Ryzen 6 core or 4 core upgrade

I am planning to upgrade to Ryzen once it releases. I am not sure about which to go for though, 4/6 core (with SMT)? All the leaks(?)/speculations point towards a reasonably priced processor on both fronts. Which do you think one should go for,according to recent news/leaks/speculations? I'm primarily a gamer, with browsing/blogging/movie watching and the occasional editing (videos mainly). Purely theoretical question. Although, they are already releasing sample units to reviewers I think.

There are benchmarks available for the six core variant. I can post the link here, only I'm not sure if it is allowed or not.

Let's put it this way... If it's a true six core (not like the 8 core Bulldozer/Vishera architecture that is really a dressed up 4 core), then using a six will allow you to run more apps/programs simultaneously without a performance hit. There are few commercial programs out there, other than scientific, parallel computing apps, that I know of, that use more than four cores at the moment. In that sense, it might be a waste of money to buy a six core, since almost nothing can use it right now.

That being said, a multithreaded quad like the AMD FX-8XXX series will still run many apps simultaneously. I find that my FX-8350 is a huge performance gain over my old Phenom II, even at the same clock speed. The Ryzen architecture is supposed to improve on that performance, and is supposed to offer multithreading in its quads, giving 8 core performance at 4 core prices. Sort of like Intel's i7 series, only no doubt cheaper. Perhaps the six core has multithreading too, I haven't read up on the specs fully, but I expect that Ryzen will out perform what AMD has in it's stable now by a long shot, based on the limited information that I have read.

If it were me, I would buy the six core.

AMD isn't going to make any Win 7 drivers for the Ryzen.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

AMD isn't going to make any Win 7 drivers for the Ryzen.

Well, darn. There goes my new build. lol

Win 7 boots on Ryzen. Although they won't support it officially. If my arm is twisted by MS, I might just upgrade to Win 10 Home or something. Just might.

Ryzen Six core's 1st variant (costs about 130 USD according to leaks) Ryzen 5 1500 has 6 cores and 12 threads (it has Simultaneous Multi Threading) base clock 3.2, turbo 3.5. 16MB L3 and 65w TDP.
The second one, costs about 260 USD Ryzen 5 1600x (same as above) with unlocked multiplier, 95 TDP and a higher clock rate

AMD: Sorry, there will be no official Ryzen drivers for Windows 7 | PCWorld

Intel has done the same with Kaby Lake. I may upgrade provided the six core Ryzen is affordable at all. Win 10 sometimes slows down after major updates on my father's lapppie (eg. Anniversary update) -if I get to learn how to correct that problem, I would think about upgrading seriously. I'm worried about those slowdowns.

Hi,
Anniversary build was a little over 6 months ago :)
Most would clean install but that is not very convenient starting all over just because of a new build is it.

If a clean install solves slowdown/lag issues I'll definitely do that when upgrading my rig. Win 10 just seems prey to lags after update...maybe even without updates sometimes.
Ryzen chips are almost here. Waiting for the openly legit benchmarks to surface, hope the six core will be affordable as rumored. B350 mobo should be enough. Pricing info would be nice though. My Hyper TX3 Evo seems to be compatible with the new AM4 sockets according to the CM site.

Hmm my two cents worth the Ryzens I have seen advertised out here are 8 core 16 thread beasts and I was considering doing a build with one until I saw the price

The YouTube I watched showed the US prices flatten out at $499 for the 1800X and then out here - $699 and guess what the Intel core i7 7700K has dropped to $485 so the point is is this new AMD CPU really up to the job and worth even thinking about - given it will not support 7 drivers?? (I am guessing the Intel doesn't either but haven't checked).

Oh what a tangled world we live in