AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU Review

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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.

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.

  • mitch074
    And how about testing with some AMD GPU? Seems Ryzen gets the short hand of the stick when using an Nvidia GPU... https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/nvidia-dx12-driver-holding-back-ryzen.18774744/
    Reply
  • Sakkura
    Why are the graphs blurry?
    Reply
  • envy14tpe
    Why no 1440p or 4k gaming? Who buys 1700 for 1080p gaming? In gaming, the new 1700, 1700x, 1800 don't compare to 7700k in gaming. But i don't see that like all other testing methodologies done by likes of gamernexus and what not.

    EDIT. Based on the downvoting of this comment it seems AMD lovers are a little butt hurt.
    Reply
  • ykki
    Thanks for the review. Will Tom's bench (or has already benched) the R5s with AMD GPUs? (i5 + 1060, i5 + 480, R5 + 1060, r5 + 480)?
    Reply
  • PaulAlcorn
    19526350 said:
    Why no 1440p or 4k gaming? Who buys 1700 for 1080p gaming? In gaming, the new 1700, 1700x, 1800 don't compare to 7700k in gaming. But i don't see that like all other testing methodologies done by likes of gamernexus and what not.

    Here is some recent testing at 1440p. It includes the 1700, as well.

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-vs-intel-kaby-lake-gaming,4977.html

    Reply
  • envy14tpe
    19526465 said:
    19526350 said:
    Why no 1440p or 4k gaming? Who buys 1700 for 1080p gaming? In gaming, the new 1700, 1700x, 1800 don't compare to 7700k in gaming. But i don't see that like all other testing methodologies done by likes of gamernexus and what not.

    Here is some recent testing at 1440p. It includes the 1700, as well.

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-vs-intel-kaby-lake-gaming,4977.html

    That shows the new AMD cpus as is. From all I see the i7-7700k blasts the new AMD 1700, 1700x, 1800x series at 1440p +. That's important to keep in mind for gamers that want the most out of a CPU n high end GPU.
    Reply
  • ddpruitt
    even if Ryzen isn't shaping up to be universally superior, as many hoped prior to launch.

    This makes it difficult to universally recommend those high-end parts.

    Why do they have to be universally superior? They do a killer job on highly threaded workloads and are a lot cheaper than equivalent Intel. Sure gamings a wash but they're all playable. Aiming for universally superior is shooting for the moon and doesn't happen even with a single Intel chip.

    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.

    Any chance you can multiply the numbers out so we can compare the differences?
    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    So I have to ask, is there any reason to buy a 1700X/1800X over a 1700 if you're comfortable with overclocking?
    Reply
  • Ian_85
    Can you please repeat this test after each of the Ryzen bios updates in April and May?

    I think people would be interested to show just how much performance in a new CPU architecture improves in the months after its initial release.
    Reply
  • elbert
    19526465 said:
    19526350 said:
    Why no 1440p or 4k gaming? Who buys 1700 for 1080p gaming? In gaming, the new 1700, 1700x, 1800 don't compare to 7700k in gaming. But i don't see that like all other testing methodologies done by likes of gamernexus and what not.

    Here is some recent testing at 1440p. It includes the 1700, as well.

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-vs-intel-kaby-lake-gaming,4977.html
    I dont believe that has Ashes of the Singularity updated tests. Good review and I would like to see more. Now that all the Ryzen's have been benchmarked on 1080p maybe 1440p and 4k would make a good review. With and without SLI/crossfire also just to see how it works for Ryzen. Possibly Gskills could pitch in some of their Flare X 3466 RAM for Ryzen.
    Reply