AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Review

The mid-tier Ryzen 7 1700X offers 8C/16T of CPU goodness at a modest base frequency of 3.4GHz, though with a boost to 3.8GHz and beyond thanks to the Sense MI technologies, the 1700X also represents outstanding value too.

Product on Review: Ryzen 7 1700X
Manufacturer: AMD
MSRP: UK: £389, US: $399

As it has 8 cores and 16 threads of processing goodness, the 1700X will be looking to catch the eye of those on the look out for a powerful CPU top aid with their content creation, broadcasting, and next-gen gaming/VR setups. The 1700X offers a huge price reduction over the 1800X and features all the latest top technology from AMD. It’s out-the-box specs have it seated at 3.4 GHz, which will boost a single core to a respectable 3.8GHz. This will make the 1700X look very attractive to a wide array of people looking to save on the cost over the 1800X (or alternative).

So what else does the 1700X offer? Well the clue is in its title. Somewhat confusingly, the 1700 DOES feature XFR technology (additional frequency over its maximum core boost). What this essentially means, is you can get an additional 50MHz out of the 1700 CPU if the thermals permit it, however, the 1700X/1800X will provide up to a full additional 100MHz, thus rewarding those with enthusiast cooling with nice added bonus. Like the rest of the Ryzen line-up, it is shipped with an RGB LED Wraith cooler, and all the Ryzen CPUs feature an unlocked multiplier, adjustable in 25MHz increments for a precise overclock, ensuring enthusiasts will be able to get you to get the most out of their Ryzen CPU.

Technical Specifications

Specifications
# of CPU Cores: 8
# of Threads: 16
Base Clock Speed: 3.4GHz
Max Turbo Core Speed: 3.8GHz
Total L1 Cache: 768KB
Total L2 Cache: 4MB
Total L3 Cache: 16MB
Unlocked: Yes
Package: AM4
Thermal Solution: Wraith Spire (LED)
Default TDP: 95W

Memory
Memory Interface: DDR4
Memory Channels: 2

Key Features
Supported Technologies
“Zen” Core Architecture
AMD SenseMI Technology
AMD Ryzen Master Utility
AES
AVX
FMA4
Virtualization
XFR (Extended Frequency Range)

For more information about Ryzen 7 and the platform features, Click Here.

Test Setup & Testing

CPUs
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X (3.4GHz) Summit Ridge
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X (4.05GHz Overclocked)
Cooling Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-AX370-GAMING 5
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz
Graphics Radeon RX 480 8GB
Storage Corsair Force LE 480GB
PSU Corsair RM 750X 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU

AMD Ryzen 7 1700 (3.0GHz) Summit Ridge
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X 3.6GHz) Summit Ridge
AMD FX-8350 (4.0GHz) PileDriver
Intel Core i5-7700K (4.2GHz) Kaby Lake
Intel Core i5-7600K (3.8GHz) Kaby Lake
Intel Core i7-6950X (3.0GHz) Broadwell-E
Intel Core 7-6900K (3.2GHz) Broadwell-E
Intel Core i7-5960X (3.0GHz) Haswell-E
Intel Core i7-6700K (4GHz) Skylake

Benchmarks

Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA – CPU & Memory benchmarks
POV-RAY – CPU benchmarks
TrueCrypt – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks & Memory
PCMark 8 – Home Suite & Photoshop
3DMark FireStrike – 3D Benchmark
Games – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER

Other Software

Temperature Analysis: Aida64/Ryzen Master
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z

Temperatures & Overclocking

Though running significantly warmer than the 65W TDP 1700 CPU, the 1700X does run a little cooler than the 1800X thanks to its overall lower clock speed, also our chip managed to overclock at a relatively decent voltage, meaning it ran just a little warmer than the 1800X under full load.

*Here it is worth mentioning that Ryzen ‘officially’ supports DDR4 memory up to 2667MHz, however the fastest we have been able to achieve is around 3000MHz. There is some limitations of the kind of memory that you can use (whether it is single, or dual rank arrangement) with dual rank memory being limited to lower clockspeeds. However, in our testing you will see that Ryzen keeps pace with the Intel i7 CPUs (except against the quad channel chips) with lower memory frequencies. So bare this in mind when selecting a Ryzen setup and be sure to check the motherboard QVL list for tested/compatible memory (see the motherboard manufacturer website). It appears that there is still some optimisations being made and tweaked which is improving compatibility and stability, so you will also need to keep an eye out for later BIOS updates for your motherboard.*

*Using f5d BIOS on the GIGABYTE AX370-Gaming 5 motherboard*
Despite running at similar temperatures to the 1800X, we were unable to boot at 4.1GHz or over, so we can only assume that the 1700X may be lower binned than the 1800X; which we are able to boot in at 4.15GHz. So rather than trying to pump more voltage through the CPU, we decided to find a respectable frequency to boot in at (4.05GHz) and then find the lowest voltage required to keep it stable. This ended up being a rather impressive 1.387V, much lower than we anticipated, thus resulting in relatively low overclock temperatures (similar to the stock 1800X temperatures) as well as giving respectable power consumption levels. We also noted some play in the frequency of the first CPU core, but we were unable to determine if this was down to XFR or some other aspect of the sense MI technology.

