AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review

I will be taking a look at their high-end offering in the consumer line up of Ryzen second generation i.e 2700X. One may say this is a late content of its sort but for us, this marks another milestone as we have started co-operation with AMD to review their stuff. After completing AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review, I will be setting up an AMD based test bench so that our future contents will have testing results from both platforms (Intel and AMD). If you have slightly higher budget, check out our Ryzen 5 3600 Review.

The second generation AMD Ryzen 7 2700X code-named Pinnacle Ridge packs 8 cores and 16 threads rated at a base clock of 3.7GHz with a turbo boost of 4.3GHz. The chip is rated at 105W TDP and has the support of up to 2933MHz DDR4 memory in Dual Channel. 2933 MT/s is supported on motherboards with at least six PCB layers only, otherwise 2667 MT/s (four-layer boards) is supported.

The suffix X indicates that the chip is unlocked and that this chip can be benefited with AMD precision boost 2 and XFR2 technologies to boost to their maximum rated turbo boost clock whenever the provision comes based on the cooling solution deployed. More on it to come later in the content. This chip is binned which is obvious given its X designation. It packs 4.8 billion transistors in the die package of 213mm².

Much like what we have seen with the first generation of the Ryzen CPUs, the second generation CPUs also bear the same consideration for the RAM as not all of the DDR4 kits may be Ryzen compatible. While they would work on the Ryzen but the performance might not be at par similarly, scaling with the high-speed RAM benefits Ryzen. We have 16MB L3$ cached shared between the CCX units whereas there is 64K I$ L1 cache with 32K D$ per core and 512K L2$ cache per core.

To make things more attractive, this chip comes with their Wraith Prism CPU Cooler in the bundle though our sample did not have the cooler. The Ryzen 7 2700X supports instruction sets/extensions MMX, EMMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, SSE4a, AVX, AVX2, ABM, , BMI1, BMI2, FMA3, AES, SHA, ADX, CLMUL, F16C, x86-16, x86-32, and x86-64.

AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review

Another, important aspect in terms of thermal monitoring is that the AMD Ryzen™ 7 2700X uses a +10°C tCTL offset; this offset has already been incorporated into motherboard BIOSes. No other 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™ desktop processor uses an offset. So, make sure that your thermal monitoring software either has incorporated or adjusted the final reading manually, accordingly.

CPU Diode in AIDA64 Extreme and tDie in HWInfo64 will report the exact temperatures. If you are monitoring tCtl then don’t forget to offset it with-10°C. the maximum thermal rating of this chip is 85℃. The 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™ family of processors continues AMD’s legacy of providing a full stack of voltage and multiplier-unlocked solutions for enthusiasts. All mid-range and high-end motherboards based on B350/X370/X470 will expose the full range of multiplier voltage control.

• Item:                     AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review
• Manufacturer:       AMD
• Price:                     Check Price on Amazon

Ryzen 7 2700X Specifications

Ryzen 7 2700X Packaging and Unboxing

The processor is shipped inside a paper board packing box. AMD brand name and logo are printed on the top left side on the front of the packing box. Ryzen brand name and logo are printed in the middle. The number 7 on the bottom right designates the Ryzen 7 chip inside the box. In ou,r case it is Ryzen 7 2700X.

The right side of the packing box has a cutout in the center from where we can take a peek at the chip itself. The brand logo of Ryzen is encircling the cutout. AMD brand name and logo are printed on the bottom right.

The left side of the box has a picture of the Prism Wraith cooler illuminated in multiple colors to signify the RGB lighting on the cooler.

Opening the box will show a cardboard box having a CPU cooler. There is another black color box having the chip inside a transparent container. Please, handle the chip with care as the pins are on the chip, as the socket is following BGA pin format, unlike LGA format.

Taking a look at the IHS of the chip, AMD Ryzen 7 2700x is printed on the top left. AMD brand name and logo along with the Ryzen brand name are printed in the middle. 2017 AMD is printed below the scan code on the lower left side. There is an arrow indicator on the PCB in the golden color. Make sure to align the arrow indicator side with the socket’s indicator side.

