Conclusion

The Final Words 

As we finish up out second Ryzen 7 review we can already conclude that the 1700X definitely offers a lot more value for you money. The performance metric is not far away from the 1800X at all, aside from a 200 MHz differential. At 399 USD this processor is going to be a lovely deal.

The Experience

Intel’s biggest worry however isn’t Ryzen, it’s the fact that Intel has been charging a lot, maybe even too much money for their processors for years now, with little innovation. Intel has become increasingly agressive as hey, their desktop processors sell anyway. This results in a generic dislike towards Intel from a lot of people. This gives AMD an extra advantage as there is a proper amount of goodwill that people have towards this company. People like the underdog, especially when they bring something to the table that really impresses. So yes, if AMD plays their cards right and do not overprice their processors, they may have a colossal win at hand. That said I am also issuing a bit of a warning: we have no doubt that with the new generation processors and chipsets there are bound to be a few motherboard firmware updates and fixes for smaller bugs. Hey, it comes with the territory. We quite honestly did not run into stuff that worried us. The motherboard used seems pretty well tuned, we had no stability issues or any weird perf drops. We deliberately tested with a competing videocard (Nvidia versus AMD) as well, here again the performance is fine.
  

 The RAW Performance

Overall we like what we are seeing with the Ryzen 7 1700X, the per core performance most certainly is good enough for what and where it needs to be. Realistically the performance overall hits an amazing sweet-spot. Combined with higher Turbo frequencies these processors shine bright. But do you need an 8-core processor for gaming? Well, probably not. But we had the very same discussion moving from two to four cores remember? So if you hang on to that thought, would you purchase a dual-core processor over a four-core one? Nope, and along these lines you need to think as we need to advance in hardware, the software will then follow in this technological evolution. I also do know that a setup like this could last you years as, again, the IPC perf is really good and you have many threads available. Since processors seem to reach frequency walls in SMT based processing, even for games it is a growing thing. Also think DirectX 12 and Vulkan here for a second, the new render APIs benefit from threaded processing.

The Gaming Performance

Yesterday we placed our finger at a sore spot, game performance in situations where you are not GPU bound compared to Intels faster quad-cores is the Achilles heel of the Ryzen 7 series. At least for now. Disabling SMT (hyper-threading) did bump up performance in some games. So there's definitely something for AMD to work on. SMT however is not the biggest culprit. It might be by design, it might be a bug, who knows. Game performance overall is good though and remember we tested with a 750 USD GeForce GTX 1080 that starts to get GPU bound at 2560x1440. But sure there is room left for improvement from the AMD side. I've stated this in the 1800X review as well, it feels like something what Nvidia has been fighting a while ago, a DPC latency issue. Next to that we find Ryzen 7 rather memory bound with fairly high memory latency in the 80 to 100ns+ ranges depending on your configuration. It is what it is though, the performance definitely is good enough for what it needs to be, but currently at 1080P with a fast enough GPU the performance lacks a little compared to where it needs to be and can be. For now we will give AMD the benefit of the doubt here, the platform is young and everything is new. The processor certainly is fast enough compared to the Intel 59xx / 69xx counterparts. We will keep an eye on this and when we have to report anything about it we'll update this content. And also in closing on this topic, if you are a little GPU bound or use 2560x1440, this pretty much is a non-issue as perf there is top notch for what the processor needs to deliver.

