AMD reveals Ryzen 5 prices as it sidesteps performance questions

From PC World: As AMD reveals its Ryzen 5 prices and release date, the company marks an important transition: After launching its eagerly awaited Ryzen 7 chip for high-end PCs, AMD hopes to parlay that goodwill into mainstream success.

AMD said it will ship its Ryzen 5 desktop processors on April 11, the same day it will begin accepting its first orders for the chip. All of the four new Ryzen 5 chips will be priced at less than $250, the same price range that Intel currently offers for its own Core i5 chips at. However, the number of cores and threads that the Ryzen 5 offers pushes into Intel’s Core i7 territory, potentially offering much more value for the price.

Here are the four members of the Ryzen 5 family:

The $169 Ryzen 5 1400, a 4-core/8-thread chip that runs at 3.2GHz and boosts at 3.4GHz
The $189 Ryzen 5 1500X, (4 cores/8 threads, 3.5GHz/3.7GHz)
The $219 Ryzen 5 1600 (6 cores/12 threads, 3.2GHz/3.6GHz)
And the $249 Ryzen 5 1600X (6 cores/12 threads, 3.6GHz/4.0GHz)

So far, Intel has held firm on its own processor prices, which means the selling point of the Ryzen 5 will be “tremendously more computational power” than the Core i5, according to Kevin Lensing, the corporate vice president and general manager of the Client Business Unit at AMD. Specifically, AMD is taking aim at Intel’s $242 Core i5-7600K, a 3.8GHz, 4-core/4-thread chip, with its slightly pricier Ryzen 5 1600X, which offers three times the thread count. (Intel’s cheapest 6-core chip, the Core i7-5820K, is $389.)

To measure how successful AMD will be with Ryzen, look to the Ryzen 5. As AMD has noted previously, the company expects to sell twice as many of these low-cost chips (priced at less than $250) as it does pricier enthusiast chips. For now, Lensing said, AMD can offer a “disruptive price and performance ratio” that Intel can’t match.

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