within the core that will make them the most powerful and efficient models that AMD has manufactured to date.

The first thing I want to say is that in this article I am only going to talk about the new architecture, given that the graphics cards themselves are scheduled to launch in the first HALF of 2017, So do not expect photos of the graphics cards, given that there are still 3 to 5 months left for these kinds of photos to be released. Anyway, while Polaris 10 and 11 were the last efforts by the AMD to regain ground in the mid-range, I assure you that Vega is 100% designed to be a high-end graphics card.

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AMD Radeon RX 480 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060, Which one should you buy?

Now that both the AMD Radeon RX480 and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 have been on the market for a while, and that they have been completely established, it’s time to write an article like this one for those users who want to upgrade their graphics card but don’t know which one to buy. Which of these two cards is a better option right now?

AMD Radeon RX 480 vs NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060

You already know that on this website we have analyzed both versions (RX480 and GTX1060), in both cases their “complete” models for lack of a better term (the 8GB version from AMD and the 6GB version form NVIDIA), so in terms of performance, we are able to give a verdict, and as we mentioned in said analysis the winner in this area is the GTX 1060 from NVIDIA, at least when the analysis was done.

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AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB vs Radeon RX 480 4GB Benchmark Comparison

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The launch of the Radeon RX 480 has been disastrous: the reference model overclocks very mildly and its cooling system is no good,custom models can’t also overclock much,and of course,these custom models,the most anticipated, are not even for sale yet, but if something can still save the name of AMD is the Radeon RX 480 …

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