AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review: Redefining Ryzen

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Far Cry Primal, GTA: V, Hitman

Far Cry Primal

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Far Cry Primal responds well to Intel's Core i7-7700K. It's also interesting that a stock Core i5-8600K beats the overclocked 6C/12T Core i7-8700K. Then again, we've seen this tendency before.

The stock Ryzen 7 2700X lags behind Intel's newest K-series CPUs, though tuning does help AMD's case.

Grand Theft Auto V

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Grand Theft Auto V favors Intel architectures and, more generally, multi-core designs with high clock rates. The overclocked Ryzen 7 2700X vies with Intel's chips at stock frequencies. But again, giving Coffee Lake the same treatment propels those chips to the top of our chart.

Ryzen 7 1700 suffers from a low base clock rate and languishes at the bottom of our chart as a result. This processor often provides similar performance as AMD's Ryzen 7 1800X after some tuning. However, it's clear that the Ryzen 7 2700X sets a new high water mark for AMD CPUs in games.

Hitman

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Hitman's GOTY update imposed a hard 90 FPS cap on performance, so this title no longer scales well with high-end PCs. Unfortunately, some popular AAA games employ similar frame rate limits, so we leave this result in place to show that not all titles respond to faster components.

We do see slight scaling from Ryzen 7 1700 up to Intel's overclocked models. However, these differences would be hard to spot during a gaming session. Ryzen 7 2700X lands in a familiar position ahead of AMD's previous-gen Ryzen CPUs. 


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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.

138 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Ninjawithagun
    Once again, Tom's provides an incorrect comparison in this review. Intel's 8700K is comparable to the 2600 or 2600X and NOT the 2700 or 2700X. Just count the number of cores and threads and one should be able to figure that out O.o

    Whine all you want. Just because you down vote me only means you don't know how to read or count :P
    Reply
  • Sakkura
    20899022 said:
    Once again, Tom's provides an incorrect comparison in this review. Intel's 8700K is comparable to the 2600 or 2600X and NOT the 2700 or 2700X. Just count the number of cores and threads and one should be able to figure that out O.o

    The 2700X costs $329, the 8700K costs $359. It is a very reasonable comparison to make.
    Reply
  • tripleX
    7820X is also there with the same number of cores and threads.
    Reply
  • tparkhuose
    well i know what im upgrading to now. thanks
    Reply
  • justin.m.beauvais
    It sure is nice to see an AMD chip up there in the thick of it with Intel's best offerings. Competition has finally officially returned. I'm impressed that AMD gained so much ground and managed to make the price more competitive than the 1800x was. It is slightly disappointing that overclocking remains less impressive than the Intel offerings, but everything else sort of makes up for that.

    I didn't feel like AMD was quite "there" yet with the 1000 Ryzens, but with the 2000 series I feel like we can finally say that they have arrived.
    Reply
  • Ninjawithagun
    20899035 said:
    20899022 said:
    Once again, Tom's provides an incorrect comparison in this review. Intel's 8700K is comparable to the 2600 or 2600X and NOT the 2700 or 2700X. Just count the number of cores and threads and one should be able to figure that out O.o

    The 2700X costs $329, the 8700K costs $359. It is a very reasonable comparison to make.

    Incorrect. It has nothing to do with price. Comparing like CPU architectures is the only logical course of action. 6 core/12 thread vs 8 core/16 thread makes no sense. Comparing the Intel 8700K 6 core/12 thread @ $347 to the AMD 2600X 6 core/12 thread @ $229.99 makes the most sense here. Once the proper math is done, AMD destroys Intel in performance vs. cost, especially when you game at any resolution higher than 1080P. The GPU becomes the bottleneck at that point, negating any IPC benefits of the Intel CPUs. I know this how? Simple. I also own a 8700K gaming PC ;-)

    Once again, whine all you want. Just because you down vote me only means you don't know how to read or count :P
    Reply
  • bfwhsm
    Now, do the tests again with meltdown/spectre applied on intel cpus, as you should.
    And you will see a VERY different story, with 2700k destroying 8700k in almost every measure).

    (check out anandtech's review to get an idea)
    Reply
  • Ninjawithagun
    20899131 said:
    Now, do the tests again with meltdown/spectre applied on intel cpus, as you should.
    And you will see a VERY different story, with 2700k destroying 8700k in almost every measure).

    (check out anandtech's review to get an idea)

    I will definitely check out that review as well. Thanks bfwhsm!
    Reply
  • tripleX
    20899131 said:
    Now, do the tests again with meltdown/spectre applied on intel cpus, as you should.
    And you will see a VERY different story, with 2700k destroying 8700k in almost every measure).

    (check out anandtech's review to get an idea)

    Maybe you should read the comments on the AnandTech article. They all point out that the test results don't match any other site's results.
    Reply
  • Sakkura
    20899157 said:
    20899131 said:
    Now, do the tests again with meltdown/spectre applied on intel cpus, as you should.
    And you will see a VERY different story, with 2700k destroying 8700k in almost every measure).

    (check out anandtech's review to get an idea)

    Maybe you should read the comments on the AnandTech article. They all point out that the test results don't match any other site's results.

    ... because of the different testing procedure that he just referred to.
    Reply