Ryzen, Zen, and Zen+

Now, that we have taken a look at the packing box and the CPU, let’s first discuss a bit about the CPU and the underlying architecture along with the technologies before proceeding to the testing section.

Here is what AMD is saying about their second gen Ryzen CPUs, “The 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™ Processor (codename “Pinnacle Ridge”) is not merely an exciting evolution of the AMD Ryzen™ family, but a fantastic new opportunity for PC enthusiasts to take home an impressively well-rounded platform.

AMD has spent the past year listening to community feedback from Reddit, Twitter, customers, trade shows, and sites like yours to outfit our new processors with an awesome compliment of user-first features. And when you add them all up, we believe we have the ultimate processor for gamers, creators and enthusiasts.”

The salient highlights of the Zen microarchitecture are clock speeds up to 4GHz, XFR, parallel 16-thread design, 20MB cache pool, and wide-instruction level parallelism in the pipeline. If I have to sum up to the core of the Zen+ architecture without going into the Nitti kitty’s; it is the efficiency and higher clock speeds.

To put it simply, the voltage requirement for a certain level of clocks in Ryzen second generation is considerably low as compared to the voltage requirement for the same level of clocks in the Ryzen first generation. This is highly beneficial as it has allowed the AMD to better bin their chips and to provide more headroom for boost clocks as the heat generation would be less which of course is still cooling bound and silicon bound.

So, the question is what are the key changes in the Zen+ over the Zen? Here are some key points to that end:

• A reduction in L1 Cache latency of approximately 13%
• A reduction in L2 Cache latency of approximately 34%
• A reduction in L3 Cache latency of approximately 16%
• A reduction in DRAM latency of approximately 11%
• Contributing to a single-threaded IPC improvement of approximately 3%
• Official support for JEDEC DDR4-2933 (up from 2667)

Generally, speaking the area where Intel shines is the powerful single core performance coming out of higher clocks per core with turbo boost. AMD’s focus has been on the multi-core performance and this is very why we saw the lower scores in the single threaded programs particularly the games. The bulk of the PC user is the PC Gamers and AMD surely needed to cater to this segment.

Zen+ is one step closer to achieving this reality for the AMD and its users. The reduction in latencies and resultantly faster access to the system memory and cache coupled with the more IPC count would be beneficial. This, when added with the efficiency and precision boost, is likely to yield better single threaded performance. 4.3GHz vs 4.0GHz looks promising at-least on the paper!

Another striking difference is the fabrication node. AMD has used Globalfoundries 12LP process technology to fabricate the Zen+ architecture. LP stands for Leading Performance. This process offers transistor performance that is 10-15% better than preceding nodes, which extends the clock speed range of the Ryzen design and reduces the required current at all points along the V/f curve.

In a nutshell, we are talking about better efficiency. These points would sum up the benefits using the 12LP process technology:

• +300MHz clock speed, now reaching up to 4.3GHz in everyday operation
• A 50mV reduction in core voltage across the operating range vs. 14nm
• All-core overclocks now in the range of 4.2GHz

Reducing the fabrication node presents a lot of challenges as the transistor size increases and die size decreases, the most obvious consideration is the thermal performance of the chip. The Summit Ridge is using 14nm process technology whereas the Pinnacle Ridge is fabricated on 12nm process technology.

AMD is claiming that the 2700X is approximately +12% faster than the 1800X in multi-thread scenarios. Unfortunately, we were unable to test it on our system due to non-availability of first generation chips.

AMD’s focus has been on Precision boost 2 and XFR 2. Combined these two technologies almost eliminate the manual overclocking requirement on the second generation Ryzen CPUs. Under light load when fewer threads are in action, these technologies will enable those threads to reach as much as 500MHz extra clock speed which was previously not possible (As per AMD).

Also Read this: Best Motherboard For Ryzen 7 3700x

It is obvious that this has implications at both electrical and thermal levels. Again, in our testing, this would all depend upon the thermal level and power being drawn as both are directly linked. Where the cushion is found, the chip is likely to boost further like in many cases, our chip boosted to 4.3GHz on 1 or 2 cores not all. This is definitely beneficial for gaming perspective.

