AMD Ryzen Price Leaks, Release Date News: New Chip Ready to Fight Intel's Offerings on Features and Price

By Edward Leano, Christian Post Contributor Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Advanced Micro Devices' (AMD) Ryzen line of processors are set to become available at the start of March for the average PC enthusiast. If the rumors hold true, AMD will be looking to dominate the dollar-to-performance ratio — a big selling point to potential buyers deciding between the Ryzen and Intel's "Kaby Lake."

Unconfirmed reports have alerted fans and industry watchers to potential Ryzen price leaks on several online store websites, Forbes reports. An online listing page for shopblt.com may have inadvertently revealed the upcoming retail prices for three AMD Ryzen models. Looking at the listing, the high-end Ryzen R7 1800X is supposed to sell for $490.29, followed by the 1700X at $381.72. R7 1700 rounds up the list at a possible $316.59.

A second source of leaks was later spotted, this time from product seller Ingram Micro. Videocardz was able to intercept their posts with a screenshot before they were taken offline.

These rumors come as a welcome case of sticker shock for a lot of PC fans. As wccftech.com points out, the cheapest central processing unit (CPU), the R7 1700, is the headliner when it comes to performance to the dollar. If the leaks hold true, the Ryzen 7 1700's $316 price tag definitely places it as "A Mighty Octa-Core for Quad-Core Money."

Take a comparable offering from Intel, the Broadwell-E i7 6900K. Head to head with the R7 1700, they have the same boost clock speed at 3.7 GHz, the same 8 cores and the same 16 threads. That's about where the similarities end — at $1,049, Intel's CPU is more than three times the price of the R7 1700.

To put it another way, for the price of a single i7 6900K, one can buy three R7 1700 chips and two sticks of 8 GB memory.

This is interesting news especially this time when a lot of consumers are looking at putting together their first virtual reality (VR) PC system. With a top-end offering rumored to be under $500, no doubt many system assemblers are already considering AMD in their future builds.