The Bad

If I may nitpick just a little bit then two things I find to be a bit of a mystery. Firstly, I simply would have liked to have seen quad-channel memory support. When you test a processor that is fighting the Core i7 6900K series from Intel, you would want it to have quad-channel support on the platform. It most likely was a cost saving feature as it would have required additional IO and memory controllers and more data-paths. A true fact is also that 95% of you guys that will use, say, anything from 2133 MHZ to 3200 MHz memory with two DIMMs, and you will be totally fine with the memory bandwidth as it really isn't going to restrict you with gaming aside from a 2, maybe 3% differential (at the normal gaming resolutions). It is however the content creators and video transcoders that will make a different call as there quad-channel memory really kicks in. My second remark is that i would have liked to see some more PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes on the CPU. The Ryzen processor has 24 of them, four are tied and thus linked to the chipset which leaves 20 lanes. If you run a properly fast NVMe M.2 SSD another four are used, leaving 16 for the the graphics card. Thus, in Crossfire or SLI you would be looking at two x8 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes. Here again, that's plenty of bandwidth sure, but if AMD wanted to go that extra mile against Intel then I certainly would have appreciated two full x16 Gen 3.0 lanes. Tied to four Ryzen PCIe 3.0 lanes is the chipset, and here we find a flaw. The chipset adds PCI express lanes but they are Gen 2.0 and not Gen 3.0. This gives Intel another competitive advantage when comparing to the upper range Core i7 6000 series. For example, a secondary M.2 device would have to be linked through the chipset (as there is no room left on the processor with the graphics card utilizing a x16 PCIe link), and there your NVMe storage unit immediately runs into a restriction as the available bandwidth was just cut in half. A 3.2 GB/sec M.2 unit would do 1.6 GB/s on that connection. Still, not bad but again, wouldn't AMD like to be a step ahead of Intel? Ergo I am not happy about the fact that the chipset does not offer any PCI-Express 3.0 lanes, not even the slightest bit. Again, if you are planning to use just one high-end graphics card, one super-duper fast M.2 unit and then HDDs or SSDs for storage this entire paragraph would be irrelevant, also multi-GPU setups seem to be dying a slow death so that makes this even more irrelevant, that is the honest truth as well.

The Memory

The AMD Ryzen platform supports DDR4 1866, 2133, 2400 and even 2667 MHz straight out of the box with two DIMMs. Higher frequencies are motherboard dependant. With the initial releases you should be able to see 3200 MHz supported (OC) but we have already noticed 3766 MHz from some partners. Honestly, take a nice low latency kit as the memory frequency is not the most important thing. We are however a little surprised that AMD did not decide to go with quad-channel as an offering. It's a really cheap way to gain incredibly high memory bandwidth, even with 2133 Mhz modules. See, the higher clocked memory DIMMs are expensive and while they do offer better bandwidth, the performance increases in real-world usage will be hard to find. Unless you transcode videos over the processor a lot. DDR4 mostly was released for lower voltages and higher frequencies. 2,133 MHz CL 14/15/16 memory in combo with dual-channel will get you to 30~35 GB/sec. For gaming you will not notice huge performance improvements with higher memory bandwidth, but with content creation and video transcoding this kind of bandwidth certainly does make a difference. If you populate your Ryzen PC with four DIMMs, at the time of writing this article you are restricted to 2400 MHz modules. That number will go up once the motherboard BIOSes get more mature. So that is not a memory controller problem, more of a time restrictive thing for this rather fast launch. As always, my advice would be to go with lower clocked DDR4 memory with decent timings, but get more of it. Don't go for 8 GB, we find 16 GB the norm for a gaming rig these days. So for now, stick to two DIMMs at 8 or 16 GB per DIMM. We know the board partners are hard at work adding memory compatibility, we strongly suggest you check the QVL (Qualified Vendor List that shows compatible products) at the motherboard partner website to see what is compatible and then base your memory purchase on that. We advise you to simply insert memory frequency, timings and voltages manually for now.

The Power

With eight cores I was expecting this processor to be a power hog, but AMD's focus for the past years has been making smaller fab processes with, in the end, more energy efficient products. With this processor now fabbed at 14 nm FinFET the TDP sticks at a low 95 Watts and with the system at idle I was a little shocked, with a GeForce GTX 1080 installed / 16 GB memory / SSD and the X370 motherboard I hovered at just under 50 Watts. That's just great and that is testimony to the 14nm fabrication as smaller packages can do with less voltage. When we stressed the processor with a Prime 1024M run we reach roughly 145 Watts, that's low enough for what it needs to be, but we do find it higher than expected. Overall though this is impressive to see. When we game we hover at 260~300 Watts, but obviously that factor is dependant on the type of graphics card you use of course. So yeah, these are really good values with a many core product. No complaints here whatsoever.

