Performance Power Profiles and Test Platforms
Game Testing Particulars
Due to time constraints, our original review only included five games and the Ryzen 7 1800X. This time around, we're expanding to include 11 games and all three Ryzen 7 processors. At launch time, AMD gave us a list of titles that respond favorably to its new architecture, including Sniper Elite 4 (DX12), Battlefield 1 (DX12), The Division, Star Wars: Battlefront, Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, Battlefield Hardline, Overwatch, Witcher 3, and Dead Rising. We added Battlefield 1 and The Division to our line-up for this round of testing.
AMD recommends disabling the HPET (High Precision Event Timer) and using Windows' "High performance" power profile to improve gaming results. We can confirm that both adjustments do confer gains. The High performance profile, in particular, offers the biggest boost. AMD adds:
Core Parking Off: Idle CPU cores are instantaneously available for thread scheduling. In contrast, the Balanced plan aggressively places idle CPU cores into low power states. This can cause additional latency when un-parking cores to accommodate varying loads.Fast frequency change: The AMD Ryzen processor can alter its voltage and frequency states in the 1ms intervals natively supported by the “Zen” architecture. In contrast, the Balanced plan may take longer for voltage and frequency (V/f) changes due to software participation in power state changes
AMD also announced that it will provide an update in the April time frame that adjusts parameters for the Balanced profile to increase performance.
In an effort to give Ryzen the most favorable conditions possible, we test AMD and Intel CPUs alike using the High performance power plan, and with the HPET disabled. We tested the CPUs with the stock clock settings. In our original coverage, we included numbers with SMT disabled. This time around, however, it's turned on. Enthusiasts should not be expected to toggle back and forth depending on the application they're running.
Test Platforms
We're using the same hardware you saw in our Ryzen 7 1800X review, except that we switched over to MSI's X370 XPower Gaming Titanium motherboard. The rapidly-evolving nature of the Ryzen ecosystem (and by that we mean incessant firmware updates) means that our gaming results are only representative of today's test environment; it may change in the future.
Systems | AMD 1Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700X, 1700MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium2x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666AMD 2AMD FX-8350MSI 970 Gaming2x Kingston HyperX DDR3 2133Intel 1Intel Core i7-7700KMSI Z270 Gaming M72x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2666Intel 2Core i7-6900KASRock X99 Extreme44x Crucial DDR4 2400All1TB Samsung PM863SilverStone ST1500, 1500WWindows 10 Pro (All Updates) Version 1607 |
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GPU | EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FE |
Cooling | Corsair H100iv2Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4Arctic MX-4 |
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