"When Advanced Micro Devices debuted the first of its new Ryzen PC processor chips last February, the company touted the product line as considerably faster than Intel chips at the same price. That was true for most applications, but video game performance lagged somewhat. As one reviewer headlined it, the new Ryzen chips were “Good For Games, Better For Everything Else.”
The gaming gap was problematic, as AMD was aiming the Ryzen line at the type of gaming enthusiast customers who buy or build desktop PCs with high-performance chips. So as AMD tweaked the chips for this year’s second generation update, which hits stores today, gaming performance was high on the list of desired improvements. AMD was also able to move manufacturing of the chip at partner GlobalFoundries from a 14-nanometer scale to a 12-nanometer scale, allowing for higher clock speeds and better energy consumption.
“We’ve spent a lot of time optimizing the performance, especially around gaming scenarios,” Kevin Lensing, head of AMD’s client business, tells Fortune. “Frankly it was an area that we got feedback that we needed to improve on from the first generation. So we put as lot of energy into that. Now head-to-head at any price point, we’re now seeing that our gaming experience is roughly equivalent to Intel’s.”
Inside AMD's Ryzen Revamp: Second Generation Chip Is Faster and Cheaper