The Tweak

For the 1700X we followed a request asked in our forums, we used just the Noctua heatpipe based cooler for overclocking. We reach a stable 4.0 GHz at ALL cores. However with proper liquid cooling and a lucky 1700X we have no doubt that you will reach the 4.1~4.2 GHz range on all eight-cores. This threshold is more or less the same for 8-core Intel processors, as more cores create more heat and complexity. While heatpipe cooling can be done, we do recommend liquid cooling HIGHLY as the processors do get hot. 8-cores produce heat. It's as simple as that. The  Ryzen 7 1700X is easy to overclock, you could increase the voltage but we advise the AUTO voltage mode really. Then select your multiplier of choice and you are good to go. One downside is that you cannot bin the cores individually. The nature of Ryzen also will not allow independent per core overclocking as they are tied to the CCX cluster. Maybe, and again maybe, we will see some sort of CCX tweak become available where you can tweak, say, 4 cores to 4100 MHz and the other four to 3800 MHz. Time will tell, but I would find that to be a terrific alternative. I hope AMD and the board partners take up on this rather subtle hint. Delidding Ryzen - somebody is bound to ask it hence I'll address it right here and now, but delidding the processor will not be possible for the simple reason that there are sensors on the heatspreader. Delidding the processor would break it.

The Conclusion

I have to admit that I like the Ryzen 7 1700X quite a lot. It is 100 USD cheaper and offers the close to 1800X performance. It surely will reach the same tweaking levels also. 

At 399 USD this CPU is over half the price of what Intel is charging, and AMD doesn’t have expensive chipsets either so the motherboards will be very affordable as well. What if you are already own a 6 or 8 core Intel processor setup? Honestly, there’s little to no reason for you to upgrade considering the performance overall remains at the same level, and that is the brutal honest truth. This also applies for users with a fast quad-core processor like the recent 6700K or 7700K.

The step upwards to Ryzen 7 for the folks that actually need and waited for a well deserved upgrade, the guys that have been waiting for a price/perf competitive 8-core processor series and the intent to give AMD some well-deserved support after a couple of gruesome years. In the weeks and months to come AMD will release 6-core and, later on, 4-core Ryzen processors as well. These are incredibly fascinating and exciting times for AMD. Now I did make some remarks, we find the number of PCIe 3.0 lanes rather skinny, and the chipset lanes to be sober at Gen 2. Next to that, the Ryzen processors do not offer quad-channel memory support which we feel is a miss. Also I need to make one more remark on memory, if you like to go with high frequency memory, say, 3200 MHz, you need to stick with two DIMMs for now. There is still a lot of tweaking to be done at BIOS level with a platform this young. We have no doubt that a four DIMM high frequency configuration will be supported at a later stage though. But for now four DIMMs at 2400 MHz would be the maximum (depending on motherboard manufacturer). Please base your memory purchase choices on what the motherboard manufacturer advises (check their QVL list). Your sweet spot memory might be 2667 MHz with two DIMMs. Configure the memory manually in the BIOS (freq/timings/voltage) and you should be on your way. Right, that said and done I think this conclusion page has had enough information for you to chew over. For me it is simple: If you never could afford the E series Intel platforms, here’s your chance my man as Ryzen 7 and an X370 or B350 motherboard will ooze in pure value with similar to sometimes even better performance and similar features to what the competition offers.

We reiterate, game performance is not yet where it needs to be in 1080P. This is something that might be fixed with firmware and software updates as the per core performance that Ryzen offers simply can do it. This is the only real nag that we stumbled into, we'll keep you updated once AMD has solved this. Who knows, it might also be something isolated on our end but we are missing at least 10% perf here in some of the games, but not all of them. Disabling SMT can help with some game titles. Under full load processor the PC draws roughly 145 Watts, that's a little more then expected , but it's good enough. AMD is paving the way to 8-core processors at more mainstream to high-end prices. This in the end will enable many more many core builds and we project that now, more than ever, we'll see a much faster adoption rate for more threaded applications like games. This processor could be a win-win for everyone except Intel. If you like a little extra bite out of the processor, simply set your multiplier at 40, the memory at 2667 or 3000 MHz and leave the rest at default and you'll be pretty amazed as to what this setup offers with 8 cores clocking in at 4000 MHz. Value for money wise, not only are the processors are much cheaper, the motherboards and chipsets are as well. So bang for buck wise this a no brainer really.

We're following the performance metric on gaming closely though. Hopefully AMD can address that and the minute they will, we'll revisit all the gaming benchmarks. 90% of the content in this article and conclusion is similar to the 1800X as hey, the 1700X is pretty much the same thing yet clocked slightly lower. Paired with the right motherboard we feel it could be a great deal that once again oozes value. 

ATH +++

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