The AMD Zen and Ryzen 7 Review: A Deep Dive on 1800X, 1700X and 1700
by Ian Cutress on March 2, 2017 9:00 AM ESTTest Bed Setup and Hardware
As always, defining a regular test bed is key to these tests. At a CPU launch, with a new chipset, new socket, and almost new everything, that can be difficult. It’s also worth noting that our testing suite is currently in a state of flux as well, as we migrate testing to Windows 10. For the most part, our test beds use off-the-shelf components, sometimes supplied by vendors for the purpose of being in our test bed. For the Ryzen review, our AMD Test bed is as follows:
- AMD Ryzen 7 1800X (8C/16T, 3.6-4.0 GHz, 95W, $499)
- AMD Ryzen 7 1700X (8C/16T, , 95W, $399)
- AMD Ryzen 7 1700 (8C/16T, 3.0-3.7 GHz, 65W, $329)
- ASUS Crosshair VI Hero Motherboard
- Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB DDR4-3000 C16 running at DDR4-2400 C15
- Crucial MX200 1TB SSD
- Rosewill SilentNight 500W Platinum PSU
- ASUS GTX 950 Ti (95W)
- MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8GB
- Windows 10 Pro
Of course, many thanks to all our partners who supplied equipment for our test beds.
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FriendlyUser - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
True. The 1600X will be competitive with the i5 at gaming and probably much faster in anything multithreaded. The crucial point is the price... $200 would be great.MrSpadge - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
"Ryzen will need to drop in price. $500 1800x is still too expensive. According to this even a 7700k @ $300 -$350 is still a good choice for gamers."That's what the 1700X is for.
lilmoe - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
+1And for that, I'd say the 1700 (non-x) is the best consumer CPU available ATM. BUT, if someone just wants to game, I'd say get the Core i5... For me though, screw Intel. Never going them again.
fanofanand - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
The 1700 is the sweet spot for anyone not trying to eek out a few more fps or drop their encode/decode times by a couple of seconds. To save $170 and lose a couple hundred mhz, I know which chip seems like the best all-around for price/performance and that's the 1700.lilmoe - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Yep. You get both efficiency and performance when needed. This should allow for super quiet and very performant builds. Just take a look at the idle system power draw of these chips. Super nice.Everything is going either multi-threaded or GPU accelerated, even compiling code. What I'm really waiting for is Raven Ridge. I've got lots of stock $$ and high hopes for a low power 4-6 core Zen APU, with HBM and some bonus blocks for video encode (akin to Quicksync). I have a feeling they'll be much better for idling power and have better support for Microsoft's connected standby.
khanikun - Friday, March 3, 2017 - link
i5 is a good gamer and all around cpu for majority of users. If all you plan to do is game and a tight budget, the i3 7350k is a great cpu for just that. Once the workload goes a bit more multithreaded, that's where you'll want to move to an i5.Valis - Friday, March 3, 2017 - link
I game now and then, but I do a lot of other things too. Video rendering, Crypto coins, Folding @ home, VM, etc. So any Zen, perhaps even 4 Core later thins year with a good GPU will suit me fine. :)nos024 - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
So the 1800x is pointless?lilmoe - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
I don't think pointless is the right word. I'd say it's the worse value for dollar of the three.tacitust - Thursday, March 2, 2017 - link
Not at all pointless if you do a lot of video transcoding or other CPU intensive tasks well suited to multiple cores. The price premium is still for the 1800x is way lower than the price premium for the Intel processors.