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AMD Ryzen 7 2700X

AMD Ryzen 5 2600X

Patching Up, Overclocking & Test Setup

Patching Up

The Spectre and Meltdown security vulnerabilities impose overhead that affect performance, but it's the Spectre Variant 2 patches that incur the largest penalties. We've been waiting for AMD and Intel to release their respective updates, leveling the playing field. AMD gave no indication in its press material that the X470 motherboards used in our Ryzen 7 2700X review already had Spectre 2 mitigations built-in. But hours before launch, we learned that the patches were present. At that point, we didn't have enough time to test with Intel's corresponding microcode.

In our 2700X review, the test rigs included Meltdown And Spectre Variant 1 mitigations. Spectre Variant 2 requires both motherboard firmware/microcode and operating system patches, though. We had already installed the operating system updates for Variant 2 on our Intel-based platforms, so we only lacked the fourth and final piece: new microcode.

There are two options for applying this microcode. One is a Windows KB that allows the operating system to load microcode during boot-up. The other is a motherboard firmware update. We used the Windows KB to install patches on our Z270-based platform, providing a true measure of pre- and post-patch performance.

Faster processors suffer less from the Spectre Variant 2 updates. This creates a conundrum for us and our Z370-based platform. In previous reviews, we noticed that Intel's Core i7-8700 was consistently faster than the more expensive Core i7-8700K on MSI and Gigabyte motherboards. We disclosed this during our launch coverage. The issue becomes relevant today because MSI's latest firmware update, which also includes the Spectre Variant 2 microcode, fixes most of the performance disparities we observed. As we suspected, the problem seems attributable to the Core i7-8700K. It's now faster in several games, performing the way we originally expected. So, on this motherboard, we're using new firmware instead of the Windows-based patch since it fixes our Core i7-8700K issues. That means our Coffee Lake-based CPUs don't correctly reflect pre- and post-patch performance. Instead, allow those results to serve as a general indication of competitive deltas.

In any case, with the exception of our AMD X370-based motherboards, all of the platforms in today's review are fully patched. The company hasn't given us a time frame for securing its previous-gen chipsets, but you can bet that we'll follow up with benchmark results once a Spectre Variant 2 patch becomes available.

Overclocking

We ran our gaming and application tests in the U.S. lab, while power/thermal measurements were collected in our German lab.

In the U.S. lab, we paired our Ryzen 5 2600X with Corsair's H115i cooler for overclocking. This allowed us to maintain a 4.2 GHz all-core frequency at 1.3875V Vcore, 1.2V SoC voltage, and default Load Line Calibration settings. These are the same settings used on the Ryzen 7 2700X, albeit with a slight 0.009V Vcore boost to ensure stability.

First-gen Ryzen processors don't have much memory overclocking headroom, so we're still testing tuned X370 platforms at DDR4-3200. The X470 chipset is remarkably stable at higher data rates with both 2000-series Ryzen CPUs installed. So, we settled on DDR4-3466 with 14-14-14-34 timings. We also ran our overclocked Intel processors at DDR4-3466.

Precision Boost Overdrive

AMD hasn't shared much information on this pending feature, which increases the maximum boost voltage and boost duration. We attempted to disable Precision Boost Overdrive as we tested for our Ryzen 7 2700X review, but didn't observe a performance difference one way or the other. Now we know the feature wasn't toggling correctly due to an issue with the board. Instead, it remained enabled throughout our benchmarking.

Precision Boost Overdrive is an AMD-sanctioned feature, unlike the multi-core enhancements you often find in Intel-based motherboards. Because this is a standard capability for Ryzen 2000-series processors, we leave it enabled.

MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC

Our MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC has a PCI Express 3.0 slot with a x16 link, a slot with a x8 connection, and another PCI Express 2.0 slot with a four-lane link for graphics cards. Its four RAM slots support DDR4-2933 and can scale up quite a bit higher through overclocking.

The motherboard also provides two M.2 slots with PCIe connectivity. The I/O panel has a USB 3.1 Type C connector. The USB 3.1 and USB 3.1 Gen 2 support fast charging for smartphones and tablets. If RGB is your thing, MSI has you covered. The integrated RGB Mystic lighting allows customizable effects with several software-controlled zones.

Comparison Products

Intel Core i5-8400

Intel Core i5-8600K

Intel Core i7-7700K

Test Systems

Test System & Configuration
Hardware	Germany AMD Socket AM4 (400-Series)AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, Ryzen 5 2600XMSI X470 Gaming M7 AC2x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2933, DDR4-3466Intel LGA 1151 (Z370):Intel Core i5-8600K, i5-8600K, Core i5-8400MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC2x 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 @ 2666AMD Socket AM4 Workstation (300-Series)AMD Ryzen 5 1500X, Ryzen 5 1600X, Ryzen 5 1400MSI X370 Tomahawk4x 8GB G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 @ 2667 and 3200 Intel LGA 1151 (Z270)Intel Core i7-7700KMSI Z270 Gaming 72x 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 @ 2400 and 3200All SystemsGeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition (Gaming)Nvidia Quadro P6000 (Workstation)1x 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 (M.2, System)2x 960GB Toshiba OCZ TR150 (Storage, Images)be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11, 850W Power SupplyWindows 10 Pro (Creators Update)U.S.AMD Socket AM4 (400-Series)AMD Ryzen 7 2700XMSI X470 Gaming M7 AC2x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2933, DDR4-3466Intel LGA 1151 (Z370):Intel Core i7-8700K, i5-8600K, Core i5-8400MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC2x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2400, DDR4-2667, DDR4-3466AMD Socket AM4 (300-Series)AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700X, 1700, Ryzen 5 1600XMSI X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium2x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2667, DDR4-3200Intel LGA 1151 (Z270)Intel Core i7-7700K MSI Z270 Gaming M72x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2400All EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FE 1TB Samsung PM863 SilverStone ST1500-TI, 1500W Windows 10 Creators Update Version 1703 - All Spectre and Meltdown mitigations
Cooling	GermanyAlphacool Eiszeit 2000 ChillerAlphacool Eisblock XPXThermal Grizzly Kryonaut (For Cooler Switch)U.S.Corsair H115i
Monitor	Eizo EV3237-BK
PC Case	Lian Li PC-T70 with Extension Kit and Mods Configurations: Open Benchtable, Closed Case
Power Consumption Measurement	Contact-free DC Measurement at PCIe Slot (Using a Riser Card) Contact-free DC Measurement at External Auxiliary Power Supply Cable Direct Voltage Measurement at Power Supply 2x Rohde & Schwarz HMO 3054, 500 MHz Digital Multi-Channel Oscilloscope with Storage Function4x Rohde & Schwarz HZO50 Current Probe (1mA - 30A, 100 kHz, DC) 4x Rohde & Schwarz HZ355 (10:1 Probes, 500 MHz) 1x Rohde & Schwarz HMC 8012 Digital Multimeter with Storage Function
Thermal Measurement	1x Optris PI640 80 Hz Infrared Camera + PI Connect Real-Time Infrared Monitoring and Recording
Acoustic Measurement	NTI Audio M2211 (with Calibration File, Low Cut at 50Hz) Steinberg UR12 (with Phantom Power for Microphones)Creative X7, Smaart v.7 Custom-Made Proprietary Measurement Chamber, 3.5 x 1.8 x 2.2m (L x D x H) Perpendicular to Center of Noise Source(s), Measurement Distance of 50cm Noise Level in dB(A) (Slow), Real-time Frequency Analyzer (RTA) Graphical Frequency Spectrum of Noise

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VRMark, 3DMark & AotS: Escalation

VRMark & 3DMark

These are busy charts with the addition of our retested Intel platforms, including the Spectre Variant 2 microcode patches. At stock settings, the Ryzen 5 2600X outperforms its overclocked predecessor across the board, which is especially meaningful in the lightly-threaded VRMark workload. Overclocking yields significant gains in synthetic gaming benchmarks, which don't necessarily translate to the rest of our benchmark suite.

Several of the patched Intel processors do lose performance compared to before the updates. This is particularly apparent in VRMark on Intel's Core i7-8700K, while other tests reflect minimal regression. Meanwhile, the Core i5-8400 and -8600K give us mixed results. Core i7-7700K is a more representative measure of pre- and post-patch performance, and it takes a healthy dive in VRMark as well (verified several times by removing and reinstalling the OS-based Spectre patch).

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ryzen 5 2600X is clearly superior to its predecessor in threaded titles. After all, the stock 2600X beats an overclocked 1600X. Those gains propel the Ryzen 5 up the chart, where it matches a stock Core i7-8700K.

Flip over to the album's next slide, which includes Intel CPUs before and after we patched their platforms. The Core i7-7700K loses a few frames per second in our retest, falling outside of this consistent benchmark's margin of error. Aside from the Core i5-8400's gains, which remind us that firmware updates sometimes fine-tune performance, too, most of the Intel CPUs land within the run-to-run variance we expect to see.

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Civilization VI Graphics & AI, Dawn of War III

Civilization VI AI Test

The Ryzen 5 2600X represents a nice step forward for AMD, particularly since Intel's processors typically lead in this test due to their per-core performance advantage.

A few of the processors exhibit slight regressions post-patch, but nothing outside of the variances we'd expect.

Civilization VI Graphics Test

An overclocked Ryzen 5 2600X beats the stock Ryzen 7 2700X, which should excite value-seekers.

Then again, Intel's Core i5-8400 slips past the tuned Ryzen 5 in this test, yielding better performance at a lower price (and despite a locked ratio multiplier).

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III

Dawn of War finds the tuned Coffee Lake-based CPUs at the top of our chart. Even the fastest Ryzen (overclocked, no less) lands behind a stock Core i7-7700K.

Interestingly, the Coffee Lake CPUs enjoy slight gains after we patch them, while Core i7-7700K doesn't change much.

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Far Cry Primal, GTA: V & Hitman

Far Cry Primal

Ryzen 5 2600X nearly matches Intel's Core i7-8700K at stock clock rates. But tuning propels the chip ahead of an overclocked Ryzen 7 2700X and into contention with Core i5-8600K at 4.9 GHz. Clearly, this title responds well to physical core count, favoring platforms without SMT enabled.

Grand Theft Auto V

It's no surprise to see Intel's processors dominate our Grand Theft Auto V charts. An overclocked Ryzen 5 2600X essentially ties the stock Core i7-7700K, while Core i5-8400 stands out again for its higher performance and lower price point.

The post-patch Core i7-8700K averages 9 FPS-higher in GTA V. This is one of the games where -8700K historically lagged the slower Core i7-8700, so it looks like motherboard firmware fixed a few issues. We also see an improvement from the Core i5-8400.

Hitman

A recent update added a frame rate cap to Hitman, causing most of our configurations to reflect a graphics bottleneck. It's no surprise, then, that an overclocked Ryzen 5 2600X nearly matches the fastest Intel CPUs.

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Shadow Of War & Project CARS 2

Middle-earth: Shadow Of War

Ryzen 5 2600X beats the overclocked Ryzen 7 1800X, and tuning propels it to within 0.5 FPS of the fastest CPU.

Intel's Core i5-8400 is less expensive and tends to outperform the 2600X in many games, but the 2600X does lead in this one. Aside from the Core i5-8400, we observe lower average frame rates from the post-patch Intel processors, though the variances only amount to one or two frames per second.

Project CARS 2

Ryzen 5 2600X delivers a commendable performance in Project CARS 2, but it lags the less expensive Core i5-8400.

Aside from the Core i7-8700K's and i5-8400's performance gains, we don't significant variations related to Spectre mitigations.

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Office & Productivity

Adobe Creative Cloud

The stock Ryzen 5 2600X trails most of AMD's first-gen Ryzen CPUs, notably lagging behind the previous-gen Ryzen 5 1600X. We reran this benchmark several times to verify its results, and the outcome is repeatable. But given the performance observed in other tests, PCMark's Creative Cloud component may be an outlier.

Although we didn't see much performance variation from the patches in our game testing, that changes drastically in our Adobe Creative Cloud suite. Every Intel processor's overall score takes a significant haircut (the Core i7-8700K drops ~9%, while the Core i5-8400 drops ~10%).

Web Browser

The Krakken suite tests JavaScript performance using several workloads, including audio, imaging, and cryptography.

AMD's processors typically lag Intel's in Web browser benchmarks due to their lower per-core performance. The Ryzen 5 2600X is competitive with Intel's Core i5-8400 in this test. But as we noted in our Ryzen 7 2700X review, overclocking actually results in lower scores during lightly-threaded tasks. That's a bit more surprising in this case because, as we pointed out on the first page, Ryzen 5 2600X sustains up to 4.2 GHz on a single core, which is the same frequency as our all-core overclock. XFR2 contributes an extra boost during sporadic workloads though, and that's likely what we're seeing here.

The MotionMark benchmarks, which emphasize graphics performance (rather than JavaScript), are also sensitive to CPU clock rates. Ryzen 5 2600X isn't as competitive compared to the Intel models, reminding us that AMD still lags what it comes to IPC throughput.

Again, we see performance regressions from Intel's processors in these workloads, which we measured with a Spectre-patched version of Firefox.

Productivity

The application start-up metric measures load time snappiness in word processors, GIMP, and Web browsers under warm- and cold-start conditions. Other platform-level considerations affect this test as well, including the storage subsystem. Initially, we thought that'd be bad news for Intel's CPUs. After all, the security mitigations have an intense impact on I/O operations. Surprisingly, though, we actually recorded higher results from the Intel-based platforms. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 5 2600X beats AMD's first-gen Ryzen CPUs, but trails the Core i5-8400.

Our video conferencing workload measures performance in single- and multi-user applications that utilize the Windows Media Foundation for playback and encoding. It also performs facial detection to model real-world usage. Ryzen processors perform well in this test, joining an overclocked Core i7-8700K at the top of the chart. At stock settings, the Ryzen 5 2600X handily dispatches Intel's Core i5-8400.

The photo editing benchmark measures performance with Futuremark's binaries using the ImageMagick library. Common photo processing workloads also tend to be parallelized, so Ryzen 7 2700X naturally takes a lead. The Ryzen 5 2600X performs well given its price point. And the Intel CPUs all take a hit after we get them patched.

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Rendering, Encoding & Compression

Rendering

Threaded rendering workloads favor Ryzen's SMT-enabled cores. Ryzen 5 2600X slots in right where we'd expect it to land, while Intel's processors suffer slight performance hits after installing the Spectre mitigation patches.

Encoding & Compression

LAME is the quintessential example of a single-threaded workload, normally favoring Intel's per-core performance advantage. AMD's 2000-series Ryzen CPUs go a long way in closing the gap by offering better per-core performance than their predecessors.

Our threaded compression and decompression tests adsorb data directly from system memory, removing storage from the equation. The Ryzen 5 2600X fares well during the test, easily beating Intel's Core i5-8400 and -8600K. Given Windows' new dual page table addressing structure that prevents Meltdown-based attacks, we expected more performance overhead after the patches. However, the company's latest processors have a PCID (Post-Context Identifiers) feature that accelerates page table translations. As a result, older Core CPUs without the PCID feature are likely affected more than the ones we're testing.

There's a larger delta between Intel and AMD processors during our HandBrake x265 test compared to the x264 benchmark due to its heavier distribution of AVX instructions. The 2600X slots in where we'd expect given its six cores with SMT technology.

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Final Analysis

AMD’s Ryzen 5 2600X isn’t quite as impressive as the higher-end Ryzen 7 2700X, but it does offer a solid mixture of performance and value that's well-suited to many different workloads. Whereas professionals might be more interested in the 2700X's eight cores, gamers on a budget will want to check out the 2600X. After all, saving money on other system components is critical at a time when you're certain to pay a premium for discrete graphics.

In the chart below, we plot gaming performance with both average frame rates and a geometric mean of the 99^th percentile frame times (a good indicator of smoothness), which we then convert into a frame-per-second measurement. We also have price-to-performance charts that get split up to include CPUs-only and extra platform costs. For the models that don't come with a bundled cooler, we add $25 for a basic heat sink. We also add $20 if overclocking requires a more expensive motherboard (as is the case for Z370). The Intel test results reflect our patched configurations.

Games show the Ryzen 5 2600X offering a universal improvement over AMD's previous-gen Ryzen 5 1600X. Unfortunately, we see limited gains from overclocking, though that's just as well given this family's meager headroom. More important is that Ryzen 5 2600X beats the Ryzen 7 1800X throughout our suite.

Intel's Core i5-8600K is also in the 2600X’s crosshairs; AMD takes aim with a significantly lower price, a bundled thermal solution, and compatibility with less expensive motherboards. If you're not worried about overclocking, though, the Core i5-8400 is an even better buy for gaming. It offers nearly the same performance as the 2600X at a ~$50 discount. The i5-8400 drops into value-oriented B-series motherboards and comes with a stock cooler/fan, too.

Although we're big fans of the Core i5-8400 for entertainment, Ryzen 5 2600X is a smarter all-around value when it has the change to stretch its six cores and 12 threads. The processor distances itself from the i5-8400 in our rendering, encoding, compression, and decompression apps. It even challenges the eight-core Ryzen 7 1700X in several tests, particularly after tuning. That highlights the improvements borne of the Ryzen 2000-series’ enhanced multi-core boost algorithms and lower memory/cache latency.

Like all of AMD’s processors, the Ryzen 5 2600X comes with an unlocked ratio multiplier. AMD is pushing the frequency/voltage curve to its limits, so we didn’t experience massive gains in some mundane workloads. However, we did see more of a benefit with the 2600X in heavily-threaded tasks compared to the Ryzen 7 2700X. That’s largely due to the 2600X’s lower multi-core boost frequencies.

We wish AMD was ready with its B450-series motherboards at launch time. But you can still pair the Ryzen 5 2600X with a capable 300-series model.

The Spectre patches did take some wind out of Intel’s sails in many of our application tests, but the impact varies by application. In most cases, the regressions aren’t severe enough to change our recommendations. Still, it's always disappointing to observe performance stepping backward. Luckily for Intel, gaming wasn't affected much.

Intel beefed up its Coffee Lake-based Core i5s by adding 50% more cores. Up against the Ryzen 5 1600X, we couldn't help but acknowledge Intel's great performance and generally better compatibility with existing games. This time, however, AMD brings the heat in our benchmarks, while most of its optimization-oriented issues are ancient history. If gaming is your only concern, save some cash and pick up a Core i5-8400. But we think you’ll be happier with the Ryzen 5 2600X, which has more resources to handle general desktop workloads with ease.

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AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review: Redefining Ryzen

palcorn@outlook.com (Paul Alcorn) — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 13:00:00 +0000

Redefining Ryzen

AMD's return to prominence last year found it rolling out a long stream of CPUs that pressured Intel in almost every segment of the desktop PC market. Even after Intel countered with dramatic adjustments to its processor portfolio, AMD continues gobbling up market share. Even in the face of stiff competition, AMD says it enjoys as much as 50% of CPU sales to DIYers on sites like Newegg and Amazon.

And a slow transition to 10nm manufacturing continues to leave Intel vulnerable. AMD is now ready to evolve its Zen architecture with a round of new processors. To be sure, the improvements they offer are iterative. The low-hanging fruit that made it possible for first-gen Ryzen to compete are already baked in. These chips do incorporate some notable advantages, though.

To begin, second-generation Ryzen processors are manufactured using an optimized 12nm LP node that promises performance and efficiency gains compared to the original Ryzen's 14nm LPP process. AMD also tweaked the Zen architecture, now dubbed Zen+, to support higher frequencies, more sophisticated multi-core boost rates, and faster memory/caches. Overall, the company claims that its 2000-series facilitates nearly equivalent gaming performance compared to similarly-priced Core CPUs, plus a 20% advantage in threaded workloads.

AMD certainly hasn't forgotten its core message: more cores and features for less money. The second-gen Ryzen processors are priced competitively, all models come with beefy stock coolers, and they are backward compatible with older Socket AM4 motherboards. AMD even throws in free caching software to sweeten the deal. It all starts with silicon though, so let's take a look.

Ryzen 7 2700X

Ryzen 2000-series processors, otherwise known by their "Pinnacle Ridge" code name, are based on the same basic Zen core design as previous-gen models. But they benefit from 12nm manufacturing, along with targeted tweaks to improve cache and memory latency. The company says its resulting Zen+ architecture delivers up to a 3% boost in IPC (instructions per cycle) throughput.

The CPUs still utilize a dual-CCX configuration tied, together with Infinity Fabric. Not surprisingly, then, they're divided into eight-core, 16-thread Ryzen 7 and six-core, 12-thread Ryzen 5 families, both with 16MB of L3 cache. Like the Ryzens that came before, all 2000-series models boast unlocked ratio multipliers for easy overclocking. Intel, in comparison, still charges a premium for its overclockable K-series SKUs.

AMD separates its the 2000-series stack into high-performance X-series models and their non-X counterparts. But it shrinks the Ryzen 7 family from three models to two. Ryzen 7 2700X would seem to suggest a Ryzen 7 1700X replacement. However, it actually replaces the flagship Ryzen 7 1800X. AMD claims that its 2700X offers up to 12% more performance than Ryzen 7 1800X in threaded applications. Much of that improvement comes from a 100 MHz-higher base clock and 200 MHz of additional boost frequency (though multiple other refinements also contribute).

While the Pinnacle Ridge processors drop into 400-series motherboards, AMD is only releasing its X470 chipset at launch time. We still don't have a release date for the less expensive B450- and A420-based motherboards. As the company originally promised, it continues supporting Socket AM4 (and purportedly will until 2020), so the new Ryzen CPUs also work with 300-series motherboards after a BIOS update. First-gen Ryzens do work with 400-series platforms as well, allowing you to drop an older CPU into a brand-new board, if desired.

	AMD Ryzen 7 2700X	AMD Ryzen 7 1800X	AMD Ryzen 7 2700	AMD Ryzen 5 1600X	AMD Ryzen 5 2600X	AMD Ryzen 5 2600	Intel Core i7-8700K	Intel Core i7-8700	Intel Core i5-8600K	Intel Core i5-8400
MSRP	$329	$349	$299	$219	$229	$199	$359	$303	$257	$182
Cores/Threads	8/16	8/16	8/16	6/12	6/12	6/12	6/12	6/12	6/6	6/6
TDP	105W	95W	65W	95W	95W	65W	95W	65W	95W	65W
Base Freq. (GHz)	3.7	3.6	3.2	3.6	3.6	3.4	3.7	3.2	3.6	2.8
Precision Boost Freq. (GHz)	4.3	4.1	4.1	4.0	4.2	3.9	4.7	4.6	4.3	4.0
Cache (L3)	16MB	16MB	16MB	16MB	16MB	16MB	12MB	12MB	9MB	9MB
Unlocked Multiplier	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Cooler	105W Wraith Prism (LED)	-	95W Wraith Spire (LED)	-	95W Wraith Spire	65W Wraith Stealth	-	Intel	-	Intel

The $329 Ryzen 7 2700X should sell for $20 less than an 1800X (though prices of previous-generation chips will likely fall as long as stock is robust), while the $299 Ryzen 7 2700 lands right where you formerly found the 1700. AMD's non-X models were apparently more popular with enthusiasts since they also had unlocked multipliers, enabling similar performance as the pricier models (after some tuning) for less money. You could save $50 stepping down from Ryzen 7 1800X to the 1700, for example. But that gap shrinks to $30 this time around.

AMD's Ryzen 7 2700X grapples with Intel's $359 flagship Core i7-8700K. Though that seems like an uncomfortably close comparison, AMD allows you to overclock with one of its value-oriented B-series motherboards (B350-based, for now), whereas Intel compels users splurge on a Z-series platform for overclocking. Adding the CPU and motherboard together, Intel's premium ends up being quite a bit higher.

Second-gen Ryzens now support up to DDR4-2933 RAM as well, trumping the Coffee Lake architecture's official DDR4-2666 ceiling (with a few caveats that we'll cover shortly). More bandwidth should help latency-sensitive apps, such as games. Also, X470 motherboards pave the way for better memory overclocking than previous-gen platforms.

AMD's first-gen X-series processors, which topped out at 95W, came without a bundled thermal solution. This time around, all 2000-series CPUs include a cooler. The 105W Ryzen 7 2700X includes a "Wraith Prism" LED cooler that features four direct-contact copper heat pipes, three independent RGB zones, switchable fan profiles, and a 39 dB(A) noise rating. The cooler is rated to dissipate 116W of waste heat in "L" mode (2800 RPM) and 124W in "H" mode (3600 RPM). Cooler Master manufactures the heat sink/fan, while AMD provides software for controlling the lighting and fan profiles. Company representatives claim the cooler represents a roughly $43 value, and that it also allows for some overclocking headroom.

As with the generation before, AMD employs Indium solder between its die and heat spreader to improve thermal transfer. In contrast, Intel uses standard thermal interface material on its Core i7-8700K. Also, that Intel chip doesn't come with a cooler, widening the price gap between a Ryzen 7 2700X-based configuration and a current-generation unlocked Intel Core i7.

According to AMD, its 2000-series CPUs benefit from an improved SensMI suite that also includes its new StorMI Technology. The latter is a software-based tiering solution that melds the low price and high capacity of a hard drive with the speed of an SSD, 3D XPoint (including Intel's Optane parts), or even up to 2GB of RAM. AMD sold this software as a $20 add-on in the past, but now it comes free as part of the 2000-series package. As with any tiering utility, you assume the same risks of data loss inherent to a RAID 0 array. For more details about this software, read our feature: AMD and Enmotus Expand FuzeDrive Offerings.

The GlobalFoundries 12nm LP Process

As mentioned, AMD's 2000-series CPUs are not manufactured on GlobalFoundries' 14nm GPP node, but rather its 12nm LP process technology. The ported-over design helps boost transistor performance, but does not affect die area or transistor density. As a result, Pinnacle Ridge's ~4.8 billion transistors and 213mm² area remain the same as first-gen Ryzen.