Power Consumption

It’s interesting to note the power consumption across all processors. Although they are using a combination of different motherboard chipsets, energy results can fluctuate between manufacturers due to the features and specifications that are integrated. First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use and then the system is loaded with 3DMark FireStrike – watts are again monitored for the duration of the test and the highest rated wattage result is then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.

Ray Tracing Performance – POV-Ray 3.7

Persistence of Vision Raytracer’s PovRay is a free and open source 3D animator application with versions for computers with different operating systems.

This product allows users to build their custom 3D worlds with excellent quality despite their computer’s hardware. It has adjustable options for levels of radiance, refraction, and reflection. Calculation time may vary depending on the computer model, but PovRay can adapt to many computer builds, and is supported by the open source community.

AES Encryption Performance – TrueCrypt 7.1a

TrueCrypt is a discontinued source-available freeware utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or encrypt a partition or (under Microsoft Windows except Windows 8 with GPT) the entire storage device (pre-boot authentication).

Encoding Performance – X264 HD

Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.

Processing Features Performance – AIDA64

AIDA64 Product Page

This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.

Memory Transfer Performance – AIDA64

AIDA64 Product Page

Memory bandwidth benchmarks (Memory Read, Memory Write, Memory Copy) measure the maximum achiveable memory data transfer bandwidth. The code behind these benchmark methods are written in Assembly and they are extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x86/x64, x87, MMX, MMX+, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE4.1, AVX, and AVX2 instruction set extension.

The Memory Latency benchmark measures the typical delay when the CPU reads data from system memory. Memory latency time means the penalty measured from the issuing of the read command until the data arrives to the integer registers of the CPU.

Processing Power Performance – Cinebench R15

CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

Bandwidth Performance – SiSoftware SANDRA

SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.

Image Editing Performance – PCMark 8 Photoshop

PCMark 8 Product Page

Developed in partnership with Benchmark Development Program members Acer, AMD, Condusiv Technologies, Dell, HGST, HP, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Samsung, SanDisk, Seagate and Western Digital, PCMark 8 is the latest version in FutureMark’s popular series of PC benchmarking tools. Improving on previous releases, PCMark 8 includes new tests using popular applications from Adobe and Microsoft.

Overall System Performance – PCMark 8

PCMark 8 Product Page

VR Performance – VRMark

VRMark Product Page

VRMark includes two VR benchmark tests that run on your monitor, no headset required, or on a connected HMD. At the end of each test, you’ll see whether your PC is VR ready, and if not, how far it falls short.

3D Performance – 3DMark FireStrike

3DMark FireStrike Product Page

Fire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today. Fire Strike will only be available in the Windows editions of 3DMark initially.

Gaming Performance – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER

It’s important for us to perform a number of game benchmarks as well as the synthetic tests because gamers will want to know if there are any significant benefits. So here we have two recent gaming titles.

Conclusion

If outright gaming performance is what you are looking for when looking at a Ryzen 7 CPU, it is easy to misunderstand what you are looking at. Most games right now aren’t optimised for this many CPU threads, and the ones that are will likely show a significant advantage. However, if you are looking for a multi-tasking monster out-the-box, Ryzen 1700X, sits at a hugely affordable price point with an army of horses lying in wait. Out the box performance (generally) is where you would expect between the 1700/1800X, though there are some inconsistencies showing, specifically with the 1800X which may be down to some improvements/optimisations which will mean that we will have to revisit and update our 1800X performance.

If you do not intend to overclock the 1700X, your experience will improve with additional cooling thanks to the core boost and XFR technology, giving a huge boost in performance over the base frequencies. Though overclockers may find that the additional cost over the 1700 may not yield the results they would like as they may be binned rather similarly, while the top binned CPUs are likely reserved for the 1800X. Despite that, we were thoroughly impressed with the power usage and thermal performance considering the overclock we achieved. Thus making the 1700X one hell of a CPU. Prosumers, content creators, and anyone that uses their PC for more than just casual gaming and Netflix can be confident that you will be surprised by the performance and price of the Ryzen 7 1700X.

The 1700X with its 3.4GHz base-clock along with AMDs Precision Boost and XFR technology, users can experience high performance computing at a very competitive price point.

Pros
+ High performance
+ 8/16 cores threads
+ Easy to overclock
+ Sense MI technologies (XFR)
+ Very competitive price
+ Supplied with RGB LED cooler
+ Competitive Performance-per-watt

Cons
– The 1700 may be better value for the enthusiast

Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.