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Rumour: AMD to launch Zen on 17th Jan with $300 price tag

January is approaching fast, which means we are very close to AMD's rumoured Zen launch. We have seen little pieces of information about AMD's upcoming 8 Core/16 Thread CPU over the last few months and this week, one of AMD's Chinese partners, MAXSUN, reportedly let it slip that we may see this chip launch on the 17th of January with a $300 price tag.

MAXSUN is a manufacturing company based in China. According to Techpowerup, they are set to help out in the creation of AM4 platform motherboards, which is how they would have got their hands on this information.

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While most rumours have pointed to AMD showing off Zen at CES in January, the actual launch apparently won't be happening until two weeks later, on the 17th of January. However, a second release date is also listed, with a ‘second wave' set to hit in March 2017, indicating that perhaps Zen's January launch will be quite limited.

For Zen, AMD will apparently be adopting an SR3, SR5 and SR7 naming scheme, similar to Intel's i3, i5 and i7 lineup. The first CPU launch will be a high-end SR7 chip priced between $250 and $300, so it sounds like there is still some wiggle room there. According to the MAXSUN leak, this CPU will have a 3.3GHz base clock and a 3.5GHz boost, though apparently, 4.2GHz will be quite easy to achieve through overclocking.

While MAXSUN is said to have a hand in Zen's launch, this should all still be considered rumour, so take this news with a healthy dose of scepticism as it may not pan out.

KitGuru Says: Judging by the rumours and leaks, Zen appears to be shaping up nicely, though we won't have any final details until next year when AMD is ready to talk about it. Are any of you waiting on the Zen launch? What do you think of the potential pricing and specs?

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41 comments

  1. WhateverYouWantItToBe

    Confident pricing if its correct.

  2. Well, they’ve got me as a customer at that price point.

  3. WINvidia or AMDream

    I’m waiting for some good results.

  4. 8-core $300 similar performance to 6800k ya i’ll be a customer too. hope the new motherboards arent glitchy

  5. If performance turns out to be as good as they say this would be a great price point for sure. I am in need of replacing my now aging i5 3570K CPU which has served me well over time running at 4.7Ghz but if these Zens can at least match a skylake i7 or within a few percent and can run everything stable I am in on the AMD Zen train for sure. Only time will tell I guess.

  6. Same my 3570 is starting to show it’s age in a few titles, a nice 8 core sounds like a good way to go.

  7. If true, expect lot of price gouging from resellers.

  8. Seems no one ‘ere questions why Zen is endin up at a lesser known mobo maker like Maxsun, and why we have not heard anythin from reknowned mobo makers like Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, MSI, ECS or Biostar. Also why there aren’t any high end AM4 mobo leaks or preannouncements with only less than 2 months till ‘launch’. Most high end mobos are typically leaked or preannounced many months, often up to 6 months, before even the CPU is launched. Can see that from Faildozer with Asus, and more recently Kaby Lake with MSI. Even with Faildozer, there aren’t any early Maxsun mobos either….

  9. question is do I drop a I7 6700k 4 core for a AMD zen 8 core…..

  10. my 2500k is ready for replacement, hope zen actually measures up to the hype.

  11. Notice that them Maxsun AM4 mobos seems to be for mainland China consumption first. Translation below, lookit….
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1677a829d2e879b73f99891d6ee728045807166fae7914d73de1300c16561d75.jpg
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/87d1e2c9b68c5836d073ed1b808ce5a17712fc7f9d79d6934f7801002daac911.jpg

  12. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/1677a829d2e879b73f99891d6ee728045807166fae7914d73de1300c16561d75.jpg

  13. Because the majors have long learned how to not leak shit. And I think your confusing ‘leaked’ with ‘announced’ at a trade expo 6 months before availability :P.

  14. I do have a nasty feeling we might be beta testers for anything AMD drop. I’m wondering if I should hold off on first wave and wait for first steppings.

  15. WhateverYouWantItToBe

    Yep it’s potentially a perfect price point if it can come close to a 6700k. Looking like I may swing to AMD as well.