Lower leakage current does enable roughly 300 MHz-higher clock rates or a 50mV core voltage reduction at any given frequency compared to 14nm manufacturing. The company also refined some of the architecture's critical pathways with higher-performance transistors. All told, AMD claims the 12nm design enables up to 11% less power consumption than 14nm-based Ryzen CPUs at the same clock rates, or up to 16% more performance at the same thermal design power. All-core overclocks are expected to land in the 4.2 GHz range moving forward.

AMD also adds other nuanced refinements to the performance story, reportedly improving L1, L2, and L3 cache latencies, while also reducing memory latency by 11%.

Ryzen 7 2700X's 105W TDP represents a 10.5% increase compared to the 1800X for a 4.65% increase in boost frequencies. That seems like a simple trade-off of power consumption for higher clock rates. But the TDP rating also takes the multi-core Precision Boost 2 and XFR2 algorithms' higher power draw into account, allowing access to Socket AM4's full 95-amp current ceiling even during stock operation.

Precision Boost 2 And XFR2

AMD's previous-gen Ryzen processors have Precision Boost (a Dynamic Voltage Frequency Scaling implementation similar to Intel's Turbo Boost), and eXtended Frequency Range, which provides additional frequency uplift if your cooling solution has thermal headroom to spare. Those 1000-series CPUs only offer dual-core or all-core Precision Boost and XFR clock rates. But lightly-threaded applications (like games) often offload less-critical tasks to other threads. Unfortunately, light helper threads can apply enough of a load to trigger the lower all-core frequency, limiting performance potential even when the CPU could be operating at higher clock rates.

The new Precision Boost 2 (which debuted on the desktop with AMD's Raven Ridge processors) and XFR2 algorithms improve performance in threaded workloads by raising the frequency of any number of cores. Precision Boost 2 delivers up to 500 MHz-higher clocks during multi-core workloads, while XFR2 adds an additional 7% boost if your cooler is beefy enough. This extends Ryzen's already-strong threaded performance to a wider variety of tasks, though it levels off when the processor reaches 60°C (tCase) or 95 amps of current. Precision Boost 2 and XFR2 also work on 300-series motherboards.

AMD doesn't share a list of specific multi-core Precision Boost 2 and XFR2 bins, because its opportunistic algorithms achieve different frequencies based on temperature, current, and load.

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AMD Ryzen 7 2700X

AMD Ryzen 5 2600X

X470 And Ryzen Master 1.3

AMD's Socket AM4 was designed with robust power delivery capabilities that aren't entirely used by first-gen Ryzen processors. The 2000-series chips are much better at leveraging the platform's current headroom through their improved boost algorithms. Some value-oriented motherboards employ scaled-back power delivery capabilities, so AMD's second-gen Ryzen CPUs communicate with the platform to modulate performance based on what the motherboard can do. That's a necessary addition to accommodate Ryzen 7 2700X's 105W TDP, which didn't exist before this new chip line. As a result, less-capable motherboards may not expose the full performance potential of higher-TDP processors like the Ryzen 7 2700X.

The processor monitors Package Power Tracking (PPT) and Thermal Design Current (TDC) variables, measuring available margin to the motherboard's maximum power output and current, respectively. Electrical Design Current (EDC) also indicates the maximum current possible from the VRMs during peak/transient conditions. A control loop feeds the real-time telemetry data back to the Infinity Fabric, which then allows the processor to dynamically affect performance based on thermal and power conditions.

If the motherboard BIOS supports it, AMD exposes some of these monitoring features with its updated Ryzen Master 1.3 overclocking software. The fastest cores are identified during the binning process and flagged by Ryzen Master with gold stars on a per-CCX basis. The third- and fourth-fastest cores are marked with a circle.

AMD's software now supports per-CCX overclocking as well, and includes a built-in stress test. The warranty does not cover damage caused by overclocking, so exercise caution.

Because there are still plenty of 300-series motherboards available for sale, AMD designed a badge to let you know that a firmware update may be necessary before dropping a 2000-series CPU into one of those older platforms. Unless your 300-series motherboard has an out-of-band update mechanism like BIOS Flashback, you need a previous-gen Ryzen processor to update it. AMD also offers its Boot Kit solution, which is a loaner processor you can use to update the motherboard firmware.

Eventually, all 300-series motherboards will support 2000-series processors right out of the box. AMD expects X470 and X370 boards to coexist for the foreseeable future, so it may be possible to find excellent deals on those previous-gen motherboards.

DIMM Slots Filled	Memory Ranks	Supported Speed
2 of 2	Single	2933*
2 of 2	Dual	2677
2 of 4	Single	2933*
2 of 4	Dual	2400
4 of 4	Single	2133
4 of 4	Dual	1866

*Note: requires a motherboard with at least six PCB layers. DDR4-2667 is supported on four-layer PCBs.

AMD's 2000-series processors support up to DDR4-2933 with a pair of single-rank DIMMs, though you need a six-layer motherboard to unlock that capability. Support drops back to DDR4-2667 for four-layer motherboards. Fortunately for enthusiasts, most mainstream platforms utilize six or eight layers.

From what we've seen thus far, X470 motherboards have an improved layout to facilitate aggressive memory overclocking. As you might expect, X470 boards in our labs are much more mature at launch than the 300-series platforms we battled last year. Thanks to this, we're easily running memory at DDR4-3466 with tight timings. Our motherboard team also noticed vastly improved overclocking with all memory slots populated, which was an issue on some X370 motherboards.

X470-based motherboards feature lower power consumption, higher multi-hub USB throughput, and improved power delivery. But they still have the same connectivity options as 300-series motherboards.

I/O Source	USB 3.1 Gen2	USB 3.1 Gen1	USB 2.0	PCIe Gen3	GPP PCIe Gen2	SATA
AMD Ryzen SoC (1000- and 2000-series)	0	4	0	20x	0	2
X470/370	2	6	6	0	8	8
B350	2	2	6	0	6	6
A320	1	2	6	0	4	6

The first line in our chart covers Ryzen's I/O capabilities, which you then combine with one of the chipsets underneath to determine platform connectivity. A Ryzen CPU sports 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes. Sixteen are dedicated to the PCIe slots, while four lanes are dedicated to SATA ports or a 4x link for NVMe SSDs. Four of the SATA ports can also be assigned to SATA Express interfaces at a 2:1 ratio, yielding a maximum of two SATA Express connections.

As you can see, the X470 chipset offers the same connectivity options as its predecessor, with two USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, four USB 3.1 Gen1 ports, six USB 2.0 ports, and eight general-purpose PCIe 2.0 lanes that vendors can carve up for additional functionality (like hanging M.2 slots off of the chipset or enhanced 5/10GbE support).

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Cache And Memory Performance, IPC

Memory Latency

AMD Measurements	L1 Cache Latency	L2 Cache Latency	L3 Cache Latency	Memory Latency
Latency Improvements	13%	34%	16%	11%

AMD's first-gen processors demonstrated higher memory latency than we expected, affecting the performance of memory-sensitive applications. The company claims it reduced memory latency by 11% this time around, as well as cutting cache latencies by double-digit percentages. We'll start by measuring the memory and Infinity Fabric subsystems, and then move on to IPC tests.

SiSoftware's Sandra is used to measure cache and memory latency with three different access patterns, giving us more granularity than a single test. Sequential access patterns are almost entirely prefetched into the TLB, so that one's a good measure of prefetcher performance. The in-page random test measures random accesses within the same memory page. It also measures TLB performance and represents best-case random performance. The full random test features a mix of TLB hits and misses, with a strong likelihood of misses, so it quantifies worst-case latency.

We tested both the Ryzen 7 1800X and Ryzen 7 2700X on the same X470 motherboard. We include results with the Ryzen 7 2700X at DDR4-2933 for the stock configuration, DDR4-3466 for the overclocked configuration, and DDR4-2666 to normalize it with AMD's Ryzen 7 1800X.

With normalized DDR4-2667 data rates and timings, the Ryzen 7 2700X posts impressive gains over Ryzen 7 1800X, regardless of the data access pattern. As percentages, the 2700X's improvements weigh in at 11.49% for full random, 6.64% for in-page, and 9.35% for the sequential access pattern.

The Infinity Fabric speeds up as we increase memory frequency to the 2700X's default DDR4-2933. This fabric ties the IMC and cores together, so we record even larger improvements of 18% in the full random test, 13.4% with a full random access pattern, and 12.9% with the sequential metric.

AMD isn't fully disclosing the steps it took to improve memory latency, but we suspect the company worked on the Infinity Fabric and integrated memory controller to realize these gains.

Cache Latency And Bandwidth

Regardless of the memory access pattern, the smallest data chunks fit into L1 cache. As the data gets larger, it populates the 2700X's higher tiers of cache, which we outlined in the following table:

	L1	L2	L3	Main Memory
Range	2KB - 32KB	64KB - 512KB	1MB - 4MB	8MB - 1GB

% Improvement Over 1800X	L1	L2	L3
In-Page	11.11%	51.72%	26.38%
Full-Random	11.11%	53.5%	25.64%
Sequential	11.11%	13.3%	13.3%

The cache latency reductions that we measured are even better than what AMD suggested we'd see, though its lab might be using different access patterns. Regardless, the apples-to-apples results in our table are downright impressive.

We also see a notable increase in cache bandwidth. Feeding the cores with lower latency and higher throughput is a win-win on the performance front. Intel's S-series processors still have a big single-core L1 bandwidth advantage, but AMD's updated L2 cache is measurably faster than the 1800X in both single- and multi-threaded tests. AMD even enjoys better L2 cache latency than Intel in the sequential test and better L3 cache latency with several data patterns.

To Infinity, And Beyond

The updated Zen+ design fuses two four-core CCXs together with the Infinity Fabric, which is a crossbar that also handles IMC, northbridge, and PCIe traffic. As such, fabric latency is a critical variable that ensures the memory latency gains we observe can actually be delivered to the cores.

SiSoftware Sandra's Processor Multi-Core Efficiency metric helps illustrate the Infinity Fabric's performance. We use the Multi-Threaded test with the "best pair match" setting (lowest latency). The utility measures ping times between threads to quantify fabric latency in every possible configuration. We boil those benchmarks down to latency averages for the different pathways, but head here for a more detailed explanation of the various components.

AMD reduced Ryzen 7 2700X's intra-core latency by 11.8% and the critical cross-CCX latency by 8.3%. We also notice that Ryzen 7 2700X offers significantly improved fabric bandwidth.

Instructions Per Clock

It's important to remember that IPC can vary by workload, so dissimilar tasks may yield different outcomes. We set a static 3 GHz clock rate for the following tests:

Our single-core Cinebench benchmark suggests a 1.6% IPC improvement favoring Ryzen 7 2700X. But while AMD does improve, Intel still holds onto a distinct IPC throughput advantage. Switching to the Multi-Threaded Cinbench test gives Ryzen 7 2700X a 2.7% improvement over its predecessor.

Core i9-7820X employs two 256-bit AVX FMA units per core that operate in parallel, whereas Ryzen's Zen architecture divides 256-bit AVX operations across two FMA units per core. That difference hands the Skylake-X processor a commanding lead in y-cruncher. We do see a 3.9% increase in the 2700X's Multi-Threaded y-cruncher result compared to Ryzen 7 1800X. But the gains in single-threaded AVX performance are marginal.

We see similar results in our single-core cryptographic tests, though Ryzen 7 2700X takes an 8.7% lead over the 1800X in the Multi-Threaded AES-256-ECB encryption workload. AMD's Zen architecture includes two AES cryptographic accelerators for each core, so it isn't surprising to see Ryzen dominate over Intel's S-series CPUs in the AES-256-ECB tests.

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Overclocking, Spectre, And Test Setup

Overclocking

We ran our gaming and application tests in the U.S. lab, while power/thermal measurements were collected in our German lab.

In the U.S. lab, we paired our Ryzen 7 2700X with Corsair's H115i cooler for overclocking. This allowed us to maintain a 4.2 GHz all-core frequency at 1.3785V Vcore, 1.2V SoC voltage, and the default Load Line Calibration settings. Since we couldn't smash through to 4.3 GHz without exceeding AMD's 1.40V maximum recommended Vcore setting, we stopped at 4.2 GHz.

We did encounter temperatures as high as 90°C during extended AVX testing, so we recommend a capable closed-loop or custom water cooler for overclocking. AMD would really benefit from an AVX-offset feature as well, which could cut clock rates during power-hungry AVX workloads. Should you choose to go the more extreme route, there have been reports of 5.8 GHz with Ryzen 7 2700X under LN2.

First-gen Ryzen processors don't have much memory overclocking headroom, so we're still testing tuned X370 platforms at DDR4-3200. However, the X470 platform was remarkably stable at higher data rates with Ryzen 7 2700X. So, we settled on DDR4-3466 with 14-14-14-34 timings (though we're confident that more time to tune would yield even higher overclocks). We also ran our overclocked Intel processors at DDR4-3466.

Spectre And Meltdown

Our test rigs now include Meltdown And Spectre Variant 1 mitigations. Spectre Variant 2 requires both motherboard firmware/microcode and operating system patches. We have installed the operating system patches for Variant 2.

Today's performance measurements do not include Intel's motherboard firmware mitigations for Spectre Variant 2 though, as we've been waiting for AMD patches to level the playing field. Last week, AMD announced that it’s making the mitigations available to motherboard vendors and OEMs, which the company says should take time to appear in the wild. We checked MSI's website for firmware updates applicable to our X370 platforms when AMD made its announcement, but no new BIOSes were available (and still aren't).

Unfortunately, we were only made aware that Variant 2 mitigations are present in our X470 board's firmware just before launch, precluding us from re-testing the Intel platforms with patches applied. We're working on this now, and plan to post updated results in future reviews.

The lack of Spectre Variant 2 patches in our Intel results likely give the Core CPUs a slight advantage over AMD's patched platforms. But the performance difference should be minimal with modern processors.

Test Setup

AMD is working on a Precision Boost Overdrive feature, which seems similar to the Multi-Core Enhanced Turbo (MCE) feature that allows Intel's K-series processors to run at their maximum Turbo Boost bin across all cores at all times. The setting on Intel platforms modifies the CPU's clock rate and voltage to deliver higher performance, basically amounting to factory-sanctioned overclocking.

AMD's Ryzen Master 1.3 software doesn't currently let you activate this feature from within Windows. But as we often find with MCE, AMD's Precision Boost Overdrive is enabled by default in many BIOSes. After extensive experimentation, we can conclude that the option doesn't deliver an appreciable performance gain in its current form. Thus, we ran our tests with Precision Boost Overdrive disabled.

Comparison Products

Intel Core i5-8400

Intel Core i5-8600K

Intel Core i7-7700K

Test Systems

Test System & Configuration
Hardware	Germany AMD Socket AM4 (400-Series)AMD Ryzen 7 2700XMSI X470 Gaming M7 AC2x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2933, DDR4-3466Intel LGA 1151 (Z370):Intel Core i5-8600K, i5-8600K, Core i5-8400MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC2x 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 @ 2666AMD Socket AM4 Workstation (300-Series)AMD Ryzen 5 1500X, Ryzen 5 1600X, Ryzen 5 1400MSI X370 Tomahawk4x 8GB G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 @ 2667 and 3200 Intel LGA 1151 (Z270)Intel Core i7-7700KMSI Z270 Gaming 72x 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 @ 2400 and 3200All SystemsGeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition (Gaming)Nvidia Quadro P6000 (Workstation)1x 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 (M.2, System)2x 960GB Toshiba OCZ TR150 (Storage, Images)be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11, 850W Power SupplyWindows 10 Pro (Creators Update)U.S.AMD Socket AM4 (400-Series)AMD Ryzen 7 2700XMSI X470 Gaming M7 AC2x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2933, DDR4-3466Intel LGA 1151 (Z370):Intel Core i7-8700K, i5-8600K, Core i5-8400MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC2x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2400, DDR4-2667, DDR4-3466AMD Socket AM4 (300-Series)AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700X, 1700, Ryzen 5 1600XMSI X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium2x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2667, DDR4-3200Intel LGA 1151 (Z270)Intel Core i7-7700K MSI Z270 Gaming M72x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2400Intel LGA 2066Intel Core i7-7820XMSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC4x 8GB G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 @ DDR4-2666All EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FE 1TB Samsung PM863 SilverStone ST1500-TI, 1500W Windows 10 Creators Update Version 1703
Cooling	GermanyAlphacool Eiszeit 2000 ChillerAlphacool Eisblock XPXThermal Grizzly Kryonaut (For Cooler Switch)U.S.Corsair H115i
Monitor	Eizo EV3237-BK
PC Case	Lian Li PC-T70 with Extension Kit and Mods Configurations: Open Benchtable, Closed Case
Power Consumption Measurement	Contact-free DC Measurement at PCIe Slot (Using a Riser Card) Contact-free DC Measurement at External Auxiliary Power Supply Cable Direct Voltage Measurement at Power Supply 2x Rohde & Schwarz HMO 3054, 500 MHz Digital Multi-Channel Oscilloscope with Storage Function4x Rohde & Schwarz HZO50 Current Probe (1mA - 30A, 100 kHz, DC) 4x Rohde & Schwarz HZ355 (10:1 Probes, 500 MHz) 1x Rohde & Schwarz HMC 8012 Digital Multimeter with Storage Function
Thermal Measurement	1x Optris PI640 80 Hz Infrared Camera + PI Connect Real-Time Infrared Monitoring and Recording
Acoustic Measurement	NTI Audio M2211 (with Calibration File, Low Cut at 50Hz) Steinberg UR12 (with Phantom Power for Microphones)Creative X7, Smaart v.7 Custom-Made Proprietary Measurement Chamber, 3.5 x 1.8 x 2.2m (L x D x H) Perpendicular to Center of Noise Source(s), Measurement Distance of 50cm Noise Level in dB(A) (Slow), Real-time Frequency Analyzer (RTA) Graphical Frequency Spectrum of Noise

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VRMark, 3DMark And AotS: Escalation

VRMark & 3DMark

Gaming is where rubber meets the road for most enthusiasts. AMD tells us that its 2000-series processors should be nearly equivalent to Intel's comparable models, at least at stock settings. And there's no doubt that Ryzen 7 2700X will excel in heavily-threaded titles. But tests that are sensitive to clock rate and IPC throughput, such as VRMark, have traditionally been a challenge for Ryzen.

The 2700X bridges the gap between Intel's processors and first-gen Ryzen. AMD's stock 2700X outstrips the Ryzen 7 1800X by 11.8%. More impressively, it also beats the overclocked 1800X by 2%. The 2700X's lead over its predecessor extends further after tuning its cores and memory subsystem.

Synthetic benchmarks are great because they tend to scale more clearly than real-world applications. 3DMark's real usefulness lies in measuring the amount of performance available to game engines, giving us a peek at what highly-optimized games could be capable of.

Ryzen 7 2700X's 16 threads beat Core i7-8700K's 12 threads in our DX11 and DX12 CPU tests, even after overclocking. The 2700X also bests Intel's $589 Core i7-7820X during both tests.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation evokes memories of AMD's early struggles with the Zen architecture. This was one of the first games to receive an update optimized for AMD's processor design.

Although the patch improved performance, Ryzen 7 1800X still fails to beat a stock Core i7-8700K. But Ryzen 7 2700X and its Precision Boost 2 algorithm turn the tables, giving AMD an advantage in stock and overclocked trim.

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Civilization VI Graphics & AI, Dawn of War III

Civilization VI AI Test

Civilization's AI test measures performance in a turn-based strategy game and tends to favor per-core performance. Ryzen 7 2700X almost ties the Coffee Lake-based Core i7-8700K at its stock settings. However, Intel gains more from overclocking, pulling away after our tuning efforts.

Again, notice that the stock Ryzen 7 2700X is fast enough to beat the overclocked 1800X.

Civilization VI Graphics Test

The stock Ryzen 7 2700X beats every other Ryzen CPU by ~10 FPS (or more). But Intel's stock CPUs have no problem maintaining their advantage.

Tuning the 2700X yields a 6.3% speed-up on average. But that doesn't help it catch the Core i5-8600K, which takes the top two spots in our chart.

Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War III

The overclocked Ryzen 7 2700X lands just shy of the Core i7-7700K and -8700K. Tuning those chips allows them to walk away from AMD's flagship, though.

Meanwhile, Ryzen 7 2700X beats AMD's Ryzen 7 1800X by 14% right out of the box.

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Far Cry Primal, GTA: V, Hitman

Far Cry Primal

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

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

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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Shadow Of War, Project CARS 2

Middle-earth: Shadow Of War

Middle-earth: Shadow of War doesn't scale as dramatically as some of our other benchmarks, and it certainly isn't as sensitive to IPC throughput and frequency as Shadow of Mordor. While CPU reviews tend to focus on games that scale well with certain host processing specifications, some games just can't get enough graphics performance.

Ryzen 7 2700X comes tantalizingly close to matching the Coffee Lake-based processors at stock and overclocked settings.

Project CARS 2

Project CARS 2 is purportedly optimized for threading. A 6C/6T Core i5-8600K beats the overclocked 8C/16T Ryzen 7 2700X though, so it's clear that parallelism isn't the most influential factor in defining this game's performance.

A stock Ryzen 7 2700X trails all of the Intel CPUs except for Core i7-7820X. But overclocking nudges AMD's flagship closer to the top.

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Office And Productivity

Adobe Creative Cloud

Adobe's Creative Cloud suite generally favors higher frequencies and IPC throughput, giving Intel an advantage. Still, Ryzen 7 2700X provides a nice balance of high clock rates and core count, yielding an impressive 13.8% speed-up in the overall score compared to AMD's tuned Ryzen 7 1800X.

Overclocking doesn't deliver the big gains we recorded in our gaming suite. In some of the lightly-threaded application tests (like After Effects), a stock Ryzen 7 2700X is even faster than the overclocked one. This is a result of the 2700X's 4.3 GHz Precision Boost 2 frequency, which outstrips our 4.2 GHz all-core overclock. These tests also aren't as latency-sensitive as gaming workloads, so DDR4-3466 doesn't deliver as much of a performance improvement.

Web Browser

The Krakken suite tests JavaScript performance using several workloads, including audio, imaging, and cryptography. AMD's processors typically lag Intel's in Web browser benchmarks due to their lower per-core performance. However, a stock Ryzen 7 2700X still outpaces its overclocked predecessor.

The MotionMark benchmarks, which emphasize graphics performance (rather than JavaScript), are also sensitive to CPU clock rates. Again, the 2700X's higher stock Precision Boost 2 frequencies allow it to slip past the overclocked configuration. At the same time, we measure a 14.6% gain over the stock 1800X.

Productivity

Ryzen 7 2700X is much more competitive than AMD's previous-generation CPUs. We also observe slim gains from overclocking in many of these workloads.

Our video conferencing workload measures performance in single- and multi-user applications that utilize the Windows Media Foundation for playback and encoding. It also performs facial detection to model real-world usage. Not surprisingly then, a stock Ryzen 7 2700X leads the rest of the field at default clock rates thanks to its 8C/16T configuration and higher frequencies.

The photo editing benchmark measures performance with Futuremark's binaries using the ImageMagick library. Common photo processing workloads also tend to be parallelized, which obviously plays to the 2700X's eight-core design.

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Rendering, Encoding, And Compression

Rendering

Ryzen 7 2700X takes a commanding lead in the multi-core Cinebench benchmark, which we expected in light of the radical cache latency and bandwidth improvements that AMD made. POV-Ray also shows the 2700X to be a chart-topper, though again it's faster in stock form than overclocked.

AMD's Ryzen 7 2700X leads in many of the threaded workloads, but isn't as impressive in workloads that tax a single core. There, Intel's architectures continue shining.

Core i7-7820X leads in LuxMark. But notice that we don't have OpenCL results for it. This is because the older OpenCL SDK doesn't support AVX-512. Intel updated the SDK fairly recently, and it works correctly with Skylake-X-based processors. We'll have to retest all of these CPUs to reflect the changes, but be assured that AVX-512 is a powerful addition.

Encoding & Compression

LAME is the quintessential example of a single-threaded workload, and the 2700X posts solid gains over Ryzen 7 1800X in its stock configuration.

Our threaded compression and decompression tests adsorb data directly from system memory, thus removing storage from the equation. As per usual, the Ryzen processors dominate the decompression workload while Intel's Skylake-X leads in compression-oriented benchmarks. It's notable that Core i7-8700K needs overclocking in order to beat AMD's flagship.

There's a larger delta between Intel and AMD processors during our HandBrake x265 test compared to the x264 benchmark due to its heavier distribution of AVX instructions. Ryzen 7 2700X is particularly impressive in the x264 metric, where it upsets the capable Core i7-7820X.

We also provide results from y-cruncher, a single- and multi-threaded program that computes Pi using AVX instructions. We tested with version 0.7.3.9474, which includes Ryzen optimizations. The 2700X trails Intel's portfolio in the single-core benchmark. However, parallelization puts it in a more competitive position. Also, we clearly see the benefit of Core i7-7820X's dual 256-bit AVX FMA units (per core) in the AVX workloads.

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XFR2 vs. Manual Overclocking

XFR2, Cooling, and Clock Rates

In contrast to the first-gen Ryzen models and their strange temperature curves, the tCTL (core temperature) values now correspond with what we'd expect to see. AMD does add a 10-degree offset to the 2700X specifically, which motherboard BIOSes already take into account. We subtract this offset from our own measurements.

Chip quality naturally influences achievable clock rates as well. These effects are seen much more clearly with second-gen Ryzen CPUs supporting XFR2, since they have to be binned precisely.

With as much cooling performance as we could muster, Ryzen 7 2700X still reaches almost 4.2 GHz. A more conventional thermal solution would result in a lower clock rate. However, with a good air cooler, it should be possible to sustain 4 GHz on all cores.