Since this is our first time doing a Zen/Zen+ based CPU, we would mention some key highlights of the Zen architecture as well. The baseline on Zen+ is still the x86 Zen based architecture which features a 1.75X larger instruction scheduler window and 1.5X greater issue width and resources; this change allows “Zen” to schedule and send more work into the execution units.

Further, a new micro-op cache allows “Zen” to bypass L2 and L3 cache when utilizing frequently-accessed micro-operations. “Zen” also gains a neural network-based branch prediction unit allows the “Zen” architecture to be more intelligent about preparing optimal instructions and pathways for future work.

Finally, products based on the “Zen” architecture may optionally utilize SMT to increase utilization of the compute pipeline by filling app-created pipeline bubbles with meaningful work.

Another key change area in the Zen over the previous architectures is the cache hierarchy with dedicated 32K L1 instruction and data caches, 512KB dedicated L2 cache per core, and up to 8MB of L3 cache shared across four cores (note: 4MB shared L3 in the “Raven Ridge” SoC).

This cache is augmented with a sophisticated learning prefetcher that speculatively harvests application data into the caches so they are available for immediate execution. Altogether, these changes establish lower level cache nearer to the core netting up to 5X greater cache bandwidth into a core.

Besides the 12nm GLOBALFOUNDRIES process, the overall “Zen” architecture also incorporates AMD’s latest low power design methodologies, such as: the previously mentioned micro-op cache to reduce power-intensive faraway fetches; aggressive clock gating to zero out dynamic power consumption in minimally utilized regions of the core; and a stack engine for low-power address generation into the dispatcher.

Scalability in the “Zen” architecture starts with the CPU Complex (CCX) which is a natively quad-core module. Each CCX has 64K L1 I-cache per core, 32K L1 D-cache per core, 512KB L2 cache per core, and up to 8MB L3 cache shared across cores.

Each core within the CCX may optionally feature SMT for additional multi-threaded capabilities. The Ryzen 7 2700X features two CCX units each with quad-cores with 16MB shared L3$ cache between both CCX units.

Another striking feature is the concept of Infinity Fabric. Think of it as an interface sitting between the key communication sub-components like system memory, I/O, PCIe, and CCXes present on the SoC design for data exchange.

The Infinity Fabric gives the “Zen” architecture powerful command and control capabilities, establishing a sensitive feedback loop that allows for real-time estimations and adjustments to core voltage, temperature, socket power draw, clock speed and more. This command and control functionality is instrumental in AMD SenseMI technology.

We can’t understand the Infinity Fabric in isolation as it is a complete structure built around other important elements in the Zen architecture. Each Ryzen CPU packs a smart grid of interconnected sensors.

These sensors provide key data to the infinity loop like voltage reading, current reading, thermal reading etc based on which the control loop determines the optimal behavior of the chip at a given point in time of the execution not only on the basis of the current input but also the likely future operating conditions. These sensors are accurate to 1mA, 1mV, 1mW, and 1°C with a polling rate of 1000/sec.

Technologies

AMD SenseMI is a package of five related “senses” that rely on sophisticated learning algorithms and/or the command-and-control functionality of the Infinity Fabric to empower AMD Ryzen™ processors with machine intelligence (MI). This intelligence is utilized to fine-tune the performance and power characteristics of the cores, manage speculative cache fetches, and perform AI-based branch prediction.

The very first technology that AMD has introduced on their Ryzen chips is the Precision boost. The second generation of the Ryzen is now using Precision boost 2 which is an enhanced and improved version of the previous gen’s Precision Boost. Don’t confuse precision boost with the all-cores boost. Both are different and outcome of an AI algorithm that would determine that underlying conditions warrant which boost type.

The CPU frequencies are adjusted with the increment of 25MHz granularity in the Zen architecture. This was their implementation of the Precision boost in the first generation of Ryzen CPUs. The idea was to enable all core boost when say that 3+ cores are working and the overall workload is still small. This has implications in terms of electrical, thermal and utilization boundary.