  16. Tis was in March 2011, lookit http://news.softpedia.com/news/MSI-and-ASRock-Present-Bulldozer-Motherboards-Powered-by-AMD-800-series-Chipsets-187065.shtml then in May 2011, lookit http://mb.zol.com.cn/slide/230/2301310_1.html#p=1 and tis was June 2011, lookit http://www.chiphell.com/thread-210890-1-1.html Faildozer was launched in October 2011 which was a good 5 to 6 months later. Notice no Maxsun mobos there, all well known brands like Asus, Asrock and MSI….. As for Kaby Lake, tis was in May 2016, lookit https://www.techpowerup.com/222932/msi-teases-its-first-intel-200-series-chipset-motherboard thats 7 months ago, again many months before the CPU will be launched. Did you forget them?

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  18. Great, but I already have a i7 5820K. I don’t think this CPU is old enough for an upgrade 🙂 Though I can change it to an 8 intel core CPU if the price falls as a result of Zen.

  19. lol, I’m sitting here with my old i7 920 Bloomfield – still runs everything silky smooth.

  20. Skylake are 4/8 c/t and Zen will be 8/16 c/t and it wipe the floors with i7 Skylake& Kabylake 4/8 even if he have only Haswell IPC

  21. in cinebench it must be at least 1300+points with 8/16 c/t!! 1100 points could be Zen with 6/12 c/t

  22. it will be competitor too 6900K or at least 5960x !!

  23. 6700K are shity 4 core and 8 threads cpu !! 8/16 c/t Zen will eat 6700K for breakfast in every task except maybe in gaming will be few percentage behind and most because of lower clock

  24. It clearly says there ‘8-core 16-thread Zen’….. There ain’t any 6c/12t Zen yet, even the ESs’ are either 4c/8t or 8c/16t only…..

  25. and who says that?? some stupid anonimus chinese something?? did AMD sayed that?? no it didnt!! i see only that AMD compare with 6900K which are Broadwell with 8/16 c/t and not with 6700K or 6850K and similar !! infact on wccftech you have graph where that chinese site or similar shows 1300+ points on cinebench r15 for 8/16 Zen cpu

  26. So where’s the link for that 1300+ Cinebench R15 score? Leaks from far east sources are much more reliable, as well as leaks from well known oc’ers. Same stuff said ‘ere by Neo ‘ShockG’ Sibeko. Looks like Zen still buggy, which would account for the lower perf. Here’s the pix from carbonite.co.za/f20/amd-zen-141214/ before the thread was deleted…..
    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/f54d0f5dd3e6fc14cf2088b3fb3728346d8e44f70a42b5e5bca41e34a0552a91.png

  27. My guess would be that the the renowned motherboard makers like Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, MSI, ECS and Biostar have tons old the old motherboards leftover from AMD’s old garbage processors that they need to get rid of first.

  28. That’s ain’t the reason, considerin there are already low end AM4 mobos with A320 chipset in the market. Samples, HP’s Willow lookit http://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c05254568 used for HP’s 510-p127c sellin at Costco, and Asus A320M-C http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/SocketAM4/A320M-C/E12133_A320M-C_V2_UM_web.pdf However both do not support Zen, and probably will never support Zen at all which is why they were destined for the OEMs only. There’s also AM4 mobos with B350 chipset leaked, Asus Octopus, lookit http://www.anandtech.com/show/10705/amd-7th-gen-bristol-ridge-and-am4-analysis-a12-9800-b350-a320-chipset as well as Gigabyte GA-B350M-DS3H and Gigabyte GA-B350M-DS2, lookit http://news.mydrivers.com/1/505/505665.htm All of them have not been seen in any OEM PCs or for retail yet. Again I suspect these mobos either have no Zen support or may not support Zen at all. Currently Bristol Ridge APUs are for OEMs only, so there aren’t any retail mobos either. Early signals that Zen ain’t ready yet when these low end AM4 mobos were made….