Manual Overclocking

Ryzen 7 2700X can be manually overclocked to 4.3 GHz. But the 1.475V required for this is more aggressive than we want to get long-term. Pushing to 4.35 GHz resulted in a crash no matter how much voltage we applied.

As the following curve shows, power consumption and performance in Cinebench are almost directly proportional, so long as the system runs stably and doesn't crash. It's also worth noting that Cool'n'Quiet is completely disabled on our test platform when we configure the ratio multiplier manually. When that happens, the configured clock rate doesn't drop from its specified maximum, even at idle.

We measure a maximum of 135W in Cinebench and just over 150W in Prime95 with AVX, although this extreme torture test is more of an exhibition.

If you spend some money on good cooling, there's no reason to manually overclock Ryzen 7 2700X. Thanks to XFR2, AMD's flagship should remain stable above 4 GHz, even under full load. Try to go any higher and you'll pay a hefty price in heat, power, and possibly long-term reliability.

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Power Consumption

At idle, Ryzen 7 2700X lands behind most of the Intel competition, but ahead of previous-gen Ryzen CPUs. First and second place in our chart go to a couple of AMD APUs, perhaps surprisingly.

Under a light CAD workload, Ryzen 7 2700X performs better and uses less power than its predecessor. This shows us that AMD didn't pay for better clocks with a sacrifice to power consumption. Its progress is already apparent at this point in the measurements.

Gaming tells a similar story; the performance increase is again more pronounced than the differences in power consumption.

When it comes to our stress test, AMD's Ryzen 7 2700X is much more reserved than its predecessor. We attribute this to the chip's XFR2 functionality, along with more granular frequency/voltage settings.

Even when we hit it as hard as possible, the new CPU stays stable above 4 GHz.

Performance rises and power consumption falls (if only slightly). There's truth to AMD's marketing material, so says our lab equipment. Ryzen 7 2700X really does deserve attention for these results.

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Thermals And Noise

The Wraith Prism

Ryzen 7 2700X's Wraith Prism thermal solution is a large, high-finned cooler with four flattened heat pipes and a plate behind them for stabilization. The heat sink's entire contact surface is thus made of copper. Its fins are arranged in such a way that the exhaust air is focused toward the memory and I/O shield.

The fastening clamp is a big disadvantage of this large cooler, which takes us back to the old Athlon XP days. Even at maximum load on all cores in the stress test, the CPU only reaches a maximum temperature of 82.8°C (corrected value), so it remains below the thermal throttle threshold. The cooler handles the 105 watts easily. You can expect peaks up to 70°C and a little above, depending on the motherboard's predefined fan curve.

The cooler is loud and emits 44 dB(A) under load (50 cm distance, 45° diagonal) when the fan is spinning at 2600-2700 RPM. The fan can even be a bit noisy even when the system is idling on the Windows desktop. Unfortunately, the fan adjusts much too rapidly as the cooler reacts to short-term temperature jumps.

We see the result in the narrow-band frequency spectrum of the motor noise, which shifts back and forth between approx. 240 and 300 Hz. The fan generates almost 39 dB(A) at idle, which isn't necessary. It helps if adjust the fan curve to a fixed speed of at least 1400 RPM if the processor is under 60°C. However, you'll have to experiment because each case will require different settings.

AMD has made good progress with XFR2 and the powerful cooling finally pays off in terms of performance. The power consumption remains largely the same and you get a nice clock rate increase, but we don't like the unnecessary noise levels or the fiddly mounting mechanism.

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Final Analysis

AMD's 2000-series processors aren't revolutionary, but they are far beyond the normal evolutionary updates we've become accustomed to over the last several years.

In the chart below, we plotted gaming performance with both average frame rates and a geometric mean of the 99^th percentile frame times (a good indicator of smoothness), which we then converted into an FPS measurement. We're also presenting price-to-performance charts that get split up to include CPUs-only and extra platform costs. For the models that don't come with a bundled cooler, we add an extra $25 for a basic heat sink. We also add $20 if overclocking requires a more expensive motherboard (as is the case for Z370).

In gaming, AMD's stock Ryzen 7 2700X delivers a great performance boost that rivals its overclocked predecessor in every one of our tests. Tuning the 2700X provides additional performance, though you probably won't notice the difference. Check out our chart: as you can see, the Ryzen 7 2700X effectively ties Core i7-8700K based on the geometric mean. But it sells at a $30 discount, drops into a less expensive motherboard, and comes with a thermal solution that adds even more value.

While the overclocked Core i7-8700K is a fierce competitor, it requires you to buy a Z-series motherboard for overclocking, along with a capable cooler. Core i5-8600K offers most of the -8700K's performance, but you lose Ryzen 7 2700X's sixteen threads and bundled heat sink/fan. We think it's safe to say that AMD is delivering on its pledge to provide a near-equivalent gaming experience in most titles.

If you're searching for a more productivity-oriented processor, Ryzen 7 2700X is incredibly attractive. It offers superior performance compared to the Core i7-8700K in many of our threaded tests, and is much more competitive in lightly threaded applications than previous-gen models.

AMD's Precision Boost 2 and XFR2 algorithms are already pushing the voltage/frequency curve to its limits, so don't expect much in the way of overclocking headroom. We did tune Ryzen 7 2700X up to 4.2 GHz, but a higher dual-core Precision Boost 2 frequency of 4.3 GHz offers better performance than our all-core overclock in certain applications. Significant gains in games were likely a result of heightened sensitivity to our DDR4-3466 memory.

AMD's latest Ryzen 7 delivers a host of features that make enthusiasts swoon, such as an unlocked multiplier, backward compatibility with 300-series motherboards, solder between the heat spreader and die, and an LED-equipped cooler. We only wish that B450-based motherboards were available at launch time. Hopefully we hear more about AMD's lower-cost platform soon.

In a broader sense, AMD is delivering on its first update to the Ryzen processor series, proving that it can execute on its roadmap. It looks like it's going to be another busy year in the CPU space--and that's more good news for enthusiasts and gamers.

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Extreme Overclocking: 10 Ryzen CPUs Under LN2

Jean Michel "Wizerty" Tisserand — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Introduction

AMD's Ryzen processors offer a compelling price/performance ratio right out of the box. But despite their many overclocking-friendly knobs and dials, most enthusiasts struggle to take the CPUs beyond 4 GHz. Given that we know the ins and outs of extreme overclocking, though, we have a solution. It's time to break out the liquid nitrogen!

Allow us to take you on a cryogenic journey, where we'll explore Ryzen's behavior when it's cooled to -196°C. Our experiment will allow us to correlate frequency scaling to temperature, voltage, and core count. We also have some tips on hardcore modding, such as lapping (sanding smooth) the processor.

Note that we previously published an article on overclocking Ryzen using air and water cooling. Check out How To Overclock AMD Ryzen CPUs for more.

If, after reading through everything, you have questions about your own overclocking endeavors, don't hesitate to ask them in our comments section. We'll be keeping an eye out in order to help however possible.

Test Configuration

We don't want to limit our quest to just one sample, or even one model. Thanks to AMD's generosity, we were able to get our hands on every SKU in the Ryzen family. Here's what we have access to for today's overclocking adventure:

2x Ryzen 7 1800X
1x Ryzen 7 1700X
3x Ryzen 7 1700
1x Ryzen 5 1600X
1x Ryzen 5 1600
1x Ryzen 5 1500X
1x Ryzen 5 1400

The processors used for this test are different than the chips used for our previous article on overclocking with air and water cooling. Therefore, we expect to see different results.

In the interest of truly torturing these CPUs, we surrounded ourselves with some of the best hardware available for testing:

The motherboard we're using is Asus' Crosshair VI Hero, equipped to facilitate extreme overclocking. The only feature it's missing is a second BIOS, which could have come in useful for recovering from a corrupted configuration.

This ROG-series motherboard is armed with two sticks of G.Skill Flare X DDR4 memory. These modules were specially developed for Ryzen. Furthermore, they are equipped with Samsung B-die ICs, known for their overclocking headroom.

Last of all, we use a Cooler Master MasterWatt Maker 1200 power supply.

AMD Ryzen 7 1700XView Deal

AMD Ryzen 7 1700View Deal

AMD Ryzen 5 1600XView Deal

AMD Ryzen 5 1600View Deal

AMD Ryzen 5 1500XView Deal

AMD Ryzen 5 1400View Deal

G.Skill Flare X (2x 8GB)View Deal

Cooler Master - MasterWatt Maker 1200View Deal

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Preparing The Motherboard

Measurement Points

We begin with a little modification to the motherboard. Test points are available on the PCB, but Asus sadly neglects to include connectors. As a result, it's on you to precisely touch the indicated pads with a multimeter in order to take measurements.

Normally that's not an issue. But when it comes to extreme overclocking, voltages have to be watched more closely and we don't always have our hands free. Right away, we add something to plug our volt meter into for easier measurements.

LN2 mode

Some preparations are easier than others. In this step, we simply move the jumper labeled “LN2 MODE” in order to activate it. Once enabled, the motherboard automatically starts up with higher supply voltages. This will offer better support for the extreme conditions we're planning to apply. Certain hidden profiles in the BIOS are also unlocked.

Don't enable the LN2 MODE jumper if you plan on overclocking at ambient temperatures. Following the activation of this mode, the PLL (Phase Locked Loop) will transition from 1.8V to 2.1V. If you read our previous article, we revealed that raising PLL from 1.8 to 1.9V caused an 8°C temperature increase. Raising the PLL to 2.1V on air cooling should be avoided!

Isolation

When overclocking with liquid nitrogen, special care must be taken to protect your hardware. Ice will form and you don't want to risk water droplets falling onto the electrical components. We presented a number of ways to approach this in De-Lidding and Overclocking Core i7-7700K with Water and LN2.

To start, we remove the heat sink covering the motherboard's VRMs. This step isn't obligatory; it most depends on the overclocker's preference. In our opinion, though, this sink is useful for extreme overclocking, so we prefer to take it off. This facilitates the insulating steps that follow, and even more important gets rid of a big metal mass. That could be a big risk for forming condensation otherwise.

Once we're down to the bare motherboard, we craft a “shield” made from shop towels. This protective layer must be fitted as tight as possible in order to prevent condensation from reaching the PCB.

Unused RAM slots are filled with towels. The space between surface-mounted components gets the same treatment, too. To finish, a section of neoprene is fitted around the socket. This protection serves as a last defense, though we hope that condensation is stopped well before this stage.

If it is properly made and placed, this ultimate protection is sufficient to shield the hardware without damaging it, and can be easily removed. Once the cooling pot (which holds the liquid nitrogen and cools the CPU) is in place, we pack on more shop towels. The pot is wrapped in neoprene, then towels, and any exposed portions of the motherboard are covered with several more layers of towels.

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Preparing The RAM

During our first extreme overclocking sessions, we didn't put much effort into preparing the memory. We simply installed the modules into slots with their factory heat sinks in place. This strategy didn't work all that well, as we had to stop our tests multiple times when the hardware refused to start up. Although we can't say for sure, it's likely that humidity around the memory stick closest to the pot was responsible for these failures.

After drying the hardware, everything worked once again. And since this happened more than once, removing the RAM sinks just seemed like a prudent idea.

If you choose to follow suit, be careful: some heat spreaders are so firmly attached to the memory chips that they can pull ICs right off the PCB. To improve our chance of success, we warmed the module up first. Even then, it took a lot of effort to achieve our goal.

Before masking off the chips, we take advantage of their exposure to verify that our sticks are endowed with Samsung B-die memory. Without question, they're the best for overclocking.

The type of the IC is indicated on the chip, just above the red line we drew, “5WB”. If these were E-die chips, we'd see 5WE, or 5WD for D-die. Other manufacturers use different identification marks.

To protect our memory stick, we cover it with adhesive tape. The impermeable nature of this tape should keep condensation from ruining our day. Don't worry, the missing sinks pose no challenge to stability. Even at 1.6V, the chips remain cool.

The small pins at the bottom of the module are too close to the slot to be covered. They're buried under layers of absorbent towels though, and therefore less exposed.

Even without the sinks in place to trap condensation, the surface of the RAM doesn't seem to be much less humid. This picture was taken at the end of an overclocking session, and you can clearly see drops of water on the stick's most exposed side. Nevertheless, our efforts pay off: we didn't have any issues with system cut-outs.

It would have been easier to pile paper towels around the RAM to keep water from collecting on the PCB. But then the modules would have cooled down even more through the motherboard. Given that Samsung's B-die memory dislikes freezing temperatures, they could have then failed to function at high frequencies. For better or worse, nothing is ever simple with extreme overclocking.

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1800X: First Test Of Scaling With LN2

By luck, we chose the best Ryzen 7 1800X for our scaling trials right out of the gate.

Ryzen 7 1800X : Frequency As A Function Of Temperature At 1.5V

This first experiment explores how the processor behaves at different temperatures with its core voltage fixed at 1.5V. That seems really high for a test at ambient, and we don't want to damage our CPU just for the sake of generating a chart. On the other hand, once the 1800X is at -196°C, a voltage of 1.5V is actually pretty conservative. In the end, we picked this value as the best compromise between risk at ambient and extreme overclocking performance.

At room temperature (20°C), the processor passes a Cinebench R15 run at 4175 MHz. This is a high frequency for Ryzen, achieved at significant risk. Don't try this at home: warm silicon doesn't like aggressive voltage settings.

By lowering the temperature to 0°C, we're able to dial in a 100 MHz frequency increase. So far, we have an improvement of around 5 MHz/°C.

We continue to lower the temperature by pouring liquid nitrogen in the cooling pot until we arrive at -50°C. The frequency gain is now 250 MHz. Our progression remains constant with the same rate of 5 MHz/°C.

Next we see -100°C, giving us an additional 200 MHz. The trend begins to flatten, indicating that the scaling progression is slowing down slightly (4 MHz/°C).

An additional 50°C drop in temperature shows a gain of only 175 MHz at -150°C. The increase is 3.5 MHz/°C.

For the last step, we reach full pot. At -196°C, with a 46°C drop in temperature, the clock rate stabilizes at 5025 MHz (2.7 MHz/°C).

A full pot signifies that our chamber is filled to the brim. We are at the minimum temperature permissible with liquid nitrogen, which is -196°C. To go any lower, you'd need liquid helium: -269 °C.

Thanks uniquely to the reduced temperature, our sample passes Cinebench R15 with an additional 850 MHz overclock. When you hear that these processors love the cold and are damaged by heat, here is the proof.

Ryzen 7 1800X : Frequency As A Function Of Core Voltage At -196 °C

The next experiment tracks our CPU's behavior at various core voltages with a temperature held constant at -196°C. Only the voltage changes; all other parameters remain unchanged.

At 1.5V, we hit the same clock rate seen in the previous set of tests. This makes sense, of course. However, we'll take the time to mention how well our sample scales. In fact, some of the CPUs we tested couldn't hit 4175 MHz even at a core voltage of more than 1.8V.

With an additional 0.1V, the frequency increases 100 MHz. This is significant, but not exceptional. As a reminder, we saw the same gain under air cooling when transitioning from 1.3 to 1.4V, while the shift from 1.0 to 1.1V offered a superior increase of 250 MHz. Before starting these tests, we would have guessed that the clock rate gained by increasing voltage would be amplified at lower temperatures. That's not the case, though.

The same observation applies when we raise the core voltage an additional 0.1V to 1.7V (+100 MHz).

For the next step, we stabilize 75 MHz higher at 1.8V. This frequency is remarkable: 5300 MHz. Such a clock rate is not common with Ryzen.

We halt the trial at 1.85V. Going any higher yields no frequency increase, and the voltage settings start becoming hazardous to our guinea pig.

The progression we just saw cannot be extrapolated to all Ryzen CPUs at the temperatures and voltages we used for testing. Certain specimens will fare worse when cold, some won't accept more than 1.75V, and others will continue scaling beyond 1.9V. This sample is above average though, even if it's always possible to find something better.

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Lapping The CPU

As we ran our tests, we realized that this sample was above average. So, we tried to land a record for eight-core processors, including AMD and Intel CPUs. The combat was relentless. On one hand, there were some very good results obtained by overclockers right around the time Ryzen was released, and it isn't hard to imagine that they had access to a sizeable quantity of hand-picked chips. On the other hand, Intel's Core i7-5960X compensates for its age with frequencies beyond 6 GHz under liquid nitrogen cooling.

We therefore decided to concentrate our efforts on two benchmarks: Cinebench R15 and GPUPI. In both cases, we succeeded in taking second place, in front of the -5960X contenders running around 6200 MHz (in the case of GPUPI).

Lapping In Pursuit Of MHz

At that time, our highest clock speed in GPUPI was 5390 MHz. The leader, Der8auer, was at 5440 MHz. First place, while so close, seemed out of reach. Without a better 1800X at our disposal, we decided to lap our sample in the hopes of better thermal transfer.

During our tests, we saw a gain of 2.7 MHz/°C at -196°C. If lapping helped us gain 15°C, which is not impossible given the high voltages we were using, 5430 MHz should be attainable.

The process proved more laborious than we expected. Within the first few minutes, defects began appearing in the CPU lid's shape. A flat processor should be “worn” completely on the surface in a homogeneous manner. However, we were uniquely attacking the edges of the IHS.

There were two possible scenarios: either the processor was not actually flat, or we were lapping incorrectly. To remove any doubt, we took a brand new razor blade and placed it on the CPU's surface. There it was: the blade only touched the borders, allowing a seam of light to shine through in the center.

Our lapping effort resumed. We used emery cloth (comparable to sand paper and intended for use in sanding metals) attached to a piece of glass to guarantee a uniform surface. We started with a course grit to rapidly remove (relatively, of course) the extra material on the edges.

This is the progress we made in one hour. The nickel coating is removed, revealing copper on the sides. Gradually as we eroded the surplus material, our uniform area grew in size. In the end, almost the entire IHS appears to be copper. Two visible spots persist, but the defect is sufficiently small to be ignored. The processor doesn't need to be polished any further. Having a flat surface is top priority. Fine scratches won't affect performance.

At this point, we resumed our trials with liquid nitrogen, confident in our work and hopeful that we'd realize our estimated gains.

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BIOS Settings

New BIOS features allowing the adjustment of RAM timings, which were previously greyed-out, became available during our testing. Unfortunately, those updates started rolling out too late. Given that there is only one BIOS chip on our test platform, and that we had already generated quite a bit of data beforehand, we decided to continue with BIOS version 0083 in order to maintain our methodology.

While some overclockers saw improvements from BIOS version 1201, this wasn't the case for everyone. Memory controller quality played a big role, too.

We already explained the BIOS settings in our previous guide, so we won't dive back into the details. Here's what the voltages we used look like, though:

CPU Core Voltage: Set to 1.5V on our sample. It can be raised to 1.8 or even 1.9V without worry when the cooling pot is at -196°C. During our first tests, we started at 1.5V in the BIOS and then stepped higher through the operating system. After a while, we determined it was safe enough to simply start off with the desired value.
VDDSOC: As with air cooling, avoid setting this any higher than 1.25V. For example, you can set VDDSOC to 1.2V, find the maximum stable frequency for your RAM, and then try to lower the setting to 1.18 or 1.15V. In short, seek the minimum value necessary.
DRAM: For our memory sticks, 1.6V was sufficient for 3200 MT/s at 12-12-12 timings. The most important variable is the quality of processor's memory controller, but aside from switching processors, there is no silver bullet!
1.8V PLL: We didn't see any gains when increasing the PLL voltage. The LN2 mode jumper adjusts this to 2.1V, but you can leave it at 1.8V without risking any problems.
1.05V SB: 1.3V does not seem to pose a problem; however, we didn't realize any performance gains by increasing this parameter.

The Case For LLC

In the “External Digi+ Power Control” sub-menu, you find the CPU Load-line Calibration option. We tried multiple modes available on Asus' Crosshair VI Hero and recorded their voltages with a multimeter. With a voltage setting of 1.8V in our BIOS, we observed the following values under load:

LLC 2: 1.78V
LLC 3: 1.83V
LLC 4: 1.85V

During our test under air cooling, we were surprised to see that even the lowest level of LLC was already too high. With LN2 and higher voltages in play, Level 1 and 2 are no longer sufficient, though. But also be careful not to overdo it, since Level 4 and 5 were too severe. Therefore, we recommend LLC 3 for voltages near 1.8V.

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AM4_PCRATIO: A Frequency For Each Core!

Hiding behind this obscure name is a small utility allowing one core to be overclocked, or to set one CCX (CPU Complex) to a different frequency than the other one. If you don't know why you'd bother, allow us to explain in a little more detail.

When overclocking a processor, all of the cores operate at the same clock rate, and this is great for most folks. On the other hand, if you're gunning for a single-threaded benchmark record, performance is held back by the least-scalable silicon.

Take a quad-core processor as an example. Some of its cores are capable of running at 4 GHz, while others hit 4.2 or 4.4 GHz. Without utilizing special tools, you'll lock up as soon as you try pushing past 4 GHz since some of the cores aren't capable of going any higher. Talk about a frustrating situation: the best cores are held back by the worst.

The CCX Version

Using am4_pcratio_ccx (instead of am4_pcratio_focus) allows the frequency of all cores in one CCX to be changed, while the other CPU Complex's cores are automatically adjusted down to a lower clock rate.

Here is an example of three processors: A, B, and C. The value shown in blue indicates the maximum frequency that the cores are capable of operating at.

A: In this example, whether you deactivate cores from the BIOS or from AM4_PCRATIO, you won't see much of a gain because they're all identical.
B: Core 0 is the best one. You can can choose to uniquely activate it from the BIOS, while the others are turned off. With fewer active cores, the processor generates less heat and you can overclock even further. Another method would be to use AM4_PCRATIO with a focus on Core 0. The result would be roughly identical, but you'd end up with other active cores. For instance, Windows would run on some cores at 2 GHz, allowing the benchmark to have unique control of the fastest core.
C: Now the fastest core is Core 3. It isn't possible to reserve only this one using the BIOS. So, using AM4_PCRATIO is your best chance for an improved benchmark score.

Given that each processor is different, it is difficult to quantify the gain from this manipulation. Worst-case, if you spend time trying each core and discover their limits are all the same, you wasted a couple of hours. On the other hand, if your sample is more like our second or third example, the gains can be substantial. Knowing that a competition can be won with a 10 or 20 MHz advantage, this is far from anecdotal.

Put your hard work in at room temperature. That'll allow you to conserve several liters of LN2.

With a bit of experience, it's easy to figure out the limits of individual cores quickly. All you need to do is overclock each one, raising their frequencies individually until your PC crashes. Since we have to run our benchmark multiple times, choose a 10- to 15-second test for brevity.

Our strategy was as follows:

Start by finding the limits of Core 0, then focus on Core 0 by using AM4_PCRATIO and execute GPUPI.
If the benchmark completes, note the stable frequency and proceed to a higher clock rate. Repeat this operation until the system freezes. We now know the maximum frequency for Core 0. If the test completes at 4000 MHz, 4025 MHz, and 4050 MHz, but fails at 4075 MHz, we conclude that 4050 MHz was the limit.
Restart the PC and change focus to Core 1. If 4000 MHz is OK, but 4025 MHz causes a crash, Core 1 isn't as good, so we don't use it.
Repeat this process across the CPU to determine its strongest core.

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OC: Ryzen 7 1800X

Since we have multiple Ryzen 7 1800X CPUs, each one gets its own number. Our freshly lapped processor is first.

Ryzen 7 1800X #1: 5411 MHz

The temperature drops, frequencies increase, but our optimism does not last for long. This CPU wouldn't stabilize at 5420 MHz, and it's just barely able to run at 5400 MHz. With a little work, and by tweaking the settings, we manage to pass GPUPI at 5411 MHz, reducing the three-second delta to just 0.9s.

We score a beautiful 2430 points in CineBench R15 at 5323 MHz, again falling short of first place. Our CPU is a good one, but it isn't setting any records.

Before moving on to other samples, we make note that this chip's IMC is quite average. Under LN2 cooling, it's impossible to push our memory beyond 3000 MT/s. Unable to achieve higher data rates, we instead tighten timings to 11-11-11-26 and use a REF_CLOCK setting of 139 MHz to boost our score a bit.

Ryzen 7 1800X #2: 5200 MHz, DDR4 At 3310 MT/s

Our second sample isn't quite as good as the first one. As a result, we didn't spend a lot of time trying to push its performance. After assembling and waterproofing our platform, we spent another two hours toying with the chip's limits. In the end, Cinebench ran successfully at a little higher than 5200 MHz.

Incidentally, this CPU's memory controller is quite good. It allowed us to complete SuperPI 32M with a memory frequency of 1655 MHz (3310 MT/s).

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OC: Ryzen 7 1700X & 1700

Ryzen 7 1700X: 5310 MHz

Our overclocking approach didn't change for AMD's Ryzen 7 1700X. The cores in this specimen aren't that great, but they aren't bad either.

Just for giggles, we again tried for some records and ended up taking first place in all of the benchmarks we ran except for SuperPi 32M, which requires a lot of optimization. Sadly, we didn't have enough time to spend hours tuning for each metric. There are a lot more CPUs to get through!

What we have, then, is an average CPU that's easy to benchmark and fairly comparable to our 1800X samples.

Curiously, the scores we obtained in Wprime 32M are systematically very poor on all of our eight-core processors, and we can't explain why. Some overclockers see times between four and five seconds, while others dip under three seconds. While differences from one system to another are normal, the deltas shouldn't be 100%.

Ryzen 7 1700: 5150 MHz And Major Bugs

While we were testing our first Ryzen 7 1700, our friend Niuulh was testing a second sample we lent him for a competition. If you are familiar with the term poisoned chalice, this inadvertently became one in every sense.

We started by overclocking with air cooling, and quickly hit a brick wall. In the first minutes of our effort, the processor was stuck at 1550 MHz. Obviously something was wrong, since the chip's stock clock rate is higher than that.

