In December, AMD officially unveiled its upcoming Ryzen CPU during its flashy New Horizon event — but the company chose to remain coy about when the chips would be made available. Now, it seems that we might have been given a clue toward the CPU’s release date thanks to a talk at this year’s Game Developer Conference.
Developer technology engineers Ken Mitchell and Elliot Kim will represent AMD at GDC 2017 by delivering a session entitled “Optimizing for AMD Ryzen CPU” as part of the conference’s programming track. While the exact time and date of this conference are listed as TBD on the GDC website, its blurb gives us a good indication of when we can expect Ryzen to be released.
The blurb makes reference to the “recently launched AMD Ryzen CPU,” according to a report from Anand Tech. This would mean that the chip is scheduled to be released ahead of GDC 2017, which will run from February 27 to March 3.
The timing certainly makes sense from a practical standpoint. If AMD intends to launch Ryzen in the next six weeks, GDC 2017 would be a prime opportunity to get developers on board and start disseminating information about how to get the best out of the CPU.
AMD has previously stated its intention to launch the CPU in the first quarter of 2017. It certainly seems that the company is on track to meet this goal — although, of course, nothing is set in stone until we hear an official confirmation.
It’s entirely possible that the blurb for the GDC talk is inaccurate, or that release plans could have been delayed at the last minute. That said, there is certainly reason to believe that Ryzen could launch before the end of February.