  29. Amazing news!

    Kitguru is reporting a techreport rumor is based in a Guru3D rumor, which is based in an anonymous post in a chinese forum from someone that claims to have a “letter” from a chinese OEM, that is itself based in information posted by another anonymous poster (a supposed overclocker) in a African forum.

    That thread in the African forum was closed by mods because it contained lots of nonsense and fake claims about Zen, such as Zen achieving 4.2GHz with easiness, nominal 1.5V, BIOS built into the Zen CPU instead on the mobo, or that “SMU” is the name of AMD’s version of hyperthreading. I don’t expect tech writers to know anything about tech and detect what is a genuine leak from plain nonsense, but it is takes five minutes to check the gcc patch for Zen and check that SMU is the System Management Unit, and get that the leaker is posting nonsense.

    Let me quote the words of a famous overclocker (The Stilt) said about those leaks

    They base those statements on the fanfiction “leak” from South Africa, where 14nm LPP handles 1.5V voltages and houses are made of gingerbreads.

    Then we take a leaked slide about Zen pricing. The slide puts clearly the cheaper SR3 model at “>RMB1500” or “>$220”, and then puts the SR5 and SR7 well above it. Then the leaker makes things up over his head and claims that the top SR7 model will be $250 or $300, because twice the Zen cores by extra $50 makes sense.

  30. Indeed because clocks are irrelevant… and performance is only given by IPC. LOL!

  31. Cannot read? It says that 8-core Zen gives performance parity with 8-core Broadwell in CBMT. Moreover, there is no 6 core Zen neither 2 Core Zen. Zen comes in groups of four cores.

  32. That leaked CB score agrees with information given by AMD including the CB slide they gave comparing Zen to Orochi.

    WCCFTECH is claiming that 8-core Zen performs like six-core Broadwell:

    performance on par with Intel’s Core i7-6850K CPU. The Zen based chip
    will feature 8 cores and 16 threads. Intel’s offering has 6 cores and 12 threads.

    AMD compared with underclocked unknown Broadwell with unknown settings running a custom image on a unknown version of Blender. Bulldozer was also very good according to AMD demos and claims…

  33. ECS is expected to show a AM4 mobo at CES, but with the B350 chipset, which makes me believe that Zen January launch is a paper launch…

  34. Another odd stuff is that Maxsun seems to be makin mostly low end to midrange mobos only for AMD chips, lookit http://www.maxsun.com.cn/list.php?catid=38 Thats very unlike reknowned mobo makers such as Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, MSI, and so forth…..

  35. im pretty sure they are just a chinese company, im not sure they are going to be available in the u.s. and the way i read it, it sounded like the company just helpd AMD develop the AM4 platform. it would be stupid for asus, asrock, gigabyte, etc. to not make AM4 mobos. theres just no point in them talking about when the mobos will be out if we dont even know when the cpus will be available.

  36. Have you ever seen any Maxsun mobos in the U.S, at places like Newegg, Microcenter, Bestbuy, and so forth? Also that’s not a brand that most folks are familiar with, let alone heard of it….

  37. Some info on Zen from SC’16, lookit https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/AMD-auf-der-Supercomputing-Konferenz-SC16-OpenCompute-mit-ROCm-aber-kein-Zen-3491050.html Just use a tranlation tool to read. Pretty much confirmed that Zen is buggy, just like Neo ‘ShockG’ Sibeko said…..

  38. I was going to say the same thing.

  39. Bring on the Zen!!! Wish Intel went from Skylake to Coffeelake. That way we would have consumer CPUs from both sides that are more than 4C and not 400-1000+

  40. Waiting for a Zen APU 🙂

  41. Great write up on the what we can expect to be revealed at CES from AMD Zen, Matthew! I can’t wait to see their new chip in action and am wondering if they are going to really give Intel a run for their money. CES is truly my favorite event of the year; my team and I will be scattered throughout Las Vegas next January representing many cutting edge advancements in tech ranging from drones to smartphones, hope to see you there!

    http://www.prodigyeventtalent.com/single-post/2016/11/17/CES-2017-Brand-Ambassadors-Booth-Staff-More