And yet, the BIOS settings were unchanged from our trials with the 1800X and 1700X. The values indicated in Asus' software even matched those we set in the BIOS. Still, the processor remained fixed at 1550 MHz.

Moving to MSI's X370 Xpower Gaming Titanium didn't solve our problem. Two CPUs, separated by 600km, were suffering the same symptoms. The motherboard didn't seem to be the cause, the operating systems were unique installations, and the overclockers were different. Without a doubt, this was a problem with our processors.

After spending many hours tweaking BIOS parameters, the only solution was to not modify the supplied voltage via the BIOS, modify the OFFSET mode, or raise the REF_CLOCK setting. Whatever was going wrong, this was not business as usual.

The problem became even more severe under LN2 cooling. Once the temperature dropped below -20°C, the processor got stuck at 1550 MHz and nothing would free it.

Since our two processors were affected identically, we came to the conclusion that Ryzen 7 1700 cannot be used with LN2 cooling. We were condemned to powering on at -20°C and dropping the temperature to -196°C after booting to Windows. When the system crashes (every four to five minutes), you have to raise the cooling pot's temperature back to -20°C with a gas heating torch and start over. This eats up a ton of time, nitrogen, and gas, and it sucks the fun right out of overclocking.

Seeing that our Roman and Indonesian friends were able to overclock Ryzen 7 1700 with LN2, we asked them how they did it. Their answer: they didn't do anything special at all.

We decided to test our last 1700, and to our surprise, it had no problems under air or LN2. There went our hypothesis. By comparing processor batches, we determined that the two problematic processors were fabricated on the same date, while the third chip was older. Could this be a manufacturing issue? For now, we don't know.

As far as maximum clock rate goes, our three samples completed Cinebench R15 at anywhere from 5050 and 5150 MHz.

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OC: Ryzen 5 1600X & 1600

We have two processors endowed with six cores and two others with four. Which one will overclock the best? Now's the time to place your bets.

Ryzen 5 1600X: 5250 MHz

During our air cooling tests, the 1600X wouldn't cooperate. Bugs kept popping up and holding back the frequency. We assumed things would get worse once we introduced LN2. In the end, while our sample didn't have any issues with liquid nitrogen cooling specifically, it still proved difficult to get running.

At this point, it's pretty safe to conclude that you never know what you're going to get. The behavior of these processors is much too variable from one to the next, even among identical models.

After spending two hours with LN2, we only saw Windows twice. Two times in as many hours is a poor showing, to say the least, which explains the absence of a score.

We hit 5.1 GHz at 1.7V, and even saw 5250 MHz once at 1.85V. The cores are pretty good, but far from Der8auer's diamond in the rough that exceeds 5.4 GHz. Still, the clock rate we recorded was good enough to land second-highest for a Ryzen 5.

For reasons pertaining to our mental health, we didn't bother trying to squeeze any more performance from the processor's memory controller.

At the end of this chip's trials, as we were removing the cooling pot, our Ryzen 5 1600X got stuck to the bottom and was pulled from its socket. This isn't the first time we've seen that. Either the socket doesn't grip tightly enough, or the thermal paste has too much suction. Fortunately, nothing was damaged.

R5 1600: 5075 MHz

Unlike the six-core chips we just finished testing, our 1600 didn't suffer any show-stopping bugs. Whether it be air or LN2 cooling, its behavior is normal. This processor loves high core voltages and exhibits progression up to 1.92V. With that said, it's not a great performer, plateauing at 5075 MHz. The IMC is nothing exceptional; we timidly reached 3000 MT/s at CAS 12, but were stable around 2800 MT/s for our memory-intensive benchmarks.

This doesn't mean that all 1600s will behave this way. We'd guess that fewer active cores would enable higher maximum clock rates. But that doesn't prove to be the case today.

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OC: Ryzen 5 1500X & 1400

Ryzen 5 1500X: 5030 MHz

We won't drag things out on you. As we dropped down AMD's Ryzen stack, the maximum frequencies continued to fall. Despite starting off great with a Ryzen 7 1800X that exceeded 5.3 GHz, our 1500X barely crossed the 5 GHz mark. It managed to complete Cinebench successfully at 5030 MHz and a voltage of 1.85V.

When we ran our benchmarks, there were no results on HWBOT using LN2 cooling. So we took advantage of the opportunity to fill the ranks with 13 first-place finishes. To be honest, though, there is no glory in breaking a record when the best competition is only using water cooling. At least future extreme overclockers have a challenge to beat now.

Ryzen 5 1400: 5000 MHz

The last of our 10 processors is the worst of all. It simply doesn't like high voltages, and it stops progressing at 1.8V. Under these conditions, 5 GHz was the limit for Cinebench R15.

This is a disappointment for the enthusiasts who hoped lower core-count Ryzens might be capable of higher clock rates. But it's a logical outcome, given the way AMD bins its dies. The best performers naturally turn into 1800Xes, with all of their cores activated and operating at the highest frequencies.

At least this chip's IMC isn't terrible. It reached 3100 MT/s at CAS 12. The processor didn't have any issues with bugs, and it accepted -196°C without a problem. The test would have been downright enjoyable if we could have squeezed out an extra 300 MHz.

As with the 1500X, we took advantage of the absence of LN2-based scores to place our own.

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Overclocking: Air Vs. LN2

Before wrapping up, we wanted to see if there was a strong correlation between a processor's maximum frequency with liquid nitrogen cooling and what it is capable of with air cooling. This has significant appeal: why bother spending precious time and an enormous quantity of LN2? It could be sufficient to pre-select the best processors based on their performance under air cooling, and then test only the best contenders using liquid nitrogen cooling.

So we revisited our 10 Ryzen CPUs and found the maximum frequency of each at 1.35V. The table below allows us to make a comparison between the room temperature results and those with liquid nitrogen.

Sample	Date of Fabrication	Max Freq. @ 1.35V (MHz)	Max Freq. @ -196°C (MHz)	Ideal Voltage @-196°C (V)
Ryzen 7 1800X #1	1703PGT	4050	5320	1.85
Ryzen 7 1800X #2	1711SUT	4025	5220	1.85
Ryzen 7 1700X	1711PGS	3975	5170	1.85
Ryzen 7 1700 #1	1713PGT	3900	5050	1.85
Ryzen 7 1700 #2	1709PGT	3900	5120	1.85
Ryzen 7 1700 #3	1713PGT	3925	5150	1.94
Ryzen 5 1600X	1711SUT	3975	5250	1.85
Ryzen 5 1600	1713SUT	3900	5075	1.92
Ryzen 5 1500X	1712SUT	3850	5030	1.85
Ryzen 5 1400	1714SUT	3900	5000	1.8

At the top of the table, the 1800X CPUs dominate with air, just as they did in our LN2 tests. It seems like a processor capable of passing Cinebench R15 at 4 GHz with air cooling could be able to do 5.2+ GHz under the influence of LN2. The difference between our first and second samples is nevertheless more pronounced with liquid nitrogen than cooling at room temperatures.
The 1700X tends to reinforce our observation; it finishes just below the 4 GHz mark with air, and just below 5.2 GHz with LN2.
The same observation applies to our 1700s. The best with air cooling is also the best with LN2, but an important variable also comes into play: ease of use. Our notes show that these processors gave us a hard time. The samples that struggled under LN2 cooling were problematic under air, too.
Looking back at the Ryzen 5 CPUs, we could say that a processor able to hold 3.9 GHz at ambient should be capable of benching at around 5.1 GHz. Obviously, these numbers aren't always exact, but they do illustrate a trend. This pattern seems to prove correct with the exception of Ryzen 5 1400, which should have been able to reach a higher frequency with LN2. It may have, too, had it not stopped progressing before 1.8V.

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Conclusion

While life isn't always black and white, you could say that overclocking Ryzen CPUs using LN2 is definitely cut-and-dried. On one hand, you have some processors that handle cryogenic temperatures and high voltages without a problem. They can reboot without issue at -196°C, allowing you to continue your pursuit of higher clock rates. In other words, they're every overclocker's dream.

But some Ryzen processors are stubborn to the point of being nightmarish. Having to go from -196°C to -20°C after every crash is not pleasurable. The resulting consumption of nitrogen, gas, and patience is downright frustrating.

AMD's Selection Methodology

Enthusiasts in the habit of trying multiple CPUs and keeping only the best won't be bothered. They'll toss stubborn samples aside for someone else to worry about. But if you're on a budget and only have one processor to experiment with, the luck of the draw is particularly unforgiving right now.

Strangely enough, while we expected the processors with the fewest cores to overclock best, the opposite proved true. With only 10 samples on-hand, it's hard to draw statistically reliable conclusions. According to our tests, though, the Ryzen 5 CPUs couldn't stand up to the clock rates achieved by our Ryzen 7s. This is most certainly due to AMD's binning process. Lower-performing chips have some cores deactivated and their clock rates reduced. The best dies go into the Ryzen 7 1800X model.

Thus, your best bet for a good overclock under LN2 is AMD's Ryzen 7 1800X. In our air cooling tests, one Ryzen 7 1700 was able to keep up with the 1800Xes.

Ultra-Solid Processors

To end on a positive note, we want to emphasize that, despite tens of hours testing with liquid nitrogen cooling, using high voltages at cryogenic temperatures, and building/tearing down our test platform (with water everywhere), not a single component was damaged. Ryzen appears solid, despite its relative youth. And when you stumble across a gem of a sample, it's a pleasure to overclock.

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AMD Processor Price List

Michael Justin Allen Sexton — Sun, 14 May 2017 01:00:00 +0000

AMD Processors

AMD recently breathed new life into its microprocessor business with the release of its Ryzen CPU architecture, which is significantly faster than the company's older Bulldozer, Piledriver, and Kaveri based processors. While Ryzen occupies the high-end of the CPU market, AMD still produces APUs and CPUs based on its older microarchitecture designs to handle the low-end.

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Socket AM1

Sempron

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Socket FM2

A4

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A6

AMD A6-5400KView Deal

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Socket FM2+

Athlon

AMD Athlon X4 860KView Deal

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A6

AMD A6-7400KView Deal

A8

AMD A8-7600View Deal

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A10

AMD A10-7860KView Deal

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Socket AM3+

AMD FX

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Socket AM4

Ryzen 5

AMD Ryzen 5 1400 w/Wraith StealthView Deal

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AMD Ryzen 5 1600 w/Wraith SpireView Deal

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Ryzen 7

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AMD Ryzen 7 1800XView Deal

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How To Overclock AMD Ryzen CPUs

Jean Michel "Wizerty" Tisserand — Thu, 04 May 2017 15:30:00 +0000

Our Ryzen Overclocking Platform

Unless you've been living under a rock, then you already know that Ryzen is AMD's newest brand that now covers eight-, six-, and four-core desktop-oriented CPUs. In the months to come, we'll also see Ryzen-branded APUs that you can see in our CPU Benchmark Hierarchy.

For now, though, we're interested in how receptive the available host processors are to CPU overclocking. After all, AMD arms the entire portfolio with adjustable ratio multipliers, practically inviting enthusiasts to throw their skill and cooling budgets up against the company's first 14nm CPUs.

Is Ryzen an overclocker's dream, then? We did some preliminary tuning for our launch coverage using early firmware. And as AMD fills in its Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5 families, we revisit the architecture's headroom using fairly high-end air and closed-loop liquid cooling. But so far we've seen a common ceiling in the 3.9 to 4 GHz range.

We've already done quite a bit to explore Ryzen's performance in stock and overclocked form. For more, check out our:

Today's story goes a step further. We're tweaking the BIOS in every direction using an eight-core model to gauge the impact of various settings on your overclocking experience. For cooling, we're going with water-cooling, though liquid nitrogen will follow as the platform matures. And we'll test the influence of memory speed and reference clock rate.

Test Configuration

Some of our labs got their CPUs from AMD, some received processors from motherboard manufacturers, and others had to buy retail chips when AMD's supply ran out. Tom's Hardware France was fortunate enough to receive all three launch models, Ryzen 7 1700, 1700X, and 1800X, from the source. To torture them, we surrounded ourselves with some of the best hardware available.

G.Skill Flare X (2x 8GB)View Deal

Cooler Master - MasterWatt Maker 1200View Deal

For cooling, we chose the Silent Loop 280 liquid cooling kit from be quiet! Although our various offices are using different motherboards, we went with Asus' Crosshair VI Hero for this story. We're arming it with two memory modules from a G.Skill Flare X kit, which was developed specifically for Ryzen. In fact, the kit employs Samsung B-die ICs, considered some of the best for overclocking. Is this a perfect combination? We'll see. To avoid graphics bottlenecks, we're using an Asus ROG Strix GTX 1080. To finish, our faithful Cooler Master MasterWatt Maker 1200 is tasked with providing clean power to our platform.

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AMD Ryzen 7 1700View Deal

BIOS Options

Overclocking Options

Overclocking through Windows is convenient, but we still prefer locking in new settings through the BIOS. This is doubly important, we think, when it comes to a brand new platform like AMD's Ryzen.

What follows are the most notable settings from our Asus board's BIOS:

Ai Overclock Tuner: Set this to manual for access to reference clock adjustments, or set it to D.O.C.P. to pick a memory overclocking profile (related parameters are adjusted automatically).
BCLK Frequency: We'll come back to this very important setting later in the article. It can be adjusted from 85 to 145 MHz, according to the settings. By default it should be near 100 MHz, but we have recommendations of our own.
CPU Core Ratio: This is a multiplier used to determine the processor frequency. Raise it to overclock your CPU. Be careful, though. When the ratio is not set to Auto, AMD's XFR technology is deactivated. The processor switches automatically to overclocking mode and all power-saving features are deactivated. It is adjustable in increments of 0.25x.
Memory Frequency: System memory frequency, from 1333 to 3200 MT/s. You can go even further using the BCLK Frequency field. This is a very important parameter for optimizing performance, and we'll go into more depth on it shortly.
SMT Mode: Simultaneous Multi-Threading is similar to Intel's Hyper-Threading. Be careful; we had trouble with our motherboard when this option was set to Activated. Leave it on Auto; SMT will still be activated and you won't run into the bugs we did.
CPU Core Voltage Override: This allows you to regulate your processor's core voltage. Asus advises against exceeding 1.4V. AMD recommends a 1.35V maximum voltage for long-term overclocks, and although the company says Ryzen can withstand 1.45V, longevity may be affected.
DRAM Voltage: Raising the RAM voltage can help stabilize an overclock. A value of 1.35V is generally sufficient. For lofty overclocks coupled with aggressive timings, this can be raised up to 1.8V without additional cooling if you're using Samsung B-die chips.
PLL Voltage: We recommend manually locking this to 1.8V. If you leave it set to Automatic, there's a risk that your motherboard will raise it, resulting in a temperature increase. It's a useful knob to have when overclocking under liquid nitrogen (notably for the RAM).

If you click on the External Digi+ Power Control sub-menu, you get these options:

Load-line Calibration: According to our testing, Level 1 yields the best results.
CPU Current Capability: To avoid overclocking limitations, we recommend raising this to 140%.

As a reminder, LLC helps stabilize the core voltage under taxing CPU loads. When the processor is at rest (idle), it consumes little energy; therefore, the 1.35V it needs is easily supplied. Once the workload intensifies, though, voltage drops a bit (to 1.3V, for example). Obviously this is not good for stability. Motherboards equipped with load-line calibration functionality can increase core voltage under load to offset this effect.

LLC Testing

We tried a number of the modes offered by Asus' Crosshair VI Hero, and recorded their results using our voltmeter.

With the CPU set to 1.35V, all of these profiles fed our sample close to 1.357V at idle. Under load, however, they can increase significantly.

Setting	Idle	Load
LLC 1 (Auto)	1.357V	1.36V
LLC 2	1.357V	1.37V
LLC 3	1.357V	1.4V
LLC 4	1.357V	1.42V
LLC 5	1.357V	1.44V

It looks like the LLC setting is a little aggressive, given the voltage overshoot at idle. At Level 1, the increase under load is reasonable and won't cause any problems. Our testing showed the Auto mode's results to be similar, but lock in Level 1 just to be sure.

The last level is fairly crazy, pushing 1.44V instead of 1.35V.

Be careful with CPU voltage. Setting 1.35V in the BIOS does not mean the processor receives this voltage, proven here with LLC 5, which adds nearly a tenth of a volt. For the remainder of today's story, the values we're reporting are verified with help from Asus' test points.

	Ambient Recommended	Ambient Maximum	LN2 Recommended	LN2 Maximum
CPU Core Voltage	1.40V	Up to 1.45V	1.80V	Up to 1.95V
SOC Voltage	1.15V	Up to 1.30V	1.20V	Up to 1.40V
DRAM Voltage1	1.40V	Up to 1.90V	1.80V	Up to 1.90V
1.8V PLL Voltage	1.80V	Up to 2.10V	3.00V	Up to 3.20V
1.05V SB Voltage	1.05V	Up to 1.40V	1.30V	Up to 1.40V
1.8V Standby Voltage	1.80V	Up to 2.10V	2.10V	Up to 2.30V
2.5V SB Voltage	2.50V	Up to 2.80V	2.70V	Up to 2.80V
1 Depends on the DRAM sticks; the limit is considered from CPU IMC side.

DRAM Timings

The DRAM Timing Control sub-menu grants access to memory timings. No, you aren't seeing things; there are currently only five options. The right memory settings are very important on this platform, so we'll dedicate an entire page to optimizing them properly.

Not all of the other parameters available in the DRAM Timing Control After Training menu are applied. At least, that's the case in firmware version 5803, which we used. Perhaps AMD will allow motherboard manufacturers to unlock these settings in future BIOS releases.

A BIOS Cheat?

To improve performance in Windows, AMD recommends using the High performance power plan. What impact does this have? In order to answer that question, we tried it out.

Also, we turned on the BIOS-based “Performance Bias” option and ran Geekbench 4. This option purportedly allows overclockers to score more points in competitions. Our Geekbench scores are the average of three consecutive runs.

Geekbench 4

Configuration	Single-Core	Multi-Core	Mem. Copy	Mem. Latency	Mem. Bandwidth
Mode: NormalBias: Auto	4705	23774	8183	5878	7276
Mode: PerformanceBias: Auto	4729	24240	8278	5885	7312
Mode: PerformanceBias: Geekbench 4	4756	24739	8528	6004	7369

Setting the power plan to High performance does yield a speed-up (a small one in our case). But it's going to have more of an impact on a CPU that hasn't been overclocked, and can drop its frequency lower at idle.

The “Performance Bias” option found in the BIOS adds even more performance to Geekbench, even set to the default Auto mode. By changing it from Auto to Aida/Geekbench, we record gains in each of the five values tested. Certain motherboard reviewers may see this as cheating, but it'll be a blessing during overclocking competitions.

AMD Ryzen 7 1700XView Deal

Overclocking BCLK Frequency & PCIe

Software: Asus TurboV versus Ryzen Master

Even though we don't think that Asus' TurboV Core software is practical for daily usage, it does facilitate BCLK frequency adjustments from Windows (though it's called APU Frequency for some reason). To its credit, TurboV Core is very comprehensive, allowing you to modify a number of different voltages, along with multiplier coefficients, on the fly.

We did find several bugs while using TurboV Core. During testing, we fiddled with various voltage settings. We'd make our adjustments via Windows and observe their effect on temperatures. Suddenly, after setting the core voltage to 1.2V, the temperature shot from 50°C to 120°C in one-tenth of a second. Cinebench R15 didn't even have a chance to display its first pixel. We though we had applied a bad setting. Several minutes later, we were at +114°C again, just before another crash (at least the built-in protection features work). Finally, as we were setting the voltage to 1.1V, the temperature spiked at 98°C. This time the OS didn't crash. So we grabbed our voltmeter and carefully read the supply voltage.

The result? Nothing died, but we discovered a 1.1V software setting was really 1.7V on the board. We have no idea what voltage was applied when the temperature offsets were showing +120°C. But if 1.7V pushed our chip to "only" 98°C after a few seconds, then the voltage needed to immediately hit 120°C must have been close to 2V. These Ryzens must be pretty robust.

The bug was reported to Asus, and a representative told us it'd be corrected in the next version of TurboV Core. Just before publishing, we tried the latest version of TurboV Core and discovered that, instead of dialing in an incorrect voltage, the application now crashes instead.

Bugs aside, we prefer Asus' software to AMD's Ryzen Master utility. The latter can be difficult to use, it exposes fewer settings, and our performance numbers simply tumble when it's open.

Overclocking BCLK Frequency

Overclocking Ryzen isn't that different from other platforms. There is a reference clock that Asus calls the BLCK Frequency, and it's more or less equivalent to the BCLK you already know from Intel's CPUs.

It's particularly important in this case because the setting is linked to several subsystems: the processor and memory clock rates, as well as the USB ports, the PCIe bus, and the SATA interfaces. Increasing it effectively overclocks almost everything on your motherboard.

Raising the BCLK Frequency setting can create stability problems with each interface. Asus therefore suggests using the interfaces connected directly to the processor, which hold up to overclocking well. Asus even recommends using M.2 storage when you're going for an aggressive overclock, since it's attached to the CPU via PCIe.

Modifying BCLK Frequency

Many motherboards do not allow the BCLK Frequency to be modified, locking it down to 100 MHz. But certain manufacturers include an external clock generator on their high-end platforms. If you plan on exploring BCLK Frequency, make sure the board you pick does indeed feature an external clock generator. At the time of this writing, only three or four models do.

On our configuration, we achieved a stable BCLK Frequency of 148 MHz with no USB- or SATA-related issues. To prevent the reference clock frequency from rising too high, it is necessary to lower the CPU and memory multipliers. The PCIe bus does have a hard time with this frequency increase, though.

Bug: To go beyond 110 MHz on our motherboard, we were forced to leave the motherboard's SMT option on “Auto.” SMT is active in that state, but when we set the option to “Activated” instead, it prevented us from booting above 110 MHz.

Back on the subject of BCLK Frequency, here is an example of the progression trends we achieved in Windows. Of course, you aren't going to boot at 100 MHz and then switch to 150 MHz from the operating system. But there is a small amount of headroom, though slippery and inconsistent. In the table below, we indicate the frequency at boot, followed by the maximum in Windows before locking up.

Boot	OS
100 MHz	104 MHz
110 MHz	115 MHz
120 MHz	127 MHz
130 MHz	138 MHz
140 MHz	148 MHz
148 MHz	154 MHz

PCI Express Management

The Socket AM4 platform manages the third-gen PCIe. When you increase the BCLK Frequency beyond a certain point, though, the motherboard rolls back to PCIe 2.0. The higher the frequency you select, the higher the offset frequency increase. Thinking that this was tied to the PCIe bus, we tried to impose first-gen transfer rates, but saw no change.

BCLK Frequency Interval	PCI Express Bandwidth	Real Bandwidth Per Lane
85 to 104.8 MHz	Gen 3, 8 GT/s (985 MB/s)	837 to 1032 MB/s
105 to 144.8 MHz	Gen 2, 5 GT/s (500 MB/s)	525 to 724 MB/s
145 MHz+	Gen 1, 2.5 GT/s (250 MB/s)	313 MB/s+

Graphics performance isn't significantly affected by these changes, at least not in any of the benchmarks we ran with our GeForce GTX 1080. As such, we suggest using either 104.8 or 144.8 MHz. If you want, you can manually lock in the PCIe generation you want through Asus' BIOS. Be careful, though: too high of a BCLK Frequency setting with a transfer rate that doesn't adapt well risks introducing instability on the PCIe bus.

AMD Ryzen 7 1800XView Deal

Temperatures & PLL Impact

As you may know, Ryzen processors contain numerous sensors that allow the frequency and voltages to be driven as a function of CPU temperature. It is therefore important to study this relationship. Once the chip's temperature exceeds 95°C, performance is throttled.

Throughout the course of our benchmarks, we were surprised to see high temperatures, especially at idle, on our 1800X. We were even further astonished when we started trials with the 1700. Since then, AMD has published a community update that explains offsets in Ryzen temperature reporting. To figure out the “real” temperature on the R7 1800X and R7 1700X, you must apply an offset of -20°C. For the 1700, no correction is necessary.

Also, we observed that this offset of 20°C is a loose approximation, and that it can change as a function of the voltage and load applied to the processor. As a result, our measurements and temperatures for the 1700X and 1800X are not assuredly precise.

PLL Influence

As a reminder, we're using be quiet!'s Silent Loop 280 liquid cooling kit. The processor was tested at a range of voltages, and each time an appropriate frequency was applied. Logically, the higher the voltage, the higher the temperature.

Settings (V)	Frequency (MHz)	PLL Voltage @1.8V Temperature (°C)	PLL Voltage @1.9V Temperature (°C)	PLL Voltage @1.8V Corrected Temp. (°C)	PLL Voltage @1.9V Corrected Temp. (°C)
1.0	3450	46	55	26	35
1.1	3700	52	60	32	40
1.2	3850	56	65	36	45
1.3	4000	63	71	43	51
1.4	4100	69	78	49	58

Our table shows the temperature we measured at the default PLL voltage of 1.8V, but also 1.9V. Why? Simply because the motherboard changes this parameter on its own any time you raise the core frequency. Therefore, we ended up with incoherent data. After a deeper analysis, we realized that this voltage varied, and that it had a significant influence on temperature. So we redid our tests while setting the PLL Voltage to a fixed value of 1.8V, which posed no stability problems.

It does not seem useful to increase this voltage. We did not see any frequency gains, while the temperature rose 8°C on average. We recommend that you manually fix the PLL Voltage to 1.8V, or even less if your processor remains stable. The last two columns show the corrected temperatures (with the -20°C offset applied).

We plotted curves with the measured data points, and the temperature increase is practically linear. The straight lines show the corrected temperatures with -20°C offset applied. An interesting observation, by fixing the PLL Voltage at 1.8V we can add an additional 0.15V to the Vcore without even hitting the temperatures measured with the PLL set to 1.9V.

