AMD Ryzen 7 1700

Is this the new ruler of the value performance realm?

BREAKING THE NORMS of price to processing power is something AMD has progressively done with its Ryzen series of CPUs. Its 1800X and 1700X have dominated our testing suites recently, demolishing the competition. But both of those feel like mere footnotes in contrast to the sheer power AMD has managed to leverage into the core complexes buried at the heart of its Ryzen architecture.

We’ve repeatedly said that the 1800X and 1700X fall a little flat when it comes to overclocking, with the 1800X managing a meager 300MHz overclock, at most, on all of its cores, and the 1700X just a touch higher than that. Not too impressive for a chip with a 95W TDP. That said, for the price, and in contrast to their blue counterparts, both chips are simply staggering.

The 1700, then, makes the 1800X look like a kitten in comparison. Differences are few and far between: You lose out on the XFR ( extended frequency) SenseMi software, which boosts a couple of cores higher, depending on your cooling solution, and the core clocks are far slower than either the 1700X or 1800X, coming in at a still respectable 3GHz, with a 3.7GHz turbo (only on four cores), but the 1700 has only a 65W TDP, as opposed to the 95W pumped into its power-hungry compadres.

By default, the performance figures are pretty solid—24.12fps in our X265 benchmark and 1,406 in Cinebench put this core in 6900K territory, a processor that comes in at a whopping $720 more. The thing is, this core doesn’t stop there. All of Ryzen’s lineup is overclockable on any X370 or B350 motherboard—and, holy cow, does this chip overclock! We managed to bump all eight cores up to 3.9GHz, with very little trouble. Temperatures peaked at around 65 C under load, utilizing the NZXT Kraken X62, but what was more amazing was the fact that it even outperformed the the 1800X, while simultaneously drawing less power and running cooler (even allowing for AMD’s erroneous 20-degree temperature boost).

Bumping the core clock up to 3.9GHz (bearing in mind that there have been reports of many hitting 4.1GHz under water), we saw an improvement of 18 percent in Cinebench R15’s multi-threaded test, 7 percent in single-core performance, 20 percent in our X265 benchmark, and a 10 percent improvement in Fryrender, too. Which, let’s face it, is truly incredible for a core that costs $330—20 bucks less than a Core i7-7700K.

So, is it all a bed of roses? Not quite. Our sample was plagued by memory issues. Testing across multiple motherboards and memory kits, we struggled to get any to operate beyond 2,133MT/s. After speaking to AMD and running multiple tests, we came to the conclusion that our particular sample was damaged, so we wouldn’t expect to encounter the same problems with other specimens.

Generally speaking, Ryzen’s memory support isn’t perfect just yet, and, yes, there are scheduling issues, but these are all to be expected with a brand new architecture design. Look back several years to Nehalem, and the birth of Intel’s core architecture, and you can see the same issues occurring there, too. Ultimately, however, teething issues aside, this chip is nigh on godly, and if we could give it a 10, we would. –ZAK STOREY