AMD 4700S Review: Defective PlayStation 5 Chips Resurrected

Break out the broken chips

Ryzen 4700S Desktop Kit
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

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AMD Ryzen 4700S Desktop Kit Application Benchmarks, the TLDR:

The charts above provide the geometric mean of several of our application tests (listed in the chart title), representing broader trends in lightly- and multi-threaded applications. Be sure to check our application tests below for performance in specific applications.

The AMD 4700S is more competitive in this round of tests, but only during multi-threaded applications where the insufficient cooler probably restricts performance in the heavier workloads (we've already recorded chip throttling during heavy work).

The AMD 4700S is 8% faster than the Ryzen 7 1800X in threaded work, but the eight-core Ryzen 7 2700X with the Zen+ architecture is 4% faster than the 4700S. We can likely chalk that up to the 2700X's higher 3.7/4.3 GHz base/boost clocks and 16MB of L3 cache (twice the 4700S). The modern Ryzen eight-core chips, like the Ryzen 7 3800X and 5800X, are vastly superior to the 4700S, though.

Flipping over to the cumulative measure of single-threaded performance finds the 4700S near the bottom of the chart. Surprisingly, the Ryzen 7 1800X provides the same level of performance in single-threaded work as the AMD 4700S, while all the other Zen-based chips lead to varying amounts.

Overall the AMD 4700S is decent in threaded work, even though the lackluster cooler probably holds it back. Still, the disappointing tradeoff of vastly lower single-threaded performance, likely due to higher GDDR6 latency, ruins the value proposition. 

Rendering Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 4700S Desktop Kit

The AMD 4700S falls to the first-gen Ryzen 7 1800X in quite a few of these rendering tests, like Corona, C-Ray, V-ray, and the bmw27 Blender render, setting the tone for lackluster performance in these types of applications. Given that there are more full-featured, newer and cheaper chips available that don't require massive tradeoffs, like the Ryzen 5 5600G, the AMD 4700S fails to impress. 

We suspect that throttling could have an impact on more than a few of these benchmarks due to the wholly insufficient cooler, but that's hard to rectify given its odd mounting spacing, highlighting the drawback of buying a one-off product that includes several unique integrated system components. 

Encoding Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 4700S Desktop Kit

The lightly-threaded LAME and FLAC encoders expose the 4700S Desktop Kit's critical weakness — single-threaded performance. The AMD 4700S is thoroughly unimpressive here. 

The 4700S is more competitive in the HandBrake tests where it can leverage the improved throughput of the GDDR6 memory in AVX workloads.

Web Browser, Office and Productivity on AMD Ryzen 4700S Desktop Kit

AMD promotes the 4700S for light office work and productivity, but its laggardly performance in single-threaded work makes that a tough sell for most types of latency-sensitive applications, like web browsers and Microsoft Office.

You'll also notice the relatively poor showing in the PCMark 10 application start-up benchmarks, highlighting the sluggish experience that was noticeable by our own subjective measure when we used the system for simple tasks. 

Compilation, Compression, AVX Performance on AMD Ryzen 4700S Desktop Kit

The GeekBench results find the 4700S again showing its somewhat bipolar nature — it's passable in threaded work, but lags in single-threaded tasks. 

Paul Alcorn
Managing Editor: News and Emerging Tech

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

  • escksu
    60GB/s read is a joke. 256bit should be easily 400GB/s. This shows the CPU likely has just 64bit memory (256bit likely only available to the GPU).
    Reply
  • maik80
    These systems should be donated to educational institutions in places lacking in equipment and not sold as a finished product.
    Reply