AMD Ryzen 7 1700View Deal

Overclocking Ryzen 7 1700 vs 1700X vs 1800X

Overclocking at Equal Voltages

Knowing that all of these processors are identical and come from the same manufacturing line, we have to ask whether there's any real reason to splurge on the highest-end model. To that end, we compared their base frequencies and maximum overclock with all eight cores under load. The memory was set to 3200 MT/s, and all of the other BIOS settings were left at their defaults.

Model	Frequency (MHz)	Voltage (V)	Temperature (°C)
Ryzen 7 1700	3200	1.07	35
Ryzen 7 1700X	3500	1.16	52 / 32
Ryzen 7 1800X	3700	1.23	58 / 38

The "entry-level" Ryzen 7 1700 seems to have an advantage, given a base core voltage of 1.07V (compared to the 1.16 and 1.23 volts measured on the pricier chips). Temperature is affected by the Vcore of course, but our comparison is made imprecise by AMD's offsets.

We applied the recommended -20°C offset, but again, we're reminded that the correction isn't perfect. The discrepancy between the reported and real values isn't constant. It changes as a function of multiple parameters. Applying this offset gets us closer to the right temperature, but it isn't guaranteed to be accurate.

Model	Frequency (MHz)	Voltage (V)	Temperature (°C)
Ryzen 7 1700 OC	3975	1.35	45
Ryzen 7 1700X OC	3950	1.35	63 / 43
Ryzen 7 1800X OC	4050	1.35	66 / 46

While the 1800X has a clear base advantage, the difference diminishes after overclocking. If tuning your CPU doesn't scare you, we recommend going for the Ryzen 7 1700 in light of its more attractive price.

Performance

The Ryzen 7 1700 serves as our baseline. Operating at just 3200 MHz (across eight cores), it obtains a score of 1438 points in Cinebench R15. That's a long way from the Ryzen 7 1800X's 1640 points. Given the 1800X's 500 MHz advantage, though, we don't have a difficult time explaining the 14% performance difference.

Overclocked, that delta disappears. Our Ryzen 7 1700 even beats the 1700X. Of course, you can expect overclocking results to vary from one CPU to another, as we mentioned in our Kaby Lake overclocking test.

The 1800X maintains a less-than 2% lead over AMD's Ryzen 7 1700. It is quite astonishing that the 1700X achieves a lower score; this cannot be explained simply by a lower frequency. Even at the same clock rate, our 1700X sample consistently fares worse than the 1700.

MORE: How to Overclock a CPU

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1800X: Maximum Overclock & Scaling

With the 1800X as our best overclocking candidate, we shift our focus to it for the rest of our experiments.

This section explores how the processor behaves at various core voltages. We begin with an under-volting scenario and finish with overclocking. In the interest of time, we're using a fairly brief test (Cinebench R15), so the reported values probably aren't their stable ceilings. However, under a heavier load, the observed progression should be similar.

Voltage (V)	Frequency (MHz)	Score (pt)	Temperature (°C)	Frequency %	Score %
1.0	3450	1540	46	0.0	0.0
1.1	3700	1642	52	7.2	6.6
1.2	3850	1710	56	11.6	11.0
1.3	4000	1770	63	15.9	14.9
1.4	4100	1822	69	18.8	18.3
1.4 SMT Off	4175	1318	62	21.0	-14.4

With a core voltage of 1.0V, we had to lower the frequency to 3450 MHz. This serves as our comparison's starting point.
Moving to 1.1V, the frequency jumps 250 MHz. That's a progression of 7.2% for a performance gain of 6.6%.
At 1.2V, we are slightly under the default core voltage. The frequency can be increased to 3850 MHz. The overclocking headroom, with respect to XFR frequency, is not high on the 1800X.
With 1.3V we reach the 4 GHz.
Our last increase is to 4100 MHz at 1.4V.
Since there are certain applications that do not use SMT, we wanted to see if deactivating the feature would allow us to push clock rate higher. Without SMT, we picked up an additional 75 MHz. The temperature also benefited: it dropped 7°C.

As is true with most components, a small increase in voltage allows a clear gain in frequency. But the magnitude of this gain lessens as Vcore goes up. Transitioning from 1.0 to 1.1V allows us to boost clock rate by 250 MHz, but going from 1.3 to 1.4V only yields 100 MHz.

Given these conditions, it is difficult to recommend a core voltage in excess of 1.3 to 1.35V for daily usage. For benchmarking, the voltage can be pushed to 1.4V without much risk.

Performance in Cinebench is heavily dependent on clock rate, so we naturally see a strong correlation between frequency and score. But it's also a threaded benchmark. While deactivating SMT (and thus eight of the 16 logical cores) helps us hit a higher clock rate, it also heavily penalizes our results.

AMD Ryzen 7 1800XView Deal

Memory Performance

Overclocking the execution cores is limited by available headroom. But if you really want to improve this platform's effectiveness, you cannot overlook the memory bus.

We begin by illustrating the gains achievable by moving from DDR4-2400 to -3200. On our Crosshair VI Hero, the 2400 MT/s is actually the default. On other motherboards, it may be lower (and not without consequence).

Cinebench R15

This test is not sensitive to memory bandwidth or latency, so the gains we measure should be trivial. Still, the influence of RAM performance is quantifiable, given a ~1.4% improvement.

Configuration	Score
2400	1639
3200	1663

Geekbench 4

This test stresses both the host processor and memory subsystem. Its single- and multi-core metrics reveal a performance increase of 5 and 6% from dialing in a faster data rate. That's quite a gain from simply modifying a multiplier setting, and memory capable of supporting 3200 MT/s isn't extremely expensive. Again, our Geekbench 4 scores are an average of three consecutive runs.

Configuration	Single-Core	Multi-Core	Mem. Copy	Mem. Latency	Mem. Bandwidth
2400	4417	20786	6229	4697	5568
3200	4635	22150	7546	5651	7094

Time Spy

Graphics-bound workloads don't benefit as much from a memory bandwidth increase. We do measure a gain in the overall score, but it's very small. Conversely, the CPU-oriented benchmark jumps by 343 points.

Configuration	Graphics	CPU	Score
2400	7204	8010	7314
3200	7217	8353	7367

AMD Ryzen 7 1700View Deal

BCLK Frequency

With our G.Skill Flare X memory kit, we have five preset RAM profiles through the Crosshair VI Hero's D.O.C.P. (Direct Over Clock Profile) menu. This is an Asus/AMD implementation analogous to Intel's XMP.

Each profile uses a final data rate of 3200 MT/s and a principal timing setting of 14, but with different BCLK Frequency values to get there. The bottom section of our screen capture explains each mode:

D.O.C.P. 1: This is purportedly the system's optimal setting, which offers the best compatibility by trading off performance.
D.O.C.P. 2: A 2133 DRAM ratio and 150 BCLK Frequency are used to arrive at a 3200 MT/s data rate.
D.O.C.P. 3: 2400 DRAM ratio and 133 MHz BCLK Frequency.
D.O.C.P. 4: 2666 DRAM ratio and 120 MHz BCLK Frequency.
D.O.C.P. 5: 2933 DRAM ratio and 109 MHz BCLK Frequency.

Why go through all of this trouble? Well, AMD locked a number of RAM timings in the BIOS, so they are not accessible to the user. That is to say they aren't directly accessible.

Here is a copy of the timings we achieved by booting the system with different memory ratios, highlighted with a yellow box in each of the six screenshots (you can enlarge the image above by clicking on it to see the details). The principal timings are marked in blue. These change as a function of the memory ratio, but can be manually forced in the BIOS.

Other timing components are shown in green, and these are not accessible. If you look carefully, you can see that the higher the RAM ratio, the higher these values appear. Higher timings reduce performance, so we have every interest in keeping these as low as possible.

To ensure that you understand what we are talking about, here are two examples where the RAM is set to 3200 MT/s:

2133 ratio and 150 MHz BCLK Frequency -> RAM frequency is 150 MHz x 21.33 = 3200 MT/s, tRC is 51, tRTP is 8, tFAW is 23
3200 ratio and 100 MHz BCLK Frequency -> RAM frequency is 100 MHz x 32.00 = 3200 MT/s, tRC is 75, tRTP is 12, tFAW is 34.

It goes without saying that the first configuration should be faster. Let's see how this translates to actual performance. The reference clock is modified, then we manually adjust the multiplier coefficient of the processor so that its final frequency is as close as possible to 4050 MHz. We didn't run into any stability issues during these changes.

Cinebench R15

We begin again with Cinebench R15. Still just as insensitive to memory throughput/latency, the gain between D.O.C.P. 5 and 2 is small. While 10 points can be a mountain for a competitive overclocker, it isn't that interesting for a regular user. By manually changing the timing settings to 12-12-12-12 instead of 14-14-14-14 we gain another five points.

Configuration	Score
3200 D.O.C.P.5 - BCLK Freq. 109	1803
3200 D.O.C.P.3 - BCLK Freq. 133	1810
3200 D.O.C.P.2 - BCLK Freq. 150	1812
3200 C12 - BCLK Freq. 150	1817

Geekbench 4

Single-core performance tests are usually less sensitive to RAM, and this one reflects a 2% speed-up from D.O.C.P. 5 to 2. Tightening up the timings yields an additional 1% gain.

We do 4% better in the multi-core test. Put another way, by assuming that the score progression is perfectly linear, this 4% increase would be the equivalent of a 200 MHz clock rate boost.

Configuration	Single-Core	Multi-Core	Mem. Copy	Mem. Latency	Mem. Bandwidth
3200 D.O.C.P.5 - BCLK Freq. 109	4649	23640	7730	5677	7062
3200 D.O.C.P.3 - BCLK Freq. 133	4726	24397	8845	5899	7456
3200 D.O.C.P.2 - BCLK Freq. 150	4741	24603	8505	5926	7470
3200 c12 - BCLK Freq. 150	4786	24634	8706	6106	7456

If we take into account the 6% gain from increasing the RAM from 2400 MT/s to 3200, we have an overall increase of 10%. That's equivalent to almost 500 MHz. Not bad!

The results of our mem copy test are difficult to reproduce. The trend is visible, but hundreds of points separate the best runs from the worst. Take those results with a grain of salt, even if the values we provide are an average of three passes. It is clear in this test that there is a a visible gain, with a 12% difference between the best and the worst profile. The two remaining columns show gains between 5 and 7%.

Time Spy

The graphics-bound benchmark didn't seem to appreciate a higher memory data rate. Let's see if tighter timings can improve this: the faster the memory, the more the score drops!

At barely 0.5%, the differences are small. This represents barely 0.2 frames per second lower in a test that averages 30 FPS. These results are quite surprising, particularly since the CPU score soars at the same time.

Configuration	Graphics	CPU	Score
3200 D.O.C.P.5 - BCLK Freq. 109	7198	8893	7410
3200 D.O.C.P.3 - BCLK Freq. 133	7180	9291	7433
3200 D.O.C.P.2 - BCLK Freq. 150	7177	9336	7434
3200 c12 - BCLK Freq. 150	7161	9485	7427

Ashes of the Singularity

We made one last comparison using the Ashes of the Singularity benchmark. Our settings included the Crazy preset, and we chose the CPU-oriented metric. The test was run before this game was patched to optimize for Ryzen, but in relative terms, its utility is the same.

Compared to a data rate of 2133 MT/s, pushing the memory to 2400 MT/s increases our score by 4.1%. The frequency is higher, yes, but timings are also more relaxed, so the two effects partially cancel one another.

Changing to 3200 MT/s jumps us up 13%. This test is therefore very sensitive to memory bandwidth, and we suspect that lots of data must be transferred from one CCX to another. With the interface between CCXes affected by memory frequency, it seems natural that this bottleneck would clear by increasing RAM performance.

By applying the technique we're showing, optimizing memory timings with a higher data rate (achieved by increasing the BCLK Frequency setting), our scores jump by no less than 31%.

Ryzen 7 1800X Configuration	Within-Core Latency Range	Within-CCX Core-to-Core Latency Range	Cross-CCX Core-to-Core Latency Range	Cross-CCX Average Latency	Bandwidth	Std. Deviation
1333 MT/s	14.6 - 14.8ns	39.5 - 41.7ns	230 - 243.4ns	237.65ns	43.74 GB/s	2.84ns
2666 MT/s	14.6 - 14.8ns	39.6 - 42.3ns	117.8 - 124.6ns	120.4ns	50.16 GB/s	1.86ns
3200 D.O.C.P. Standard - BCLK Freq. 100	14.6 - 14.8ns	40.1 - 42.1ns	108 - 114.6ns	114.66ns	52.02 GB/s	1.69ns
3200 D.O.C.P.3 - BCLK Freq. 133	14.6 - 14.9ns	39.4 - 42.0ns	108.4 - 112.4ns	111.51ns	55.24 GB/s	0.90ns

Maximum RAM Frequency

Having heard many times that Ryzen doesn't have a lot of headroom for memory overclocking, we wanted to find out for ourselves. After all, achieving DDR4-3200 at CAS12 wasn't difficult. What comes after, though?

In all honesty, it's pretty easy to hit 3400 MT/s. You select a setting in the BIOS and the motherboard boots up. At least, that's the case with our Crosshair VI Hero. Early on in this platform's life, other models seemed to struggle more. Fortunately, the situation does seem to be improving.

Once you get to 3400 MT/s, overclocking gets more complicated. The results seem to vary from one processor to another and are strongly dependent on your motherboard. Between 3400 and 3650 MT/s, we saw crash after crash. It was impossible to get the system to boot. There was, however, a very small “magic zone” at 3800 MT/s where the system was usable. The timing defaulted to CAS14, but manually specifying CAS12 didn't pose a problem.

Of course, we tried to run our tests at this data rate, but the system was too unstable. After three hours of trying to get a result from Cinebench, we threw in the towel.

The take-away is that Ryzen can hit these frequencies. It's difficult today due to platform immaturity. Asus' board is one of the better ones out there, but it's not perfect. In the future, after additional BIOS updates, it's possible that everyone will gain access to higher data rates and the additional performance they enable.

AMD Ryzen 7 1700XView Deal

Conclusion

The many hours we put into overclocking Ryzen and Asus' Crosshair VI Hero were made more difficult than we're used to due to the many bugs in AMD's nascent Socket AM4 platform.

Of course, it is never easy to start with a new platform in-hand, but when every single component is unfamiliar, and complicated by the fact that AMD seems to have rushed its launch without disseminating information to everyone who needed it, don't even bother counting the hours you spend trying to explore various settings for the first time.

The target is constantly moving, too. Regular BIOS updates intended to smash show-stopping bugs often require trashing old results and starting over from scratch. We didn't think we'd ever finish. And indeed, many updates have happened since this piece was published on Tom's Hardware's French site.

At a certain point, though, with all of the data in front of us, overclocking Ryzen becomes child's play. Increase a multiplier, fiddle with the memory data rate; it's naturally pretty intuitive.

The BCLK Frequency & RAM Surprise Attack!

G.Skill Flare X (2x 8GB)View Deal

If you want to add 4 to 5% more performance, you must have a motherboard that lets you modify the reference clock, such as our Crosshair VI Hero. You'll want to pore over our data and try replicating some of our experiments using the options and settings we dialed in.

For tinkerers, Ryzen 7 1700 is the eight-core model we suggest. Once these CPUs are pushed to their limit, the final difference between them is negligible.

Be sure to configure your memory with relation to the BCLK Frequency setting, which can significantly improve gaming performance. Don't hesitate to spend extra on high-performance memory. G.Skill's Flare X kit proved to be very practical thanks to Asus' D.O.C.P profiles.

The Ryzen platform, in all of its newness, still suffers from several bugs. Watch carefully for BIOS updates from your motherboard vendor. Little by little, these will correct problem spots, improving stability and increasing performance.

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AMD Ryzen AMA

Tom's Hardware Community — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 13:00:00 +0000

TDP, RAM Performance, and APUs

[Updated 4/17/2017 at 1:15 pm PDT to include a clarification regarding APUs. That answer is on this page toward the end.]

First off, let's give a big thank you to AMD for stopping by to answer all the insightful questions presented by our community members. Scheduling this AMA took a bit of work on their end, especially during such a busy launch year, and for that, the Community Staff as well as our readers are much obliged to everyone at AMD for taking the time to engage with the enthusiastic members of our community.

And of course, we're deeply appreciative of Don Woligroski for the in-depth responses given to each question posted by the Community. We'd also like to thank Sam Tehrani and Erin Maiorino for all their help putting this together.

Want to read the AMA in its original format? You can check out the original thread here. While you're there make sure to enter our second and final giveaway for the ASRock X370 Taichi AM4 Motherboard. Below you'll find the AMA in its entirety, formatted for your convenience and edited for clarity.

Our AMA With AMD

turkey3_scratch: When it comes to TDP, how exactly are the values created? I notice both the Ryzen 7 1800X and 1700X are labeled as a 95W TDP, however, there are differences in the frequency between the two, and looking at the data on these processors I would think the 1700X would use less power than the 1800X. How come the TDPs are the same?

Do you think the current TDPs for these processors best exemplify average power under maximum load (i.e. torture test) or a typical heavy load (i.e. gaming)? Do you think any more data relating to the power of these processors would be helpful to consumers under the specifications, such as the peaks in an oscilloscope graph?

A lot of people like to overclock but when overclocking the TDP no longer is the same and requires some guesswork. Do you think there could be some form of data presented to consumers that could tell them more about the power requirements of the processor if they overclock to certain amounts and voltages, or do you think it's too unpredictable and/or best left to third party sites' independent testing?

DON WOLIGROSKI: This is a can of worms, but I'll do my best. A couple points to frame the conversation:

1. TDP is not electrical watts (power draw), it's thermal watts.

2. Published processor TDPs are often rounded up to fit a desired specification. For example, AM4 motherboards are specd to run processors with 65W and 95W TDPs. It gives motherboard manufacturers and system builders a thermal framework to fit within. At AMD we call the Ryzen 7 1800X, Ryzen 7 1700X, and Ryzen 5 1600X 95W processors, but in practice there might be a couple of thermal watts difference during operation due to a number of factors.

So right off the bat, power draw conclusions based on processor TDPs are probably not going to be perfect, although they can give you a rough idea.

To be frank, people tend to overspec the heck out of their PSUs. Primarily I think important to look for a well-reviewed model from a reliable manufacturer, rather than to worry about processor power draw on 95W Ryzen CPUs. Heck, 125W FX processors tend to run fine on a decent 450W juice box from my experience, but Igor at Tom's Hardware frankly knows a hell of a lot more than I ever will about PSUs. He's your guy when it comes to power draw.

James Mason: Will AMD eventually be able to fix the RAM clock speed issues through software updates alone?

DON WOLIGROSKI: As long as there isn't a physical motherboard hardware limitation, we are absolutely able to address RAM performance improvements through the motherboard BIOS.

Some perspective here - Socket AM4 is brand new, and our first DDR4 socket. Our competition took a year to get the RAM speed and stability they enjoy, but in the month since we launched Ryzen 7 we've gone from testing our original data at 2400 MHz to giving Ryzen 5 reviewers stable 3200 MHz B350 platforms to test with thanks to BIOS updates. Consumers can expect those updated BIOSes to arrive for X370 motherboards in the Ryzen 5 launch time frame around April 11^th for X370 boards.

That's not to say we've achieved perfection in a month. We still have a lot more work to do on the AM4 platform, but the strides we've already taken are incredible. We're also tracking toward another BIOS update in May to help with overclocked memory stability and performance even more, and we have a standing team of people working to develop this indefinitely.

The best part of this is, memory speed is a big piece of the platform, and rears its head in platform-limited applications like games running at the relatively-low 1080p resolution. So we're really happy about the improvements we've made, and this is definitely a priority for us going forward.

imrazor: How will you price the lowest end 4 core, 8 thread Ryzen 3 processor?

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DON WOLIGROSKI: We haven't disclosed any Ryzen 3 pricing yet, but you can probably where prices will be relative to Ryzen 5. I'm also sure we haven't announced a 4c/8t version, Ryzen 3 specs will be revealed later.

Sorry, wish I could say more. But I invite you to enjoy the 4c/8t Ryzen 5 1400 when it's released on the 11^th at a suggested price of $169 USD!

atljsf: Now that AM4 motherboards support APUs, what kind of APUs can we expect? Will they have 4 cores and 4 threads? Perhaps 4 cores and 8 threads? Do you have any information of TDP limit? Will they hit 65 Watts TDP?

DON WOLIGROSKI: I can't comment on unannounced products and specifications, but the Ryzen-based APUs will be awesome. That is all I can say.

[Update: Don contacted Tom's Hardware to make he following addendum to this answer: "In the second half of 2017, we will be introducing APUs for Socket AM4 based on our newest Bristol Ridge design, which is currently our newest notebook part. These continue to offer excellent Radeon graphics performance and are a great entry point for eSports gamers. We haven’t yet announced any release dates for a Zen-based APU.]

redgarl: With Nvidia pursuing self-driving car opportunities and Intel looking at Optane, is there a new focus for AMD in the upcoming future?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Optane: The elephant in the room is that Intel has made a very expensive cache drive available. Remember the first SSDs? Been there, done that. It says something that they don't recommend Optane for users who already have an SSD as their primary drive.

As for AMD, our finger is definitely on the pulse of storage tech. Of course I can't comment on unannounced products, so if we did have something in the works I couldn't talk about it.

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Ryzen 2, Wraith Coolers, and Infinity Fabric

redgarl: Goldman Sachs recently depreciated the value of AMD in a report. Do you think the public and the industry is still missing what AMD is trying to accomplish with their new lineup of products?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Goldman Sachs depreciation: This is my personal and not AMD-related opinion: AMD is really well positioned for the long haul, so frankly I'm not worried one iota about it. We've only just begun with Ryzen, Naples isn't released yet, and the public has no idea of our detailed plans. Take from that what you will.

Aspiring techie: What are the low hanging fruits that AMD can easily improve from Ryzen to Ryzen 2 and do you think the gains will be significant? Can we expect improvements in clock rates, SMT, CCX scheduling, overclocking, or other microarchitecture features?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Ryzen represents a double introduction here: an all-new architecture, and an all-new 14nm FinFET process. There are many levers to pull in pretty much every aspect of the CPU. The ones you mentioned are all part of that. And that's a really awesome place to be, when Ryzen is only 6% slower than Intel's newest Kaby Lake architecture clock-for-clock in Cinebench single-thread right out of the gate.

scout_03: Which cooler will come with the 1500x and the 1600x OEM CPU sale in box kit?

DON WOLIGROSKI: The Ryzen 5 1500X comes with the Wraith Spire cooler. This is the same cooler on the Ryzen 7 1700, but without the illuminated LED ring on the Ryzen 5. The Ryzen 5 1600X is sold without a fan, like the Core i5-7600K, which is its main competition in the price segment.

jaymc: Can we expect further performance improvements from Infinity Fabric [AMD’s latest interconnect technology and the successor to HyperTransport]? How future proof is it? Will Infinity Fabric keep up with DDR4 4000MHz? What about speeds in excess of 4500MHz DDR4 memory?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Well, I haven't heard of any engineering concerns about the Infinity Fabric interconnect. On the contrary, if you speed up Infinity Fabric you should drop some latency, so it's all good.

As I've answered already, we're very focused on improving memory speeds and latency, but I haven't heard any concerns about how far we can go before we're capped yet.

Presentato: As someone interested in doing virtualization and PCI pass-through of a GPU early reports of IOMMU groupings don't look promising for the consumer motherboards. Is that something AMD can address or are any improvements reliant on motherboard manufacturers?

DON WOLIGROSKI: This is something I've personally started to look at recently as a pet project. I'm playing with VM-Ware on my Ryzen system at home because, really, Ryzen's highly-threaded CPUs bring a lot of virtualization potential to the table in price segments where it hasn't been before. The sub-$300 segment has been limited to 4-thread processors on the Intel side, while Ryzen 5 ratchets that up to 12 threads. Boom.

Having said that, we're in launch mode right now, and virtualization isn't a top priority at the moment. We're laser focused on making the platform as fast as we can in the near future. I anticipate we'll look harder at virtualization as time goes on.

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AMD Ryzen 7 1700XView Deal

Versus Kaby Lake, FreeSync TVs, and Frame Latency

PC-Cobbler: Many corporations have discovered to their great dismay that China does not respect IP ownership. Last April, AMD signed a technology transfer agreement with THATIC, a subsidiary of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of China’s national research institutions. Did AMD cut its own throat with this deal?

DON WOLIGROSKI: This really isn't in my purview. I can say that AMD has good relationships with its partners that we build on trust. I can also say my colleagues are sharp and know what they're doing.

hendrickhere: Big AMD fan - always have been. Why should a standard PC user who is primarily interested in gaming and graphic software performance chose Ryzen and it's AM4 platform over a competing platform of a similar caliber?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Simple questions can be the most nuanced to answer, so bear with me. You've got two use cases here: Graphics Software and Gaming.

1. Graphics Software

This isn't even a contest. We absolutely crush Intel at every price point if you're doing any graphics rendering. We have three times the threads in the Core i5 segment, and double the threads of the Core i7 Kaby Lake segment in the consumer desktop space. We have very high single threaded performance, combined with a massive multi-threading advantage, and this makes Ryzen a very deadly foe when it comes to productivity/rendering/encoding/encryption application performance.

2. Gaming

I don't know how old you are, but I'll date myself. Back in the old days of PC gaming, it didn't really matter what kind of CPU you had because everything out there was graphics card bottlenecked. You'd buy the cheapest CPU out there and spend the rest of your money on the graphics card. A Duron with a Radeon 8500 performed the same as an Athlon with a Radeon 8500. Gamers didn't need to waste extra money on the CPU.

