AMD today launched Ryzen Pro (styled “PRO” in AMD’s branding, but we’re not going to do that here), a series of processors designed for the corporate desktop. Close counterparts to the existing line of consumer-oriented Ryzen chips, the Pro parts are aimed at Intel’s vPro-compatible processors, which enable a number of additional administrative, security, and management capabilities.
Most of the regular Ryzen models have corresponding Pro versions, albeit topping out at a 1700X rather than the 1800 and 1800X of the consumer parts. This means that at the high end, there’s a couple of eight core, 16 thread parts, which is twice the number of cores and threads of comparable Intel chips.
In general, each Ryzen numbered series approximately corresponds to Intel’s numbering—Ryzen 7 against Core i7, and so on—but AMD is claiming some advantages over Intel. In particular, Intel doesn’t make any vPro-enabled i3-series processors. Even if your computational needs are modest, and an i3 is otherwise sufficient, you’ll have to step up to at least an i5 if you want vPro capabilities.
Not so with Ryzen Pro; at the low end, AMD has a pair of Ryzen 3 Pro chips with just four cores and four threads each, operating at the same kind of price point as the two core, four thread i3, but with the same management and security capabilities as other Pro parts. Ryzen 3 Pros also have some amount of turbo boosting, which i3s don’t.