What precision boost has done is to enable fewer cores to boost much higher than what 3+ or all cores could achieve. This, of course, has to be done within the electrical, thermal and utilization restrictions or in this case, the stated or rated clock range added as a fourth variable (whichever comes earlier). Precision boost 2 has taken this to the next level by applying to any number of threads in flight, without arbitrary limits.

If a power or temperature limit is encountered, Precision Boost 2 is designed to employ its granular clock selection to dither at a frequency within the power or temperature limits. This process is a continuous adjustment loop managed by the AMD Infinity Fabric, iterating up to 1000 times per second.

It is clear that precision boost 2 is restricted in terms of the electrical, thermal or max clock limitation and as soon as any of these are met, the precision boost 2 will dither at the frequency within the prescribed limit. Thermals is one area which is more or less bounded by the cooling solution and ambient temperatures. Hence, it may be somewhat in the hands of the users.

If the user has a good ambient temperature backed by powerful cooling solution, then higher frequencies could be retained for a longer time and this is exactly what the XFR 2 is all about. AMD believes that the user should be rewarded for exceeding recommended thermal specification with more performance, and that is achieved through the XFR2 capability.

A superior-than-recommended thermal environment effectively extends the time the processor can boost clock speeds before encountering a thermal boundary, and XFR2 will let the AMD Ryzen processor run at a higher average frequency as a result. The striking difference between XFR and XFR 2 is that the above capability was restricted to a small number of cores with the 1st Gen AMD Ryzen, XFR2 now operates across any number of cores and threads.

A true AI inside every AMD Ryzen™ processor coupled with smart prefetch harnesses a neural network and sophisticated learning algorithms to do real-time learning of an application’s behavior and speculate on its next moves. The predictive AI readies vital CPU instructions so the processor is always primed to tackle a new workload. Smart Prefetch predictively pre-loads that data into large caches on the AMD Ryzen™ processor to enable fast and responsive computing.

AMD RYZEN New Chipset

Good news for the AMD users is that they can enjoy the second generation of Ryzen CPUs on the first gen chipset motherboards like X370 with a BIOS update. AMD has released new chipset dubbed X470 for enthusiasts, B450 for mainstream users and A300 for the small form factor along with the Ryzen second generation chips.

All these chipsets still feature the same AM4 socket. The AMD AM4 Platform puts effortless compatibility front and center. The 1331-pin processor socket works with AMD Ryzen™ Desktop Processors and AMD 7th Gen Desktop Processors. The one Socket AM4 motherboard you buy will work with any AM4 processor (some 300-series boards may require a BIOS flash).

And with support for the latest I/O standards like USB 3.1 Gen 2, NVMe, or PCI Express® 3.0, it’s easy to build a high-performance system. Here are some of the salient features in the new X470 chipset:

• Design optimized for 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen processors, including an updated power infrastructure guaranteed to support the power requirements behind the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X’s performance leadership.
• Out of the box support for all socket AM4 processors, including the new 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen Processors.*
• An incrementally lower TDP for the physical chipset silicon.
• AMD StoreMI storage acceleration

CPU-Z

Before moving on to the testing section, here are the pictures of the CPU-Z taken on the stock settings.

Testing

Following is the configuration of the test benches that have been used for this content.

Intel Z390

• Intel i5 9600k
• Ballistix Elite 16GB @ 3000MHz
• Asus Strix Z390-E Gaming Motherboard
• Asus Ryujin 360 CPU Cooler
• Asus GeForce RTX 2080 O8G
• HyperX 120GB SSD
• Seagate Barracuda 2TB
• Thermaltake ToughPower iRGB 1250 Titanium rated PSU
• Thermaltake View 71

Intel Z370

• Intel i7 8700k
• Ballistix Elite 16GB @ 3000MHz
• Gigabyte Ultra Durable Z370-HD3
• Asus Ryujin 360 CPU Cooler
• Asus GeForce RTX 2080 O8G
• HyperX 120GB SSD
• Seagate Barracuda 2TB
• Thermaltake ToughPower RGB 750 Gold rated PSU

 AMD X470

• AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
• Ballistix Elite 16GB @ 3000MHz
• Corsair Vengeance RGB 16GB @ 3200MHz
• Asus Ryujin 360 CPU Cooler
• Asus GeForce RTX 2080 O8G
• HyperX 120GB SSD
• Seagate Barracuda 2TB
• Antec HCP1300 PSU
• Primochill Praxis Wetbench

I have tried to use the same components for above all three test setups where possible. Same RAM kit, storage drives, CPU Cooler and graphics card were used to ensure the standardization. An exception is from the motherboards which are obvious and the PSUs.