As time went on, developers started to make advanced AI, more demanding assets. Things started to shift back to the CPU and platform. Now in 2017, you want a decent 4-core CPU minimum for serious gaming. Even game consoles run 8-core processors. IPC has become a lot more important to gaming, as has platform speed if you want the highest frame rates at 1080p.

With the introduction of Ryzen, AMD is back in the high-end gaming segment. The graphics card is still the bottleneck in a practical sense, but primarily only at HD+ resolutions (1440p, 4K, and VR) So, if you're playing games at 1440p and above (and you really should be with a decent processor, because HD+ is so pretty), Ryzen is fast enough to move that gaming bottleneck back to the graphics card where it belongs. It's the good old days again, baby!

If you're playing at 1080p (and let's be fair, that's still the most prevalent resolution out there), the bottleneck gets shifted back to the platform and CPU. That's where we see Intel's Kaby Lake pull ahead of Ryzen in some cases. This surprised a lot of people, because Ryzen is such a dominating force in applications, why do we drop behind in some outliers?

Let's talk about that. A few points to frame this 1080p gaming conversation:

Ryzen is never slow at gaming in 1080p, it's just not as fast as Kaby Lake in certain game benchmarks. For example, if the Core i7-7700K gets 200 FPS, and Ryzen gets 150 FPS, that's a technical loss of 25%. In real world terms there's no practical advantage to 200 FPS over 150 FPS. Hell, most 1080p monitors are 60 Hz, which means you can't really get a meaningful benefit from higher frame rates than 60 FPS.

At 1080p, I'm not aware of any game that is so limited by Ryzen that 60 FPS is not achievable. In many games, Ryzen's 1080p performance is well above 80 FPS and 120 FPS. Even for people with ultra-high-end 144Hz monitors, Ryzen can get the job done if you're willing to adjust detail settings, which you’ll often have to do on Kaby Lake to get those frame rates.

Ryzen is getting a lot faster at 1080p gaming. Ryzen is a brand-new CPU, and in the month since we launched we engaged developers to address DOTA2, Ashes of the Singularity, and Warhammer: Total War to deliver faster Ryzen performance. That's in a month. At the same time, platform limited titles are gaining a benefit from our RAM-speed ramp. And we're delivering other updates like a better Windows power plan and a Ryzen Master Overclocking Utility that doesn't require HPET clock to be enabled, which also helps performance. You're going to see an uplift in Ryzen 1080p game performance in the April 11^th launch day articles, and we're just getting started.

Developers tend to make use of as many resources as you provide - over time. You will see games take advantage of more cores and threads organically, especially now that we have new graphics APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan to take advantage of them.

So, to Summarize:

1. Graphics software: Clean Kill for Ryzen. Your productivity/render/encoding/encryption wait times will be significantly longer on similarly-priced Intel competition.

2. Gaming: Virtually identical 1440p, 4K, VR game performance as the competition, and extremely smooth high-performance 1080p gaming (if not the fastest), combined with better prospects for the future thanks to advanced graphics APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan. Advantage: Ryzen!

tredeuce: How long do you and others at AMD get to celebrate the success before you have to move on to the next task or project? I know innovation and competition never ends, but surely I hope y'all can enjoy how well AMD is doing right now.

DON WOLIGROSKI: Wait, we get to sit back celebrate our success? Being in the tech industry means you're never coasting. I don't see a significant reduction in the foreseeable future. But better busy than bored!

redgarl: Are there any plans to add FreeSync technology to TVs? Can we expect a console like Scorpio to have positive effect for AMD GPU performance on the PC?

DON WOLIGROSKI: We will probably see television manufacturers adding FreeSync technology to their products. It seems like an inevitable no-brainer to me, but you never know. I think it's a much clearer path to monitor domination for FreeSync.

I’m not sure what you mean by your second question. Are you asking if our experience working with console manufacturers gives us design and engineering insights that we use for future PC products? If that’s your question, then yes, I think our engineers take all the lessons they learn from console gaming and apply those lessons to the PC where it makes sense. We're a very gaming focused company here at AMD, so it's a natural progression.

jaymc: There have been many online reports of a "Silky Smooth" gaming experience. Is this a real phenomenon or a placebo effect? If it is real then what do you think causes this affect? Is it mouse latency, more cores and threads, or a combination of the two? Also, can you verify if it is possible for gamers to reduce their mouse latency by bypassing the chipset, and connecting the mouse directly to the CPU via USB 3.1?

DON WOLIGROSKI: I personally believe that having all of those extra core/thread Ryzen resources at the PC's disposal means that the windows scheduler can throw requests at resources without affecting the game, where it otherwise might have had the slightest impact on the experience. I've personally noticed that Ryzen gaming has been very smooth for me, but is there placebo there? Hard to say. I do plan to address this with testing in the future, to see if we can quantify this objectively. We do know that Ryzen's 99^th percentile frame times are very good.

As for mouse latency, I don't have any numbers on this. I'd love to see someone dig in to this. If there's placebo anywhere, though, I suspect this is where it is. Even the 500Hz mouse polling rate on USB 2.0 seems like it should be sufficient to me, but admittedly I'm not a mouse performance purist and haven't looked deeply at this, or run any compares myself.

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AMD Ryzen 7 1700View Deal

Cooler Brackets, Gaming, and Console Lessons

Awzey: I’m love the new Ryzen architecture, but I still don't understand why AMD introduced a new CPU cooler mounting system for the AM4 socket. Why didn’t AMD continue using the AM3+ bracket design, proven to work just fine on the Asus Crosshair VI Hero Motherboard?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Dude! We gave you the best of both worlds.

We include the AM3+ cooler-compatible retention frame on AM4 motherboards (to the best of my knowledge, all of them come with those retention frames), not just the ASUS Crosshair. Just check the Newegg board pics for socket AM4. They're all over the place. If you want to use the new Wraith Stealth and Wraith Spire coolers just take that retention frame off.

And frankly, spring screws on the AM4 Wraith Coolers are awesome.

paulgrr63: Which Ryzen processor would you recommend for gaming? I use my PC for schoolwork and gaming, but nothing too demanding. The games I play include For Honor, Battlefield 1, World of Warcraft, and Gears of War. Thank you for your time!

AMD Ryzen 5 1600XView Deal

DON WOLIGROSKI: In general, the Ryzen 5 1600X is the best Ryzen processor for gaming. It gives nothing up to the Ryzen 7s, since it has the same clocks as the top-of-the-line Ryzen 7 1800X, and it can really beat the Core i5-7600K in certain titles. Having said that, I'd wait for April 11^th launch day and look at the reviews before buying. The lower-priced Ryzen 5 1500X might do the job for you. Gaming performance depends on your graphics card, too.

Ditt44: During the mid-2000s most PC game development devolved into a 'console-first' policy, resulting in dumbed-down interfaces, specs, etc. It seems like we’re finally witnessing a reversal to that. With AMD's diversification and integration into console markets, is your company’s development process for CPU and GPU technology based on one market or the other, or is there a more parallel sharing of engineering assets, product features, and architectural designs?

DON WOLIGROSKI: I think products follow what people want.

There was a time when gamers were a bit intimidated by PCs and the knowledge that was required to run them properly. I think the new generation of gamers aren't intimidated and really see the benefits of the open PC platform. Combine that with the tremendous success of eSports, and the PC is leading the millennium's current gaming renaissance.

As far as base-lines, it's a loop. CPUs and GPUs get better, developers start to take advantage of that power, and then we plateau for a while.

This is why Ryzen is so fricking awesome for gamers. We basically disrupted the PC's landscape by making highly-threaded, high performance CPUs accessible at previously unheard of price points. Now that AMD has brought multi-core processors to mainstream, developers can make use for that hardware as it reshapes the market. It won't be instantaneous, but it's inevitable.

Personally, from a crystal ball standpoint, I think the PC will completely displace consoles someday. Really, consoles are just PCs with simplified user interfaces and better compatibility. We've been moving in that direction since day one, it just takes time.

redgarl: Do you think having console game developers and manufactures reliance on AMD architecture gives your company a serious advantage in performance for the same game on PC running on Nvidia or Intel components?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Being the de-facto console developer does have some advantages, giving developers a lot of incentive to optimize for your architecture. From a CPU development perspective, we are focused on both Radeon and GeForce compatibility first and foremost. We want our customers to be confident that both will work flawlessly on their rigs.

Aspiring techie: What do you think is holding Ryzen's clock speeds back? Compared to Kaby Lake, Ryzen's clock speeds are somewhat sluggish. Do you think that it's something in the architecture or Global Foundry's 14nm process?

DON WOLIGROSKI: If you think about it, Ryzen is an absolute worst-case scenario for clock rates: a brand-new architecture, and a brand-new process. And still we hit 4 GHz without too much trouble.

I believe we have tremendous clock speed headroom to take advantage of as we move forward because of this. Lots of improvements to be made.

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AMD Ryzen 5 1600XView Deal

Project Scorpio, Versus Core i5, and ECC

Robert Pankiw: Microsoft engineers are said to have made significant improvements to both the architecture and design of the Scorpio Engine, the SoC (system on chip) jointly developed with AMD. The engineering team reduced the Jaguar powered SoC to a 16nm process node. I realize that doing a process shrink isn't nearly as easy as shrinking a picture in MSPaint. What goes into shrinking existing core design?

The team also reportedly made huge strides in parsing DirectX 12 commands, even claiming that their new designs reduced some API calls down from thousands of instructions to 11. Can AMD still benefit from that knowledge and implementation specifics?

DON WOLIGROSKI: I should qualify this by starting with saying I can't comment directly on Project Scorpio, I am not involved in that project and have no idea if what you've heard about a die shrink is true, but I can make a comment on die shrinks in general

Die shrinks are far more involved than people think, because architecture is tied to dies in ways that we don't know. Not that I know, but this is what our architects tell me when I ask. I can say it's a non-trivial, massive undertaking. But I'm no processor engineer, to be sure. So, I don't have the knowledge to answer you with any authority, sorry.

It might sound like I'm tooting our own horn, but I do believe that AMD invented the basis for all modern APIs. DirectX 12 owes a good portion of its existence to AMD's Mantle API, which laid out a template for Microsoft to follow. They do a lot of things similarly. And of course, Mantle lives on as the basis of the Vulkan API. So absolutely, we're very, very focused on future-looking graphics APIs and taking advantage of them as best we can.

g-unit1111: I'm interested in upgrading my 4th Generation Intel Haswell rig to a Ryzen based system. What performance can we expect from the Ryzen 5 Processors? How does the Ryzen 5 1600X compare to say an i5-7600K? Would my money be better spent on upgrading to a Ryzen 7 1700X?

Also, what's the issue with AM4 mounting brackets? I see that companies like Noctua are giving away AM4 mounting brackets but would older coolers be able to work on the new platform?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Ryzen 5 will murder the Core i5 when it comes to prosumer applications: rendering, encoding, encryption. Anything that takes advantage of more threads, the Ryzen dominates.

If you're a prosumer who wants even more productivity, Ryzen 7 will deliver even shorter processing times than Ryzen 5. If this is you, get the

best you can afford. But know that the Ryzen 5 is worlds better than the Core i5. The Ryzen 5 1600X is essentially as fast as the Core i7-6850K when it comes to prosumer applications.

Now, if all you do is surf the web and game, one application at a time, maybe don't upgrade yet. If you game and stream at the same time, and like to run apps while gaming, then Ryzen is a sweet upgrade for gamers.

norune: Has AMD fine-tuned Ryzen chips so there is less overclocking headroom for the 1800X models in comparison to the 1700 models? Any date for the next revision of Ryzen? Like Late 2017 or early 2018?

DON WOLIGROSKI: AMD qualifies chips. We choose the best samples to be the 1800X, because it has to run at the highest clocks. Does that mean a 1700 or 1700X can't run at those same clocks? Not at all, they might run very well at higher clocks! But they might need a bit more voltage and a bit more cooling to do so.

I have no dates for the next Ryzen revision, sorry. All I can tell you is that Ryzen 3 is coming in the 2nd half of 2017.

sp1207: What is the story with ECC? I've read reports of it working with various motherboards, working only in Linux, working in Windows but not advertised as such. Is there any AMD push to coordinate with Microsoft and motherboard manufacturers to enable ECC as an option even if not officially supported?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Ryzen processors support ECC memory, but it's up to motherboard manufacturers to qualify their platforms. Since this isn't a typical consumer feature, you'll need to do some research and see what works I'm afraid, unless a motherboard specifically announces support for ECC RAM.

Robert Pankiw: Does AMD, Intel, and NVidia work together pre-launch to prevent as few hardware related bugs as possible, especially if these bugs only show up in certain configurations?

DON WOLIGROSKI: AMD does its best to ensure the best possible user experience when we partner with any other vendor.

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AMD Ryzen 5 1600View Deal

X399 Motherboard, Ryzen 5 Launch BIOS, and DDR5

BulkZerker: Can you comment on a rumor I read about a high-end prosumer focused motherboard (the X399)? Is this just idle gossip?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Well you can't believe everything you hear on the internet. But at the same time, if there was an unannounced product, I couldn't talk about it anyway.

Vesperan: If I buy a AM4 motherboard before Ryzen 5 launches, will it post and boot with the current shipped BIOS once I install a Ryzen 5 CPU?

DON WOLIGROSKI: I just asked our motherboard chipset product manager, Steve Basset, to be sure: Any Ryzen 7, 5, or 3 will be fine on the first-revision BIOSes. You're golden!

aeriolwinters: Will the AM4 platform have future revisions to enable DDR5 compatibility?

DON WOLIGROSKI: As far as I can remember, every major memory technology has required a new type of socket. So DDR5 probably won't fit in a DDR4 memory slot when it arrives. Processors are often backwards-compatible with older board revisions; I think that's what you're referring to. AMD has a history of supporting that more than the competition, but it's too early to make any specific promises or even speculation, sorry.

jdwii: In certain titles, such as Watch Dogs 2 the 6900K beats a 7700K but in that same title the 1800X is in parity with the Intel Core i5 in terms of performance. It’s an unexpected result. Can you please explain why as the 1800X beats a 6900X in most multi-threaded tasks, but has Core i5 level gaming performance?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Frankly, Ryzen is a brand-new architecture. Game developers have tightly focused on Intel for years, there will be a ramp-up as game developers learn what they're doing that might not play well with Ryzen, and how to take advantage of its strengths.

We have already improved Ryzen performance for games like DOTA2, Ashes of the Singularity, and Warhammer: Total War with relatively little developer effort. We're working to do what we can and make sure developers have access to Ryzen hardware and our expertise to get rid of these strange game performance anomalies.

Having said that, Ryzen processors provide an excellent gaming experience today, even if it's not the fastest at everything it's still very smooth. And things are only getting better! So, we have good reason to be optimistic.

BuildCrisp2213: Will the 6 Core Ryzen 5 processors be as fully utilized as the Ryzen 7 series for future applications, or do you think Ryzen 7 is a better investment in terms of future performance and longevity? Which processor do you think will most optimized for current applications, and which one will be best for future applications?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Many applications (Rendering/encryption/encoding) will take as many cores and threads as you can throw at them, right now. Those are the easy targets for multi-core optimization.

Aside from that, we expect game developers to make use of DirectX 12 and Vulkan to take better use of CPU resources going forward. This benefit all multi-core processors, but the more cores and threads, the more the benefit. In these situations, Ryzen 7 CPUs should perform better than Ryzen 5.

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AMD Ryzen 5 1500XView Deal

Enterprise, Best GPUs, CCX Latency, and Scheduling

mikeangs2004: Are the Ryzen CPUs stable enough for use in an enterprise environment? Are APUs a lower R&D priority compared to high core count CPUs?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Personally, I would have no reservations over recommending Ryzen for enterprise clients. It’s a crazy good part. Ryzen-based APUs are well on their way. I think it's great that we could stagger releases to make sure we could give each part the proper focus it deserves.

FireDFL: Which Ryzen CPU would you recommend for a gaming/overclocking/rendering build? I'll be doing light-intermediate rendering before I become an advanced renderer. Also, which GPU do you recommend to pair with any Ryzen CPU if I want to game in 1080p and 1440p at 60FPS?

DON WOLIGROSKI: If you plan to render at all, get the best Ryzen you can afford. It's that simple. The good news is that at every price point you're getting rendering performance that blows away the pre-Ryzen status quo, which was 4 threads below $275 (we deliver 12), and 8 threads under $400 (we deliver 16).

Honestly, you can get great 1440p game performance with a Radeon RX 480 or a GeForce GTX 1060 under $200. Only spend more if you want to crank up detail levels and anti-aliasing.

cryoburner: You mentioned that there are already performance optimizations for certain games such as Ashes of the Singularity. What exactly do some of these software optimizations for Ryzen entail? I've heard that communication between cores on the same CCX might be significantly faster than it is between cores on disparate CCX units. Are these optimizations due to updated code keeping threads that communicate often on the same CCX? Would this avoid the increased latency between different CCX cores?

DON WOLIGROSKI: It’s all over the map, there's no silver bullet, even though that's what people want to hear. The CCX latency is there, but it's not that bad and it's not responsible for the outliers.

I'll give you an example of the kids of things that are holding Ryzen back: a developer found that their game code automatically assumed that AMD CPUs had all-physical cores, because we didn't have SMT before now. Once the game was guided to behave as it does on Intel HyperThreaded CPUs, we saw a notable boost in performance.

It sounds simple, but this is what happens when a new architecture is introduced. It sounds trivial, once you know what's happening it can be easy to attack, but finding it takes work.

wildcard1978: When can we expect a fix for the BIOS, RAM speed bugs, and scheduling issues?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Ryzen RAM speed and compatibility is improving all the time. We have a huge BIOS update enabling 3200 MHz DDR4 that should hit most boards April 11^th, and there is another update scheduled for May.

As for scheduling issues, there aren't any “issues” per se. Windows is doing what it's supposed to do. The balanced power plan wasn't working optimally and we fixed that with an updated plan you can download from the AMD website.

That's not to say we can't work with Microsoft to make the schedulers work better in the future, but there's no problem right now. It's working as designed.

Bursar: What is the IPC improvement you are looking for between Ryzen and Ryzen 2?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Personally, I'm looking for as much performance uplift as possible! We haven't disclosed anything yet, but I'm quite optimistic.

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AMD Ryzen 5 1400View Deal

Mobile, Naming Scheme, and Naples

awetle: Theoretically, how fast can the Infinity Fabric clock? Will we see an iteration of this interconnect technology on Ryzen compatible with the higher speeds of DDR5?

DON WOLIGROSKI: I'm not aware of an Infinity Fabric ceiling. That's not to say there isn't one, but it's never come up as a limitation in the meetings I've been a part of.

I can't comment on memory technologies that don't even have a defined specification yet. I can say that AMD has committed to keeping the AM4 platform around for years to come, and we're very committed to the Ryzen brand, so we'll have to see if that collides with the consumer release of DDR5.

skgs2017: Are there plans to release an 8-Core Ryzen CPU for Laptops this year?

DON WOLIGROSKI: We haven't publicly released the specifications of our Ryzen-based laptop APUs, so I can't comment.

LordStreetguru: Why weren’t the Ryzen series of processors named Ryzen 4, Ryzen 6, Ryzen 8, Ryzen 12, and Ryzen 16?

DON WOLIGROSKI: We did a ton of research and found that the vast majority of people just want a good/better/best brand segmentation scheme. They value the simplicity and clarity of it. Good = Ryzen 3, better = Ryzen 5, best = Ryzen 7. Boom! Done.

randomizer: Do you ever miss writing reviews?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Sometimes, but not nearly as much as I miss playing with all the new hardware that used to come across my desk.

The opportunity I miss most is reporting on the VR industry when the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive were released. I was there before it started; I made a polarized 3D projector before you could buy them, and I tested the crap that was out before the first Oculus Rift Development kit. I met Palmer Luckey in a tiny hotel room at CES where he showed me the very first DK1. I'll always feel it's a story I never got to delve in to as much as I expected I would.

chriscambridge: We do data processing using single and dual Xeons. We actually know very little about AMD and the new Ryzen CPUs, as we are more Intel/Nvidia users. Would Ryzen processors and their related motherboards have anything to offer us? We require high core counts with hyper-threading, at the quickest frequency possible, with AVX/AVX2, auto-overclocking, and DDR4 RAM?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Ryzen has single-threaded IPC comparable to Intel's Broadwell-E. Clock for clock, we're about 6% behind Kaby Lake, Intel's best.

At the same time, we offer colossal multithreading advantages over the competition. Our 6-core/12 thread Ryzen 5's start at just over $200 USD. Our 8-core/16 thread Ryzen 7s start at just over $300 USD. The $499 Ryzen 7 1800X offers multithreading performance about 9% better than the Core i7-6900K, which costs over $1000.

Ryzen CPUs can use ECC memory, but Intel consumer CPUs cannot (although Ryzen boards are not qualified for this). Ryzen also uses DDR4 RAM. It's a new platform so we're ramping up memory, but we're stably at 3200 MHz and making fast progress with BIOS updates.

If you use Xeons, though, do some research on AMD's upcoming Naples server parts. Quad-channel RAM, unholy amounts of I/O bandwidth, 32-core/64-thread CPUs. Absolutely killer server value coming your way.

XaveT: Are there any plans to release a low-power Ryzen processor, such as one with a TDP of 25W less, designed in the same vein as the Athlon 5300-series? I love those little workhorses, and am hoping to see an AM4 version with PCIe 3.0 and DDR4 support. Any chance of us seeing this?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Nothing we've announced specifically. Although we're making mobile Ryzen processors in the future, so that's some indication.

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Best Gaming Processor, Clock Speeds, and Development

AMD Radeon RX 480 8GBView Deal

johnson151168: Which processor do you recommend strictly for gaming, priced less than $250? I don't really play anything besides League of Legends and World of Warcraft, but I would like to try out quite a few upcoming games, and I know my FX CPU is not be up to the challenge. I am currently using a Radeon RX 480 8GB graphics card.

DON WOLIGROSKI: Strictly gaming, well, assuming your “strictly gaming” goal doesn't include gaming and streaming to twitch (which can really take advantage of the 12-threaded Ryzen 5 1600X and Ryzen 7 processors), I'd steer you to the Ryzen 5 1500X. High clocks and the most XFR clock rate headroom in the Ryzen stack so far (up to 200 MHz over the Precision Boost spec with capable cooling), four cores and 8 threads so it has enough resources to take advantage of the games that value more cores. $189. Sweet little part, basically a Core i7 equivalent in a lot of ways, but for about half the price.

SinxarKnights: Did you have a party once the first Ryzen chips rolled off the line to celebrate?

DON WOLIGROSKI: I work from home in Canada, I wasn't at the AMD campus when they had the Ryzen launch party.

jaymc: Do you expect to hit higher and higher clock speed as AMD further refines and tweaks the Ryzen platform? Will Ryzen ever hit clock speeds equal to an overclocked Kaby Lake?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Until we have new silicon spins, anything I say is speculation. But we're all quite optimistic about how fast we got this first architecture/process to go in its first go round, and bolstered that we have a lot of opportunity to crank up the clocks.

Martell1977: Could tell us a little about Ryzen's development, as in, how long ago was it that it was started? Was it before the Bulldozer release? Shortly after?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Off the top of my head, I believe it was 4 or 5 years ago now, around 2012. Before my time at AMD, I started my tenure here at the beginning of 2015. The promise of the Zen architecture is one of the reasons I came to AMD in the first place.

Martell1977: The benchmarks I have seen for Ryzen 7 have made it difficult to know exactly which CPU to recommend. There are 4 SKU's out to challenge Intel’s. Is there a chart or list you have that show exactly what your intended CPU vs CPU matchups are?

DON WOLIGROSKI: You can compare on price or on ability. The Ryzen 7 1700X ($499) actually also beats the Core i7-6900K in a lot of multi-threaded benches, but on a price standpoint it's closer to the Core i7-6800K, which it dominates.

We usually pit the Ryzen 7 1700 ($330) and the i7-7700K because their price is so close. From a productivity rendering/encoding/encrypting standpoint the 1700 kicks the crap out of Kaby. The 7700K does have higher clocks and IPC, so there's a 1080p gaming advantage, but once you raise resolution to 1440p the gaming advantage is very muted. At 4K and in VR, it barely shows up in benchmarks. So, if you're spending over $300 on a CPU, I think the Ryzen 7 1700 is an easy choice because folks in this segment would be buying 1440p or higher resolution monitors. You're not giving up any real-world game performance at 1440p and above, but you're getting colossal application advantages.

The new Ryzen 5 1600X ($249) is 6 cores/12 threads and priced similarly to the Core i5-7600K. Literally 3x the threads on Ryzen, this is the easiest battle for us. Productivity is on a different level entirely, while some modern games really appreciate more than 4 threads and the 7600K can suffer significantly compared to the 7700K. So, games trade blows at 1080p. No real argument to choose Kaby Lake here.

The Ryzen 5 1500X ($189) is priced opposite the Core i5-7500. With twice the threads of the core i5, the Ryzen 5 1500X is a good gaming part for people who like the idea of Core i7 class productivity for half the price, should they ever want to exercise that power. And games are becoming more threaded all the time thanks to DirectX 12 and Vulkan.

Dragonsmint878: Any update on the availability to purchase Wraith coolers? Will the Wraith Max, might it be available to purchase at R5 Launch? Will stock RGB coolers be able to be bought separately?

DON WOLIGROSKI: We're very aware of the demand from AMD customers for standalone wraith coolers. We haven't announced anything publicly. I personally think it would be very cool if they were offered as a standalone item.

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AMD Ryzen 7 1700XView Deal

Update Schedule, 1600X Microarchitecture, and Optane

lightofhonor: How has developing/updating the BIOS process been different then supporting previous AMD sockets or Intel sockets? I've noticed a lot of updates since release on my Killer board. When will the BIOS stop being updated several times a month? When do you think the BIOS will be "done"?

DON WOLIGROSKI: On any new platform, there's going to be more development than usual. It happens with every major socket update, on both AMD and Intel for those who have been around long enough to remember a number of turnovers.

