I read in the articlethat the ryzen is comparable to the I5

well.. it depends on which ryzen is compared to the i5, doesn't it.

the articles headlines i've seen so far seem to suggest the high end parts stack up well performance wise so far at lower cost, but i did read one of the reason is that intel "wastes" a big chunk of the chip on igpu that simply doesn't get used by people using discrete gfx (whatever happened to the dx12/vulcan mixing gpus?) whereas the amd cpu is just that... cpu.

a different article i read suggest intel still have a big edge on manufacturing - the blah blah nm node terms used by different companies mean different things.

Well now, that sounds much better! Think I'll still be waiting until there are computers running it in the wild before I stick my toes in AMD waters again. (note: typing this on an AMD desktop right now) I always seem to end up disappointed. Think the last time I had an AMD computer I ended up happy with was back around 1999-2000 with an AMD running Win2k.

edit: Not saying that is the last good AMD, just the last good one I had. Think I've just had a combo of shitty timing and not doing my homework correctly.

Thats not something to brag about, because in the years of Athlon XP/x64 AMD actually had superior consumer CPUs compared to Intel. I dont think thats going to repeat now, not to that extent at least, but currently it seems Ryzen is going to be pretty much on par with comparable Intel CPUs performance wise.

You would have to be hard fanboy to buy 6900K for 1100 EUROs now, when you can very likely have more or less equal performance for about 400 with Ryzen. It has nothing to do with being "tech junkie", its all about common sense.

@Larsenex> AMD just released their initial promo materials for Ryzen. They claim their Cinebench score to be 1600 points, which is actually slightly more than you can get with 6900K. My 6850k gets around 1310 at 4,2GHz and it was more expensive than top Ryzen is supposed to be. Unless you believe that AMD is shamelessly lying about these results, then there is no reason to buy any of the aforementioned Intel CPUs right now - Ryzen is going to be more sensible choice and Intel is going to need drop prices of their HEDT line-up anyway. So if you waited up until now, wait a bit longer.

Personally i am curious if the 6950x is going to drop from its sub-orbital price of 1800 EUROs to at least 1000 or ideally even less - i may sell my 6850k and get this one instead, if that happens. 

Last I checked, the best Australian price I could find was AU$2,214.  Next best was AU$2,224, up to AU$2,699.  Now that's a wide gap between top and bottom prices, and I don't know how the highest one is justified, but even the lowest is way too pricey for me when even the top Ryzen will be quite a bit less than half that.

The i7 6850X may currently be the performance king, but honestly, it is way, way too overpriced and likely wouldn't enter the minds of most system builers, Intel enthusiasts included, as a viable option for a new build.  I mean, for the price of a 6950X, I could pretty nearly build a whole new machine based around the top Ryzen.  Even Intel has more competitively priced CPUs that are well rated, so why the massive price on a 6950X?

I really wanted to build my next machine around a 6950X, but given the Ryzen alternative, I'd be mad to splurge over two grand on just a CPU.  It's not like I even need that much power anymore, anyway.  For what I do these days, creating, editing, converting videos, a mid-range Ryzen will quite adequate, along with 32 Gigs of RAM and a decent 10xx series GTX graphics card.