8 bits of bun

8 bits of bun

AMD Ryzen 7 1700x


Intro

Yay! the processor wars have rebooted big time.

Not that i am a AMD fan in particular, i jyust want market shares to be around the equal mark, as this forces companies to innovate, which is good for everyone.

This review is of my Ryzen 1700x i bought.


Performance

With all respect, If i see any AMD engineer, i'd bow to them out of respect for the awesome the got to us..

Introducing a true 8 core cpu with 16 threads, where the 'main competition' is still only quad core for mainstream desktops at the introduction time (for years in a row), with that IPC uplift and effficiency, who wouldn't call that awesome engineering?

Well, turns out that was just the start, it seems.

Single thread the performance isn't on par with the first gen Ryzen cpu's, which is to clock speed limiting factors more than IPC.

Multicore ryzen is a beast to put it simply.


Hidden efficiency

When I undervolted my 1700x CPU, and lowered the base clock, one can find it is very efficient.

around 80W power draw on all cores at stock speed (3.4ghz) with bios settings (B350M Mortar): turbo disabled, 1.125Vcore & LLC1 & RAM speed: 3000MHZ

In fact, it is more efficient than the competition, though sadly AMD pushed the efficiency curve a bit over it's sweetspot to compete at absolute performance (which is understandable, but increases power draw)
 


Future with my 1700x:

I once said that i wanna upgrade my 1700x for something with more cores, but i ended up selling it a few months after (overkill is a thing for the time being).

I don't even have use for my current core amount aside from a CAD render and DAW sometimes.

This to me proves we've been on 4 processor cores for too long and software needs to adapt.

My rating: 7/10 (as of late 2019 and based on a market price of 150€)