But we're making really good progress, and very quickly. My gut feeling is that the upcoming April update gets us to a place where people are generally satisfied, and then we'll hone that edge in the months to come.

Aris25: Is the 1600X manufactured as a 3x3 or is it a 1800X with one core on each side turned off or is it an 1800X with one core that failed on each side that was then turned off or something else altogether?

DON WOLIGROSKI: The 1600X is essentially an 1800X with one core disabled per CCX (a 3+3 configuration). All 16MB of L3 cache is still enabled, BTW.

Evilwumpus: Can we expect a significant performance difference of Vega or the Polaris refresh when used in conjunction with Ryzen 7 vs an Intel Core i7-7700k?

DON WOLIGROSKI: From a CPU perspective, we try to be graphics-agnostic so everyone can enjoy Ryzen regardless of their choice of GPU.

Nope 1151: Will you ever go back to the green AMD logo?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Your answer lies within (your username).

aeriolwinters: Would the Athlon brand still be active? With the R7 for Enthusiasts, the R5's for mainstream high computing and the R3 for mainstream computing, how do you see the Athlon fit in with all the APU's still not in tow?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Athlon will be used for CPUs that sit below the Ryzen 3 brand, just as it sits below the current FX brand. It will live next to A-series APUs in the same segment. Bristol-Ridge-based APUs and Athlons will be available for Socket AM4 motherboards at an undisclosed date. Stay tuned!

valeman2012: Any plans for Intel Optane support?

DON WOLIGROSKI: The short answer is no. The long answer is:

1. Optane is Intel-proprietary technology, and the Optane M.2 slot is exclusive to some Intel motherboards

2. Intel partnered with Micron to create 3D Xpoint memory technology that Optane is based on. I don't know if Micron's 3D Xpoint-based memory will ever be available as an agnostic solution. I would assume that Intel has an exclusivity clause, but I don't know how long it'd last.

3. In its current form for consumer desktop, Optane is basically an SSD cache drive with a maximum (pitiful) 32GB of storage. They don't even recommend pairing it with an SSD because you wouldn't notice a performance difference. They suggest you pair it with a mechanical hard drive. Lots of hype and little substance.

On the consumer desktop, you're better served with an SSD that actually has decent amount of storage space.

anironbutterfly: I've been reading on the new Ryzen CPUs, in hopes that they're a good successor to the FX-series (I'm currently using an FX-8350 on an original Sabretooth FX990 motherboard with 32 GB DDR RAM). I'm not a gamer, but a hobbyist graphic artist who uses Poser and DAZ|Studio. It's starting to show its age, and I'm looking at options to upgrade. the Ryzen series are the first new straight CPUs I've seen come out of AMD in several years.

I'm curious how this new series of chips might perform for 3d graphics rendering with the Nvidia Iray render engine (and the alternative 3Delight rendering) in comparison to the i5 and i7 Intel CPUs and compatibility with the Nvidia GeForce video cards. (I'm currently using an EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 4GB that will be progressing into my new build).

DON WOLIGROSKI: I'm not familiar how the Nvidia iRay engine works - I'll assume because it's Nvidia, it's CUDA based. It may not be CPU dependent.

For any CPU-dependent renderer, though, Ryzen will give you colossal - and I mean COLOSSAL - performance increases over FX. And in general, it's just a lot faster and enables multi-tasking in a much more responsive way. Even the sub-$200 Ryzen 5's will give you a tremendous upgrade over the FX. But I encourage you to read the launch day reviews on April 11^th.

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AMD Ryzen 7 1700View Deal

M.2 Performance, FreeSync Vs G-Sync, and CCX Performance

Onoref: With the new M.2 SSD's coming out, will the restriction on Ryzen PCIe lanes be an issue and what is your take on it?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Our M.2 performance is very good, especially NVMe, as a lot of Ryzen's I/O goes direct to the CPU - not through a chipset. I encourage you to check out the storage benchmarks in Ryzen 5 reviews.

tanke001: I'm saving to update my computer from a Phenom II X6 1055 to a full Ryzen platform. I use it mainly for video games. My question is: if it has been confirmed that L3 shared cache memory is creating bottlenecks with its actual config, can it be a good idea to split it into 4MB per CCX by software?

DON WOLIGROSKI: There's a lot of cache FUD out there about Ryzen, and a lot of people are making assumptions based on limited info. Just keep an eye on actual reviews. As we ramp up the platform and get rid of bottlenecks like memory speed, we get faster. And I can confidently say Ryzen is a lot faster than the Phenom II out of the box when it comes to gaming.

orifiel: Is AMD working with RAM vendors for more RAM options to be available for Ryzen? All I want is an AMD Ryzen 1700X with 32GB of RAM at 3000MHz or 3200MHz. Can I hope for a fix with a Rev2 BIOS and firmware updates?

DON WOLIGROSKI: RAM compatibility is one of our top priorities right now, and we're working hard to get regular BIOS updates until the situation is ideal. Expect a new BIOS around April 11^th, and in May to make memory work faster on Ryzen.

PandaNation: Why are FreeSync monitors so much cheaper than their G-Sync counterparts? I know you won't be able to say much, but how does Vega compare to the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and the Nvidia Titan Xp? Big fan of AMD, thinking of doing a Mini-ITX Ryzen 5 build. Keep up the good work!

DON WOLIGROSKI: FreeSync is cheaper because it's an open standard. In many cases a panel manufacturer can make a FreeSync panel by changing their monitor's firmware and having it meet the spec. For G-Sync, Nvidia charges a licensing fee. Because of this differentiation alone, I think the inevitable future is FreeSync.

(re Vega): It looks really nice.

I am also waiting for my MiniITX Ryzen board!

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AMD Ryzen 5 1600XView Deal

Tweaks & Support, Power Plan, and Game Benchmarks

Eric_010: Is AMD working with Battlefield 1 developer DICE to improve performance on Ryzen CPUs?

DON WOLIGROSKI: We're engaging with every major developer we can to make sure the Ryzen gaming experience only gets better. For now I'd play with the Battlefield 1 DirectX setting and detail to optimize the game, offhand I don't recall hearing about these issues on BF1 and Ryzen so this might be a problem specific to your system. That said, there's a lot of data being tracked and I apologize if it's a known issue that I can't recall at the moment.

fourseven: I live in Indonesia. Do you know when AMD plans to launch the Ryzen 5 in South East Asia, specifically in Indonesia?

DON WOLIGROSKI: Official on-shelf launch day is April 11^th worldwide. I'm not sure if your specific country has any challenges that would prevent that, but that's the day we expect Ryzen 5 to be available on shelf.

cstephenson: When do you expect the Ryzen chips to be competitive with Intel in terms of gaming? The potential is certainly there!

DON WOLIGROSKI: I'd argue that Ryzen is already competitive. There's been a lot of reviewers talking about outliers where we don't do as well, and bringing a lot of focus to them. And those outliers are where we've focused our first-round of developer engagements. Games like Ashes of the Singularity, Total War: Warhammer, and DOTA2 already have improvements.

With the new faster memory support, we average game performance delta between Ryzen and Kaby Lake is a lot closer than you'd think over a wide swath of games at 1080p. And Ryzen can hit over 60 FPS in pretty much every game I've seen at 1080p, and usually over 80 FPS and 120 FPS. It's never slow, it's just not the fastest. At 1440p, 4K, and in VR, the delta becomes insignificant between Ryzen and Kaby.

Based on that, I think it's fair to say we're already quite competitive, we're just not just not the fastest at 1080p gaming. Saying Ryzen isn't a competitive gaming CPU because Kaby is a bit faster is like saying the Ferrari 488 isn't a competitive sports car because the Bugatti Veyron is faster. It's a gross oversimplification.

Ditt44: Having just read that AMD has a new power plan available, is this something that we will see integrated with Ryzen after "Date X" or will users have to manually download and update?

DON WOLIGROSKI: For now it’s a manual download. Our long-term goal is to get it automatically updated in Windows, but I don't have a target date on that yet, sorry.

Tech_TTT: Are we expecting an AMD APU with onboard HBM2 Memory as shared memory for both System and GPU and no DIMMs slots any time sooner? What are your plans for very low voltage CPU? The Ryzen managed a good 65W TDP for 8 cores. Can we expect a 15W 4 core Ryzen APU to compete with a low voltage Intel CPU?

DON WOLIGROSKI: We're definitely considering different HBM implementations, but we haven't announced anything I can talk to. In a lot of ways the Zen architecture gets more impressive as you provide less power. I can't comment on unannounced laptop parts, but there are great things coming!

Tech_TTT: Why did you choose to go dual channel memory and not quad or eight channels for the Ryzen? Why doesn’t AMD manufacture their own motherboards?

DON WOLIGROSKI: We decided to focus on what’s best for the market. Our goal is to have a platform that competes with low-end Intel boards all the way up to high-end Intel Extreme. After analyzing the benefits, the real-world advantage of quad-channel RAM doesn't outweigh the extra costs or trade-offs. The vast majority of users will never see the difference. Heck, the dual-channel 1800X can still beat the tar out of the quad-channel 6900K in many benchmarks. I think it was a good compromise for the vast majority of users. From an enthusiast perspective, it's always nice to have more, though, so I get it.

AMD does not manufacture their own motherboards because, frankly, our partners do a better job and offer more differentiation and flavor than AMD would want to. We're happy to concentrate on the processors and leave the boards to the specialists.

Thanks again to everyone who participated! If you haven't yet, now is your final chance to enter our giveaway for the ASRock X370 Taichi AM4 Motherboard. New to the Tom's Hardware Community? Head to the forums and sign up to become a member of the largest enthusiast community on the planet.

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AMD Ryzen 5 1600View Deal

AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU Review

palcorn@outlook.com (Paul Alcorn) — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Introduction

AMD is trying to claw back lost market share with its eight-core Ryzen processors, and in the process, the company is generating a tremendous amount of excitement. Most of the enthusiasm stems from competitive pricing and solid performance in content creation and productivity workloads, even if Ryzen isn't shaping up to be universally superior, as many hoped prior to launch. The chips still suffer an IPC deficit compared to Intel’s Kaby Lake processors, and the unique Zen microarchitecture falls behind in some games at lower resolutions. While the Ryzen 7 CPUs we've tested provide a smooth experience in most titles, they don't oust Intel from its comfortable position atop the benchmark charts. This makes it difficult to universally recommend those high-end parts.

But it appears the bottom of AMD's Ryzen 7 stack offers the best value. The company claims that its Ryzen 7 1700 is the most efficient eight-core CPU available. And priced at $330, it's undoubtedly the cheapest one with modern amenities. The 1700 wields the same design as its more expensive counterparts, including the same Zen-based architecture, two CCXes enabling 16 logical cores, and 16MB of L3 cache. It also sports an unlocked ratio multiplier, AMD's SenseMI suite, and Socket AM4 compatibility.

As a result, the Ryzen 7 1700 might hit a value sweet spot that the $500 Ryzen 7 1800X and $400 1700X couldn’t.

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X

Ryzen 7 1700X

Ryzen 7 1700

The 1700’s 65W TDP stands out as its most notable differentiator compared to the higher-end 95W Ryzen 7s. A more conservative power rating means lower voltages (and heat), so its 3 GHz base and 3.7 GHz boost frequencies understandably trail the 1700X and 1800X as well.

Both X SKUs do benefit from AMD's XFR (eXtended Frequency Range) technology, which provides an additional 100 MHz over the boost ceiling if your thermal solution is beefy enough. In contrast, the 1700 comes equipped with a reduced XFR feature set that doesn’t boost beyond 3.7 GHz, though it does facilitate an all-core 3.1 GHz boost in threaded workloads. You also save a few bucks with the bundled 95W Wraith Spire cooler, and although we wouldn’t recommend using the stock heat sink for overclocking, it’s a nice addition.

The 1700 wades into a brutally competitive segment; its $330 price tag is only slightly lower than the $350 Core i7-7700K rocking a 4.2 GHz base and 4.5 GHz Turbo Boost clock rate. The Ryzen 7 1700 beckons with twice as many cores and double the L3 cache, though that doesn't translate to more performance in every application. After all, even Intel's Core i5-7600K competes with the top Ryzen 7s in certain workloads.

The Ryzens we've tested thus far suffer curious performance losses in some games. But AMD contends that many developers will patch their software to improve frame rates. Encouragingly, Stardock/Oxide recently patched Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation to optimize for Ryzen. Valve also released a patch for Dota 2. Both updates improve performance, and more important, they hint at what we might see from other devs in the future.

In the meantime, Ryzen 7 1700 offers a great starting price for eight cores and an unlocked multiplier. We think it can match its bigger brothers with a bit of tuning. Let's test that theory out.

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Overclocking & Test Setup

Overclocking

We dialed in a 3.9 GHz overclock for all three Ryzen processors, and the tuning experience was similar across the trio. A 1.3875V core voltage and 1.2V CPU SoC voltage paved the way for extended stability in Prime95. During our tests in the U.S. lab, we saw the 1700 peak at 65°C (according to AIDA), while the 1700X and 1800X reached 70°C.

Waste heat appears to accumulate quickly at higher clock rates (we hit 82°C with the 1800X at 4 GHz using Corsair's H100i v2). The Wraith Spire cooler can dissipate up to 95W, but it’s best to purchase a beefy cooler if you plan on pushing the limits of Ryzen's frequency headroom. Regardless of the heat sink we used, or the unsafe voltages we dialed in, though, we couldn't run at the same 4 GHz with our 1700. Our sample just wouldn't make it past our stress tests. Your mileage may vary, of course.

AMD recommends a "safe" limit of 1.35V for long-term overclocks, but doesn't provide warranty coverage for voltage settings beyond default. The company also claims Ryzen can take up to 1.45V, though it doesn't recommend this for long-term use.

Ryzen Memory Support	MT/s
Dual-Channel/Dual-Rank/Four-DIMM	1866
Dual-Channel/Single-Rank/Four-DIMM	2133
Dual-Channel/Dual-Rank/Two-DIMM	2400
Dual-Channel/Single-Rank/Two-DIMM	2677

We bumped Corsair's LPX memory modules up to DDR4-2933 for our overclocked tests. There are reports that higher data rates yield notable gains from Ryzen processors. Unfortunately though, even after the most recent wave of BIOS updates, support for 3000 MT/s+ is dicey. The motherboard ecosystem continues to mature, and we plan to follow up when AMD opens up additional timings and improves memory overclocking with an update later in April.

Test Setup

For this piece, we split testing between our German and American labs. The team in the U.S. ran the gaming benchmarks, while the Germans measured performance in HPC and workstation apps, and then collected thermal/power data. They used MSI's X370 XPower Gaming Titanium motherboard and we went with Asus' Crosshair VI Hero and an EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FE. We stuck with AMD’s recommended presets for our stock configurations to minimize issues attributable to the dissimilar boards.

If you want to know more about how the Tom's Hardware DE system looks and is controlled, check out How We Test Graphics Cards.

Test Systems and Measurement Setups
Systems	Germany AMD 1Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700X, 1700MSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium2x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 @2666 MT/sIntel LGA 2011-v3 Intel Core i7-6900K MSI X99S XPower Gaming Titanium 4 x 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4-2400Intel LGA 1151 Intel Core i7-7700K MSI Z270 Gaming 7 2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 @2400 MT/sAMD Socket AM3+ FX-9590 Asus Crosshair V Formula 2 x 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3-2133 @1866 MT/sGermany All1x 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 (M.2, System SSD)2x 960GB Toshiba OCZ TR150 (Storage, Images)be quiet Dark Power Pro 11, 850WWindows 10 Pro (All Updates)US AMD 1Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700X, 1700Asus ROG Crosshair VI Hero2x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 @2666 MT/sUSA Intel 1Intel Core i7-7700KMSI Z270 Gaming M72x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 @2400 MT/sUSA Intel 2Core i7-6900KASRock X99 Extreme44x Crucial DDR4-2400US All1TB Samsung PM863SilverStone ST1500, 1500WWindows 10 Pro (All Updates) Version 1607
Cooling	Germany- Alphacool Eispumpe VPP755 Pump - Alphacool NexXxoS UT60 Full Copper 240mm- Alphacool Eisblock XPX CPU-Alphacool Cape Corp Coolplex Pro 10 LT- 5x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 PWM- Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut US-Corsair H100iv2-Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4-Arctic MX-4
Case	Lian Li PC-T70 with Expansion Kit and Mods
Power Consumption Measurements	- Contact-free DC Measurement at PCIe Slot (Using a Riser Card) - Contact-free DC Measurement at External Auxiliary Power Supply Cable - Direct Voltage Measurement at Power Supply- 2 x Rohde & Schwarz HMO 3054, 500MHz Digital Multi-Channel Oscilloscope with Storage Function - 4 x Rohde & Schwarz HZO50 Current Probe (1mA - 30A, 100kHz, DC) - 4 x Rohde & Schwarz HZ355 (10:1 Probes, 500MHz) - 1 x Rohde & Schwarz HMC 8012 Digital Multimeter with Storage Function
Thermal Measurements	- 1 x Optris PI640 80Hz Infrared Camera- PI Connect Analysis Software with Profiles
Noise Measurements	- NTI Audio M2211 (with Calibration File)- Steinberg UR12 (with Phantom Power for Microphones)- Creative X7, Smaart v.7- Custom-Made Proprietary Measurement Chamber, 3.5 x 1.8 x 2.2m (L x D x H)- Perpendicular to Center of Noise Source(s), Measurement Distance of 50cm- Noise Level in dB(A) (Slow), Real-time Frequency Analyzer (RTA) - Graphical Frequency Spectrum of Noise

3DMark, Ashes of the Singularity, Battlefield 1 & 4

3DMark

Synthetic benchmarks usually don't provide an accurate measure of real-world gaming performance, but 3DMark's DX11 physics and DX12 CPU tests provide useful insight into the raw horsepower available to the game engine.

The DX11 and DX12 CPU tests reveal a similar trend. Ryzen 7 1700 trails the other eight-core processors, but passes the Core i7-6900K once we overclock it. Of course, the same treatment applied to Intel's chip would have a similar effect, so we'll stop short of calling this an AMD victory.

The quad-core Core i7-7700K and i5-7600K are far less potent in the threaded Time Spy and Fire Strike tests. However, they leverage their superior IPC throughput and clock rate to turn in a solid showing during the single-thread DX11 API overhead metrics. Intel's four-core CPUs are also competitive against the Ryzen processors in multi-threaded DX11 draw call performance, which helps explain their commanding lead in most gaming benchmarks.

DX12 leverages additional cores more efficiently, which turns the tables in favor of the eight-core chips. AMD's 1700 makes a solid showing, though it naturally trails the quicker 1700X and 1800X at stock settings. The overclocked 1700 pulls closer to its companions, but all overclocked Ryzen 7 processors suffer curiously reduced DX11 multi-threaded performance compared to stock settings. Through it all, the stock Core i7-6900K stubbornly refuses to budge from its commanding lead in DX11 threaded and DX12 tests.

Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation

Lackluster results in Ashes of the Singularity was a notable thorn in Ryzen's side, which surprised us given the purportedly close collaboration between AMD and Stardock/Oxide. Before the Ryzen launch, AMD stated that Ashes of the Singularity's Nitrous game engine wasn't optimized to fully leverage Ryzen's unique cache topology and SMT implementation, but that a patch was inbound. We gained access to the pre-release update and recorded significantly better performance from Ryzen 7. We saw the Core i7-6900K speed up too, though.

The stock Ryzen 7 1700 and 1700X can't beat a stock Core i7-7700K, but a little overclocking puts them in the lead. Unsurprisingly, though, the Core i7-6900K asserts its dominance with a large lead over the other processors.

Battlefield 1

We dialed Battlefield 1 up to the Ultra preset and repetitively took an armor-laden stroll across the O La Vittoria landscape.

We run into a graphics bottleneck during the test, so we don't observe much variation between contenders. They all enable smooth game play through our test sequence. This is why AMD says Ryzen is great for high-res gaming!

Battlefield 4

Battlefield 4 also leans on the GPU more than the CPU, so again, we notice little variation at the upper end of the 1920x1080 benchmark results.

The Ryzen 7 1700 and 1700X trail the other contenders, but pull up to the faster processors after overclocking. In many ways, these results mirror the common trend we see at higher resolutions. All of the processors offer acceptable performance when you encounter a graphics bottleneck.

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 AI benchmark is very consistent, so it was strange when we noticed the Ryzen 7 1700 outpacing the rest of the field. Alas, the remarkable performance came from a Civilization VI Spring 2017 update, which dramatically improved AI performance, forcing us to toss our old numbers.

We retested all of the processors and noted higher performance across the board, so it appears this wasn't an AMD-targeted patch. The finishing order remains the same, reflecting a ~3-second improvement for all CPUs. The stock Ryzen 7s can't keep up with Core i7-6900K, though they do jump in front after overclocking.

The Core i7-7700K and i5-7600K continue to dominate this test. We did log CPU utilization during our run and saw the benchmark scale across all 16 logical cores (it spawns 45 threads). But scaling and scaling well are two different matters, so the four-core processors continue enjoying a lead.

Civilization VI Graphics Test

The update had little impact on our graphics test, though we did notice a slight decline in average frame rates for most processors, along with more consistent minimum frame rate measurements.

The results line up familiarly, though the Core i5-7600K isn't as competitive as it is in other titles. Meanwhile, Intel's Core i7-6900K leads, while the company's Core i7-7700K falls into its wake. The stock Ryzen 1700 isn't competitive and trails its siblings by a large margin. An overclock helps put the chip within range of the two faster SKUs.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided remains the only game that Ryzen processors dominate in convincing fashion. That trend continues as we look at Ryzen 7 1700's performance. The CPU secures its spot in the leading group at stock settings. And due to an apparent graphics bottleneck, it experiences minimal uplift from our overclocking efforts.

Grand Theft Auto V

We measure performance during Grand Theft Auto V's F-16 flight sequence with the built-in benchmark. The scripted path yields a solid and consistent benchmark, while constantly changing terrain applies a significant graphics workload.

The stock Ryzen 7 1700 shows up at the bottom of our performance chart. But once again, it climbs into a more competitive position after we overclock. Unfortunately for AMD, all of the Ryzen processors trail their Intel competition by a significant margin. Even the affordable Core i5-7600K at stock clock rates outperforms. And overclocking would certainly propel it into a much higher position.

Hitman (2016), Metro: Last Light Redux, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Hitman (2016)

Hitman prefers high clock rates and additional logical cores, so the Core i7s lead while the Core i5-7600K tumbles to the bottom.

We recorded moderate improvements from the overclocked Ryzen 7s, but they still aren't competitive with Intel's Core i7s. A clear delineation between the processor families, apparent in our average frame rate over time chart, suggests that the game could benefit from Ryzen-specific optimizations.

Metro: Last Light Redux

We encounter a graphics bottleneck during our Metro: Last Light Redux tests. The stock 1700 only loses by 1.5 FPS compared to the Ryzen 7 1800X, but trails the Core i7-7700K's average frame rate by 4.1.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor also reflects a GPU-imposed ceiling at the top end of the scale. A stock Ryzen 1700 doesn't have the clock rate to keep up, so it trails the leader by an average of 8.9 FPS. Overclocking helps put the 1700 into a more competitive position, though.

Project CARS, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Division

Project CARS

Project CARS is a CPU-intensive title that promotes parallelism by breaking tasks into smaller chunks and spreading them among the cores. Intel's quad-core models take a commanding lead during our benchmark run, though, indicating a particular sensitivity to clock rate.

The Ryzen processors aren't as fast as Intel's Core i7-6900K, even after overclocking. We measure a 27.4 average FPS gulf between the Ryzen 7 1700 and Core i7-7700K. Although this gap narrows to 17.5 FPS after overclocking the 1700, we expect the -7700K would also benefit greatly from a bit of tuning.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is another sore spot for AMD's architecture, as evidenced by a 55.9 FPS gap between the Core i7-6900K and stock Ryzen 7 1700. The -6900K's solid performance points to respectable scaling based on host processing resources. But even after our overclocking efforts, the eight-core Ryzen 7s still trail Intel's chips by more than 30 FPS. The 1700, for its part, averages 24.2 FPS higher after overclocking to 3.9 GHz.

The Division

We spot little variation between the overclocked Ryzen processors as they slip by Intel's Core i7-6900K.

Workstation & HPC Benchmarks

2D Benchmarks: DirectX And GDI/GDI+

Even though it sports considerably lower base and boost frequencies (and doesn't benefit from XFR), the Ryzen 7 1700 stays within striking distance of its faster 1700X and 1800X counterparts.

2D Benchmarks: Adobe Creative Cloud

As with most productivity-focused workloads, AMD's Ryzen 7 processors battle fiercely for a position near the top of these charts. They're especially attractive in light of their low price points. Intel's less expensive Core i7-7700K leads though, so it takes a Ryzen 7 1700 to make a value case.

3D Benchmarks: DirectX And OpenGL

We see more of a delta between the 65W 1700 and 95W X SKUs during the DirectX and OpenGL tests. Many of these metrics respond best to single-threaded performance at high clock rates, so Kaby Lake enjoys a natural advantage.

CPU Performance: Workstation

Parallelized workloads are in Ryzen's wheelhouse, so all three models turn in strong results in our SolidWorks 2015 and 3ds Max 2015 composite/computing benchmarks. In many cases, they're faster than Intel's pricier Core i7-6900K in its stock configuration.

CPU Performance: Photorealistic Rendering

The 95W Ryzen processors compete aggressively against the Core i7-6900K in our CPU rendering test suite, while the 65W 1700 trails its faster counterparts and battles the stock Core i7-7700K during many of the Blender tests. AMD's 1700 does beat the Core i7-6900K in 3ds Max, but falls behind during the LuxRender benchmark.

