AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Review

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Civilization VI AI & Graphics Test, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, GTA V

Civilization VI AI Test

Civilization VI's AI benchmark measures the amount of computational horsepower available to the system during a turn-based strategy gaming session.

The overclocked Ryzen processors nudge past Intel's Core i7-6900K, but can't catch Kaby Lake. While it's likely threaded, this metric clearly isn't able to utilize more than four cores.

Civilization VI Graphics Test

The Core i7-6900K rockets to the top of this chart, but Intel's Core i7-7700K achieves a better minimum frame rate. Remember that all of the Intel CPUs in our story also sport unlocked multipliers, and would benefit handsomely from overclocking as well.

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The two overclocked Ryzen 7s enjoy quantifiable gains from the jump to 3.9 GHz. Our 1800X registers a 3.6% gain over its stock settings, and the 1700X scores a 6.5% performance increase. A stock Core i5-7600K can't carry over its top position from the AI Test, and instead lands under the stock Ryzen 7 1700X.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided provides rare respite for the Ryzen processors; they beat their Intel competition in convincing fashion during the game's benchmark. We asked Eidos for technical detail about the game engine's behavior and await more information.

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The difference between Intel and AMD processors is obvious from their FPS result.

Although Ryzen appears graphics-bound, the two CPUs at 3.9 GHz do average higher frame rates than the stock configurations.

Grand Theft Auto V

We pushed the graphics settings as high as they'd go to characterize real-world gaming under Grand Theft Auto V with a high-end GPU. We measure performance during the F-16 flight sequence in the built-in benchmark. The constantly changing terrain of the expansive scene yields a solid and consistent benchmark. 

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The Core i7-7700K leads with a 91.1 FPS result, and the rest of the field scales down from there. Intel's i5-7600K also turns in a stellar performance, particularly in light of its budget-friendly price point. Although Ryzen 7 provides smooth-enough performance, it lags the competition by a quantifiable margin. Overclocking does clearly help, and the two CPUs at 3.9 GHz fare similarly.

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Paul Alcorn
Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

Paul Alcorn is the Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech for Tom's Hardware US. He also writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage, and enterprise hardware.

122 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Ergosum
    Whoever runs PR at AMD needs to reevaluate their methods. The 1800's and 1700's are very solid products, but for some reason were shadow marketed--letting rumor define the target application sets.

    AMD should have had a strong positive campaign on where these chips do well. Specific. Timely. They would have gathered some gamers who wanted to brag about handbrake performance or some-such. Instead they let the market build fairy castles in the sky about gaming-specific performance, and so (again) lost a great deal of goodwill and trust.
    Reply
  • ykki
    Tom's please update the win 10 pro version number. "All updates" doesn't tell crap.
    Reply
  • hannibal
    The problem is that the market made those cloud castless, not the AMD... it is hard to AMD to say users not to speculate. Every information that AMD did give out was confirming that Ryzen was going to be really good multicore performer, and we all know that very few game use more that teo or three threats, so the extra 4-6 cores that Ryzen has normally Are useless I. The games, so any Intel 2-4 core prosessor wa going to better in the games if They would run in higher freguences that Ryzen and AMD very clearly tell us that 3.8 was the very near the top of the prosessor speed.

    If and when games start supporting 8 cores the 1700 is super good perfomer in the games too, but if and most propably because the situation stays the same. 2-4 more powerfull cores is always better in games that having more of them.
    It seems that people now know games really poorly if They expected the Ryzen has any chance in those.
    Ryzen 1500 (four cores) is as fast in the games than 1800X is and 1500 is much cheaper.
    http://www.techspot.com/review/1360-amd-ryzen-5-1600x-1500x-gaming/
    Reply
  • TechyInAZ
    Good review. Can't wait until software devs and motherboard manufactuer's get better optimized softwares and BIOS's so Ryzen isn't constantly dealing with this problem anymore.
    Reply
  • Conclusion: Ryzen still sucks.
    Reply
  • dstarr3
    19481950 said:
    Conclusion: Ryzen still sucks.

    It's not that Ryzen sucks, it's that Ryzen was meant to compete with Xeon CPUs, which it does very well. Gamers should look elsewhere, but for some reason, gamers are the ones that got most excited about these CPUs.
    Reply
  • elbert
    I wouldn't suggest either a 1070 nor the 1080 on 1080p. Probably should have tested with a more normal 1060 6GB at that resolution. Those willing to pay high prices for both the CPU and GPU should be running at 1440p. The game benchmarks are unnaturally skewed.
    The biggest thing to look at in the game benchmarks is how unutilized the Ryzen CPU's are. We will probably see the Ryzen R5 quads running the same FPS for a few hundered less then all but the old 8350 on April the 11th.
    Also it looks like AMD is gearing up a new socket with 8, 12, and 16 cores on an X390 motherboard. At the current pricing the 16 core could be lower priced than Intel's over priced 6900 8 core.
    Reply
  • Achaios
    ?ll this talk about games supporting more than 4 cores is really a COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME.

    46.19% of Steam Gamers own 2-Core CPU's and 47.74% of Steam Gamers own 4 Core CPUs. No Game Studio is going to waste resources and money on optimizing games for more than 4 cores in the foreseeable future, if ever.

    According to the same survey, only 0.24% of gamers own octacore CPU's. A little less than this is the presence of AMD Ryzen CPU's in the gaming market. Almost nonexistent.

    I wish I was trolling.
    Reply
  • Oranthal
    Why did you only test 1080p performance? Most people who would consider these CPUs run an RX-480 or greater GPU if they are gaming ($300+ is still the premium market). Other reviews show the gaps shrinking or disappearing with greater resolutions as the bottlenecks are at the GPU where most die-hard review reading gamers will actually be limited.
    Reply
  • Oranthal
    19482020 said:
    I wouldn't suggest either a 1070 nor the 1080 on 1080p. Probably should have tested with a more normal 1060 6GB at that resolution. Those willing to pay high prices for both the CPU and GPU should be running at 1440p. The game benchmarks are unnaturally skewed.
    The biggest thing to look at in the game benchmarks is how unutilized the Ryzen CPU's are. We will probably see the Ryzen R5 quads running the same FPS for a few hundered less then all but the old 8350 on April the 11th.
    Also it looks like AMD is gearing up a new socket with 8, 12, and 16 cores on an X390 motherboard. At the current pricing the 16 core could be lower priced than Intel's over priced 6900 8 core.

    100% spot on. I would of skipped my comment had I seen this when I started writing it.
    Reply