CPU Performance: Encoding & Compression/Decompression

The 1700 is particularly competitive in HandBrake. It beats the -6900K during high-quality encoding tasks, and puts up a fight in our test using default settings. At $330, it's impossible to dismiss the 1700's value proposition compared to Intel's $1100 price point. Likely due to its lower frequency, the 1700 loses steam when we decompress an archive using 7-Zip (it even trails the old FX), but it fares better in the more parallelized compression workloads.

HPC Benchmarks (High Performance Computing)

The results of these HPC-oriented benchmarks vary depending on how they utilize each architecture. As a general trend, though, when a test is able to exploit Ryzen 7's eight cores, AMD beats the Core i7-7700K. It's usually able to give Core i7-6900K a run for its money, too. In the cases where Intel's -6900K is significantly faster, we might suspect specific optimizations for efficiency on Intel CPUs. We know, for example, that there are accelerated packages for LAMMPS, one of which includes Intel CPUs and Xeon Phi. SPEC doesn't say if any of these are part of its wpc 2.0 suite, though. AMD's market penetration with the Naples server chips will likely determine how much reaction we see in the HPC software ecosystem.

Power Consumption & Temperatures

Direct Comparisons of Power Consumption

The 65W 1700 consumes slightly more power at idle than the 95W Ryzens.

Meanwhile, our mildly overclocked Core i7-6900K consumes more power at idle than its stock configuration because we reduced its single-core Turbo Boost frequency to achieve a 3.9 GHz clock rate.

The 1700's power consumption is impressive during the AutoCAD 2015 workload; it only consumes 29.3W. A stock Core i7-7700K uses considerably more power. But looking at these figures on their own can be misleading. Remember that Intel's top Kaby Lake-based CPU demonstrated a commanding lead in the previous page's AutoCAD workloads, so it ends up offering superior performance per watt.

AMD's Ryzen 7 1700 proves its frugal nature by drawing only 44.3W during our gaming benchmark. The -6900K consumes less power than Intel's Core i7-7700K, likely because the workload doesn't fully utilize all eight cores.

The 32nm FX-9590 is in a class of its own, which isn't a good thing. Still, it highlights one of the 14nm process' main advantages.

Prime95's Small FFT stress test pushes power consumption to the max, revealing one of the 65W 1700's best attributes: it consumes 23.3W less than the 1700X. The 1700's modest power use, coupled with a small performance delta between it and the 1700X in our application benchmarks, paints a convincing picture of efficiency.

Temperatures

We optimized our CPU cooler for Socket AM4 by using two nuts between the spring and bracket to increase the force on the package to 0.4Nm. That is why these results differ from those in our launch article, where we only used washers.

Both AMD and Intel employ different temperature measurement methodology. While these readings aren't entirely comparable, they do serve as a close approximation.

In its stock form, Ryzen 7 1700 runs cooler than the rest of the field due to its lower TDP. Of course, all bets are off once you start overclocking and dialing in higher voltages. In any case, AMD uses solder between its die and heat spreader, which generally provides better thermal transfer than thermal paste. Intel famously uses thermal paste and contends that it boosts processor longevity.

Even though our results aren't apples-to-apples, it's clear that the 1700's 65W TDP does convey an expected power and thermal advantage over the other Ryzen 7s.

Conclusion

Ryzen 7 1700 pulls AMD's entry-level eight-core price point below the quad-core Core i7-7700K. That's powerful. The 1700's compelling performance in desktop productivity and content creation workloads, even at stock settings, is impressive. Moreover, the chip's power consumption and thermal characteristics align with our expectations of a CPU with a 30W-lower TDP. Combine those two strengths and you have a recipe for hard-to-beat efficiency.

The 1700 also challenges or beats Intel's Core i7-6900K in several of our application tests. Moreover, it sells for roughly one-third of the -6900K's $1100 price tag, and the bundled cooler is a nice bonus. Overall, Ryzen 7 1700's price to performance ratio is very attractive for most productivity use-cases.

AMD's higher-end Ryzen 7 1700X and 1800X are fast enough for smooth gaming. But in light of their $400 and $500 prices, there's no real reason to recommend them over Intel's Core i5-7600K or Core i7-7700K. Ryzen 7 1700 demonstrates the same behaviors as both X-series SKUs, albeit with lower frame rates if you refrain from overclocking. Tuning the 1700 somewhat aggressively breaks the 65W chip free of its shackles and allows it to trade blows with the faster Ryzen 7s. It's a bummer that our sample didn't overclock quite as well; it just wouldn't crack 4 GHz like the X-series parts. Still, a respectable clock rate ceiling enables similar performance as the 95W models, so if you expect to overclock, spending more money on a 1700X or 1800X may not make sense.

The recent Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation and Dota 2 patches bring hope that game developers can, and will, address Ryzen's most quantifiable weakness. Ideally, all developers would follow suit, but in reality, most older games won't be changed. It's the future of gaming we must look to. And in that, the more accessible Ryzen 5 and 3 families may prove to be even better options for gaming, perhaps encouraging devs to spend more time improving the FHD experience on Ryzen-based platforms.

For now, Ryzen 7 1700 provides good-enough gaming performance at an acceptably low price point, which makes it a viable option for anyone shopping for an eight-core workstation-class chip ready for some entertainment, too.

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AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Review

palcorn@outlook.com (Paul Alcorn) — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 13:00:00 +0000

Introduction

AMD is trying to shake up the market with shockingly low prices for its 8C/16T Ryzen 7 line-up. And while these CPUs don't dominate every workload, there is hope the company's newest architecture is compelling across enough segments to put much-needed pressure on Intel.

One component of AMD's strategy involves attractive pricing. The flagship Ryzen 7 1800X grabbed attention for its ability to battle Intel's Broadwell-E-based Core i7-6900K for $550 less (and with the same number of execution cores). We agree that the 1800X is compelling in threaded productivity and content creation apps. But we think you'll derive more value out from the cheaper Ryzen 7 1700X ($400) and 1700 ($330). The former goes up against Intel's $450 Core i7-6800K, while the latter undercuts Core i7-7700K. In both cases, the AMD chips wield more processing resources than the Intel competition.

Of course, that doesn't mean AMD runs the table in benchmarks. In our AMD Ryzen 7 1800X CPU Review, we saw the new chip offer a solid price-to-performance ratio for productivity and workstation-class workloads. Unfortunately, we couldn’t say the same about gaming. We followed up with testing in a wider range of popular games, and while Ryzen delivered playable performance in most titles, cheaper Core i7-7700K and Core i5-7600K chips were typically better.

Zen, In-Depth

From a high level, various enhancements over Zen’s predecessors, such as Simultaneous Multi-Threading (SMT), a new micro-op cache, better branch prediction, a wider instruction scheduler window, and faster caches contribute to the architecture's increased IPC throughput. Check out Everything Zen: AMD Presents New Microarchitecture At HotChips for more.

AMD claims that the gaming performance issues stem from how applications interact with the intricacies of its new architecture. The company expects a wave of updates from various developers that will eventually remedy this (though so far only two devs have publicly committed to optimizing their engines for the new processors). Until something concrete happens, though, we don't see much value in gaming-specific Ryzen 7 1800X builds.

Might the Ryzen 7 1700X cast a more favorable light on gaming? After all, it costs $100 less, carries over the eight-core configuration with 16MB of L3 cache, and continues to offer an unlocked ratio multiplier.

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X

Ryzen 7 1700X

Ryzen 7 1700

The unlocked multiplier is especially interesting, given the similarities up and down the Ryzen 7 family. Given a similar 95W TDP between the $500 1800X and $400 1700X, then, the only technical differences between them are their base, two-core Precision Boost, and XFR clock rates. Out of the box, 1800X enjoys a 200 MHz advantage down low and up top. But we've heard claims that 1700X hits a similar ceiling as 1800X when it comes to overclocking.

Right out of the gate, Ryzen 7 1700X looks like a smarter buy than 1800X. But is it smart enough to maintain AMD's strong position in well-threaded desktop apps and make up some value ground in gaming, where the architecture isn't as strong?

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Overclocking And Test Setup

Overclocking

You can download AMD's Ryzen Master utility from the company's website. The tool makes overclocking from within Windows nice and convenient. However, we still prefer making firmware-based adjustments.

Our 1800X hit 4 GHz at 1.425V across all of its cores in our launch article, but we stepped that back to a more conservative 3.9 GHz overclock in this piece to represent a safer long-term frequency. We achieved Prime95 stability on both the 1800X and 1700X by dialing core voltage up to 1.3875V and bumping CPU SoC voltage to 1.2V. We left Load Line Calibration set to Auto, but boosted the Crucial LPX memory modules to DDR4-2933 for our overclocked setups. That's only a slight increase over the DDR4-2699 we used for the stock gaming configurations.

While we've seen many enthusiasts hit 4.0-4.1 GHz with much higher voltages, AMD says 1.35V is the "safe" ceiling for long-term overclocking. We didn't run into any thermal issues at 3.9 GHz, and recorded 70°C (per AIDA) after a two-hour Prime95 run with the capable Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 heat sink in place. Waste heat appears to accumulate quickly at higher clock rates (we hit 82°C at 4 GHz using Corsair's H100i v2). Invest in a beefy cooler if you plan on pushing the limits of Ryzen's frequency headroom.

Test Setup

We've experienced general platform instability with numerous AM4-based motherboards and early firmware revisions. This is typically pinned on unoptimized AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture microcode. AGESA is a bootstrap protocol that initializes processor cores, memory, and the HyperTransport (now Infinity Fabric) controller. We're using Asus' Crosshair VI Hero for this round of testing, along with the latest 1001 firmware. This version demonstrated improved stability at stock and overclocked settings. We'll continue to monitor the firmware updates from other vendors and note when they've achieved a similar degree of stability. AMD is expected to release an AGESA revision in late March that should enhance memory support, including opening up more sub-timings.

Early firmware updates yielded large performance increases over AMD's original press kit. As time goes on, though, the gains get smaller and smaller. Asus mentioned that we shouldn't expect big changes from future builds.

In general, we've recorded more performance variation from Ryzen processors than we're accustomed to in a few games. Ashes of the Singularity is one example. Incidentally, that's also a title expected to improve once the developer follows up on promises to optimize for AMD's architecture. We suspect that some of this inconsistency stems from the impact of cross-CCX thread migration and other peculiarities of Zen. In response, we've disabled several transitory background services that fire up with little to no provocation and may promote thread migration, such as Windows Search and Defender. Frequent reboots during testing also helped weed out obvious outliers, yielding more consistent results. We're again testing under Windows' High performance power plan with HPET disabled. As we demonstrated in our Ryzen 7 1800X review, some games benefit from disabling SMT, though that also leads to lower performance in other titles. Plus, we don't think you should be expected to toggle this feature on and off. As such, we're leaving SMT enabled for today's story.

As expected, we also encounter graphics bottlenecks in several titles at 2560x1440. AMD argues that its Ryzen processors fare best at higher resolutions, for obvious reasons: as you start shifting the burden to your GPU, host processing weaknesses are easier to mask. Further, outside of one exception in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, we only recorded minor hierarchy changes between FHD and QHD in our Ryzen Versus Core i7 in 11 Popular Games article. In other words, the same performance trends at 1920x1080 carry over to 2560x1440.

If you want to know more about how the Tom's Hardware DE system looks and is controlled, check out How We Test Graphics Cards.

Test Systems and Measurement Setups
Systems	Germany AMD 1Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700XMSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium2x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 @2666 MT/sIntel LGA 2011-v3 Intel Core i7-6900K MSI X99S XPower Gaming Titanium 4 x 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4 2400Intel LGA 1151 Intel Core i7-7700K MSI Z270 Gaming 7 2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 @2400 MT/sAMD Socket AM3+ FX-9590 Asus Crosshair V Formula 2 x 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 2133 @1866 MT/sGermany All1x 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 (M.2, System SSD)2x 960GB Toshiba OCZ TR150 (Storage, Images)be quiet Dark Power Pro 11, 850WWindows 10 Pro (All Updates)US AMD 1Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700XAsus ROG Crosshair VI Hero2x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 @2666 MT/sUS AMD 2AMD FX-8350MSI 970 Gaming2x Kingston HyperX DDR3-2133USA Intel 1Intel Core i7-7700KMSI Z270 Gaming M72x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 @2400 MT/sUSA Intel 2Core i7-6900KASRock X99 Extreme44x Crucial DDR4-2400US All1TB Samsung PM863SilverStone ST1500, 1500WWindows 10 Pro (All Updates) Version 1607
Cooling	Germany- Alphacool Eispumpe VPP755 Pump - Alphacool NexXxoS UT60 Full Copper 240mm- Alphacool Eisblock XPX CPU-Alphacool Cape Corp Coolplex Pro 10 LT- 5x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 PWM- Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut US-Corsair H100iv2-Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4-Arctic MX-4
Case	Lian Li PC-T70 with Expansion Kit and Mods
Power Consumption Measurements	- Contact-free DC Measurement at PCIe Slot (Using a Riser Card) - Contact-free DC Measurement at External Auxiliary Power Supply Cable - Direct Voltage Measurement at Power Supply- 2 x Rohde & Schwarz HMO 3054, 500MHz Digital Multi-Channel Oscilloscope with Storage Function - 4 x Rohde & Schwarz HZO50 Current Probe (1mA - 30A, 100kHz, DC) - 4 x Rohde & Schwarz HZ355 (10:1 Probes, 500MHz) - 1 x Rohde & Schwarz HMC 8012 Digital Multimeter with Storage Function
Thermal Measurements	- 1 x Optris PI640 80Hz Infrared Camera- PI Connect Analysis Software with Profiles
Noise Measurements	- NTI Audio M2211 (with Calibration File)- Steinberg UR12 (with Phantom Power for Microphones)- Creative X7, Smaart v.7- Custom-Made Proprietary Measurement Chamber, 3.5 x 1.8 x 2.2m (L x D x H)- Perpendicular to Center of Noise Source(s), Measurement Distance of 50cm- Noise Level in dB(A) (Slow), Real-time Frequency Analyzer (RTA) - Graphical Frequency Spectrum of Noise

3DMark, Ashes of the Singularity, Battlefield 1 & 4

3DMark

We don't consider synthetic benchmarks to be a good measure of real-world gaming performance, but 3DMark's DX11 physics and DX12 CPU tests provide useful metrics that quantify the amount of processing power available to the game engine.

The stock Ryzen 7 1800X comes close to unseating Intel's Core i7-6900K during the DX12 CPU test. AMD's 1700X trails its faster counterpart by 383 points. However, overclocking both chips to 3.9 GHz shrinks the gap to 72 points...in favor of the 1700X.

Futuremark's DX11 Fire Strike benchmark runs 32 parallel soft and rigid body physics simulations that tax the processor specifically. We notice a similar trend during the DX11 physics test; both Ryzen processors lag the i7-6900K at stock settings, but overtake Intel when overclocked. Rest assured that we're planning a follow-up that has each of these unlocked CPUs tuned up to show how they ultimately fall in relation to each other.

The Ryzen processors offer better single-threaded DX11 performance when we overclock them, yet curiously turn in worse results in the threaded DX11 test compared to the stock settings. We repeated this test multiple times just to be sure. In spite of the odd outcome, both AMD CPUs beat the Core i7-6900K in 3DMark's DX11 single-threaded test, regardless of clock rate.

Ryzen 7 demonstrates a tremendous DX11 single-thread deficit compared to the Core i7-7700K and i5-7600K, which helps explain Intel's commanding lead in titles that are primarily sensitive to single-threaded performance. The 3DMark DX12 API overhead test reveals a large gap between the stock Ryzens and Core i7-6900K. Even overclocking can't make up the difference.

Ashes of the Singularity

Ashes of the Singularity is notoriously CPU-bound, but it responds well to higher core counts and clock rate, which makes it particularly well suited for examining the impact of increased processing performance on CPU-intensive titles. Unfortunately, the game engine doesn't play well with AMD's new architecture, which is a punishing reality considering its hefty 16-thread SMT implementation. Oxide Games has voiced its intention to optimize for Ryzen, but the timing specifics remain unclear.

Ryzen 7 CPUs lag behind the Intel competition (even its Core i5) by a considerable margin.

At stock clock rates, the 1800X outpaces AMD's 1700X by 2.1 FPS on average. However, the overclocked Ryzen 7 1700X roughly matches the higher-end model. Given the frequency boost and correspondingly small speed-up, something other than clock rate is holding Ryzen back.

Fortunately, all of the processors except AMD's FX-8350 provide smooth-enough frame rates at 1920x1080.

Battlefield 1

We dialed Battlefield 1 up to Ultra preset and trudged across the landscape in O La Vittoria. The game flirts with a graphics bottleneck, even at 1920x1080, so there isn't as much performance variation between host processors.

While both overclocked Ryzen 7 CPUs trump the stock configurations, average frame rates in Battlefield 1 are so close that there's little reason to compare performance. Only the FX-8350 stands out as a notably slower CPU unworthy of your high-end graphics hardware.

Battlefield 4

Battlefield 4 behaves similarly, also emphasizing graphics performance (even at 1920x1080). As a result, the Ryzen 7 CPUs are right there in the mix with Intel's fastest desktop processors.

The stock Ryzen 7 1700X trails the field slightly, but bumping it to 3.9 GHz adds a few FPS, edging out the stock 1800X. Meanwhile, the FX-8350 is our only real loser.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hitman (2016), Metro: Last Light Redux, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Hitman (2016)

The Intel processors maintain a lead during this test. Although we observe a moderate gain from overclocking Ryzen, AMD's deficit suggests something else is bottlenecking these CPUs other than clock rate.

Also interesting is that Core i5 trails the i7s and Ryzen. Could its lack of Hyper-Threading really incur such a performance hit compared to Core i7-7700K?

Further, we notice several frame time outliers with the stock 1800X that shows up in both our frame time and unevenness charts. Overclocking smooths out some of the inconsistency.

Metro: Last Light Redux

Even at 1920x1080, Metro Last Light is largely graphics-bound. Nevertheless, all four Ryzen data points trail behind the three Intel CPUs, and not even overclocking changes this.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Middle-earth also appears to be limited by graphics horsepower. Still, the Core i7-770K leads slightly, followed by the Core i5-7600K. The Ryzen 7 processors trail at their stock settings, though overclocking them is enough to beat a stock Core i7-6900K.

Project CARS, Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Division

Project CARS

The Core i7-7700K takes a beastly lead during our Project CARS test run. AMD's Ryzen 7 CPUs obvious struggle at their stock settings, though overclocking helps quite a bit.

The 1800X does fare somewhat better than the 1700X right out of the box, and as a result of its higher base and XFR frequencies, it doesn't benefit as much from an overclock to 3.9 GHz.

AMD's old FX-8350 lags woefully behind the rest of the field, suffering from latency spikes throughout our run. This was perceivable as intermittent bouts of choppy performance.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Quite the opposite of Deus Ex, Rise of the Tomb Raider is a marked weakness for AMD's Ryzen CPUs. They lag behind the Intel competition by 35 to 45 FPS in their stock configurations.

The Ryzens jump up to the ~120 FPS range in response to our moderate overclock, improving their standing somewhat.

The Division

Tom Clancy's The Division appears more graphics-bound, allowing the Ryzen chips to compete alongside Intel's Broadwell-E and Kaby Lake architectures. Overclocking even helps propel the Ryzen 7s in front of the stock Core i7-6900K. If you're primarily buying new hardware to game, though, that Core i5 still looks like a pretty solid performer.

Workstation And HPC Benchmarks

Our German team re-tested all of this hardware for today's story using the latest firmware. This especially affects the Ryzen 7 1800X and its 3.8 GHz overclocked results. Therefore, some of the updated test data no longer agrees with the launch results. Consider this a good thing. Maturity is helping Ryzen perform better.

2D Benchmarks: DirectX And GDI/GDI+

We extended our AutoCAD 2D and graphics throughput benchmark for the GDI/GDI+ functions to the new CPUs and summarized the results in a common section. Absolutely nothing changed from the key conclusions in our launch article.

2D Benchmarks: Adobe Creative Cloud

The Ryzen 7 1700X is well-suited for a number of threaded workloads, even if it trails the 1800X due to lower stock clock rates. Still, the differences we measure are often not noticeable during normal use.

3D Benchmarks: DirectX And OpenGL

The performance of these CPUs in our professional graphics workloads doesn't really change from what we saw in our 1800X launch coverage. However, we see that Ryzen 7 1700X is at a disadvantage without overclocking, since the architecture's IPC throughput is lower than Intel's. This particularly hurts in single-threaded tasks.

CPU Performance: Workstation

As we shift to more parallelized CPU-bound workloads, the Ryzen CPUs hit their stride and start beating some of the Intel processors that previously appeared much faster.

CPU Performance: Photorealistic Rendering

Workloads tuned for multi-core/multi-processor configurations love Ryzen. The stock 1800X and 1700X consistently appear in the top half of our test field, while the overclocked 1800X takes first or second place across the board. If you do a lot of rendering in Blender, 3ds Max, or LuxRender, Ryzen represents a good way to save money without compromising performance.

Considering the similar overclocking headroom available on 1700X and 1800X CPUs, a tuned 1700X should serve up even better value.

CPU Performance: Encoding And Compression/Decompression

AMD straight-up rocks our HandBrake encoding tests.

It's not as dominant in 7-Zip, but does trade blows with the Intel competition. Take a look at the 7-Zip decompression chart, specifically. Since Core i7-7700K lands at the top, we can assume this workload can't fully utilize the 8C/16T CPUs. This explains why a stock Core i7-6900K lands among the Ryzen configurations.

So long as the behavior of your workload is somewhat predictable, it's possible to guess how Ryzen will fare against Intel's nimble Kaby Lake models and beefy Broadwell-Es.

HPC Benchmarks (High Performance Computing)

Power Consumption And Temperatures

Direct Comparisons of Power Consumption

Similar to our performance numbers, we re-ran the 1800X review's power data to reflect the continual improvements being made to motherboard firmware.

Let's start by looking at idle power consumption. Intel's overclocked Core i7-6900K turns in a better result than the stock configuration because we also reduced the one-core Turbo Boost frequency.

The 95W AMD CPUs clearly use less power in our combined CAD benchmark. When we weigh average performance against power consumption, however, the eight-core CPUs from AMD and Intel are fairly similar.

The same story applies to our measurements in games, where Ryzen 7 blows away the Core i7s. It's been a long time since AMD was at least equal in terms of efficiency.

The 3.8 GHz Ryzen 7 sucks down more than 140W , but the Core i7-6900K is even worse at 166W. The Core i7-7700K down-clocked to the same frequency uses a conservative 86W or so.

Based on AMD's technology briefings, we know it has more granular control over clock rate. And it's notable that the 95W Ryzen 7 1700X we're reviewing today uses less power under our stress test than Intel's 91W Core i7-7700K. It takes a significant underclock to put the Kaby Lake flagship in first place.

Temperatures

We optimized our CPU cooler for Socket AM4 by using two nuts between the spring and bracket to increase force on the package to 0.4Nm. That is why these results differ from those in our launch article, where we only used washers.

The temperatures we recorded for the FX-9590 are a bit uncertain, since AMD’s older Bulldozer CPUs don't measure with 100% confidence. Moreover, the Ryzen 7 and Core i7 CPU readings aren't exactly comparable; both companies employ different sensor approaches.

Intel's Core i7-7700K is the only processor in our test field handicapped by cheap thermal paste between its die and heat spreader. Thankfully, AMD solders Ryzen's heat spreader, which results in good thermal transfer. This naturally shows up in the relationship between power converted to heat.

Enthusiasts should be happy with Ryzen's power consumption and its resulting waste heat.

Conclusion

When AMD announced that all of its Ryzen 7 CPUs would get unlocked multipliers and eight cores, we immediately imagined opportunities for enthusiasts to snag the lower-end models for less and overclock to great effect. Our testing shows that, if you're willing to spend some time tuning, the Ryzen 7 1700X offers better overall value than the 1800X at a similar 95W TDP.

This shouldn't be surprising. After all, Ryzen 7 1700X bears many of the flagship's attributes, differing mainly in base and peak clock rates. As a result, you get satisfactory performance in heavily threaded workloads at a lower price. Though most professionals eschew overclocking in favor of stability, even at its stock settings the 1700X serves up a solid price-to-performance ratio.

The story gets better once you push Ryzen 7 1700X up to and beyond the 1800X's default configuration. And overclocking is simple, too. We bumped the core voltage up to 1.3875V and increased the SoC voltage to obtain a rock-solid 3.9 GHz across all of the chip's cores. With the right cooler, a moderate overclock doesn’t come close to pushing Ryzen's thermal boundaries, and there is likely some additional headroom if you're willing to tolerate higher voltages. Memory tuning is still somewhat limited, but we're told that future firmware updates should make more settings available.

Of course, the 1800X's challenges in games carry over to the 1700X, too. Even overclocked, Ryzen lags behind cheaper Intel CPUs in much of our gaming suite. Your best chance of seeing parity comes from graphics-bound resolutions and detail settings. AMD claims that patches may address some of our concerns, but we aren't holding our breath. It's far more probable that future titles include optimizations for AMD's new architecture.

It would be easier for us to recommend Ryzen 7 to gamers if it was less expensive. But with Core i7-7700K and Core i5-7600K performing so well, and both CPUs less expensive than the 1700X we're reviewing today, Kaby Lake maintains its leadership. But there remains near-term hope for the Ryzen family: AMD's Ryzen 5 series will surface early in April at price points better suited to take on mainstream Core CPUs.

We've established that Ryzen 7 1700X tells a better value story than the 1800X, and it gets even better if you're willing to live with the B350 chipset's reduced feature set. Enthusiasts willing to overclock should be able to match or exceed the 1800X's stock performance with little effort. Now, what we really want to know is whether Ryzen 7 1700 is the best model of all, or if dipping down to the 65W model means giving up some overclocking headroom. Stay tuned!

MORE: Best CPUs