Special thanks to Asus, Antec, Corsair, PakDukaan, PCFanatics, Easetec for sponsoring the AMD based test bench setup.

Methodology

Following was ensured for each testing:

• Each testing was done on the stock settings.
• Default tweaking/performance enhancement options were disabled in the BIOS.
• Most of the settings were left at Auto.
• XMP was loaded for each testing.
• Ballistix Elite DDR4 kit was used on all the platforms for the testing. Same was the case on the AMD platform. The same kit was to be used on these platforms for better understanding and standardization of the results. Corsair kit was sent only for the AMD platform. It was tested with AIDA64 Memory benchmark. All other testing was done with the Ballistix Elite kit. The AIDA64 Memory benchmark graph will show the results of both kits.
• Voltages were left at Auto.
• The pump and fans of the AIO were made to run at 100% during the testing.
• Games were benched on the stock clocks and overclock for each CPU.
• Intel i5 9600k and i7 8700k were overclocked to 5.0GHz whereas AMD Ryzen 7 2700x was overclocked to 4.2GHz for games benching.
• Graphics card was not overclocked but its power limit was increased to full i.e 125% for games benching.
• Microsoft Windows x64 version 1809 was used on each test bench. After updating, the Windows Updates were paused.
• Motherboards’ BIOS were updated to their latest.
• Nvidia’s driver 417.71 were used.
• AIDA64 Extreme 599 was used to stress the CPU
• HWinfo64 was used to monitor the sensors.
• Testing on the AMD test bench was done for AMD Ryzen Balanced profile and Windows Balanced profile as well. Graphs will show the results of both unless there is one entry which would be from Windows Balanced profile. On Intel platforms, all testing was done on Windows Balanced profile.
• AMD’s Cool n Quiet was disabled during the manual overclocking. It was left on Auto during the stock testing.
• Each game was tested on the maxed out setting. As we all know, at lower resolutions, gaming is more CPU bound than GPU hence only for the sake of performance testing 720p results are also included. It is only to give an idea of the CPU performance at lower resolution. Majority of the users are gaming at 1080p or higher resolutions.
• XFR 2 was disabled during the stock testing.

Following test suite has been used for the testing:

• AIDA64 Extreme 599
• Performance Test (for CPU and Memory)
• PCMark 10
• 7-Zip
• Blender Benchmark (BMW27, Classroom)
• FryBench FryRender
• Corona
• Indigo Benchmark
• V-Ray
• POV-Ray
• Cinebench R15
• Geekbench
• Handbrake
• X264 HD Benchmark
• Kraken
• Octane
• Fritz Chess
• Super-PI

Synthetic Gaming Benchmarks:

• FireStrike
• TimeSpy

Games:

• Assassin’s Creed Origins
• Grand Theft Auto – V
• Far Cry 5
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX11, DX12)
• DOOM (Vulkan)
• Ashes of the Singularity (DX12)

Let’s start with the results.

7-Zip

7-Zip is free software with open source. Most of the code is under the GNU LGPL license. Some parts of the code are under the BSD 3-clause License. 7-Zip has high compression ratio in 7z format with LZMA and LZMA2 compression with supported formats of Packing / unpacking: 7z, XZ, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, ZIP and WIM and unpacking only: AR, ARJ, CAB, CHM, CPIO, CramFS, DMG, EXT, FAT, GPT, HFS, IHEX, ISO, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NSIS, NTFS, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SquashFS, UDF, UEFI, VDI, VHD, VMDK, WIM, XAR and Z.

For ZIP and GZIP formats, 7-Zip provides a compression ratio that is 2-10 % better than the ratio provided by PKZip This software has a built-in benchmark which tests the performance of the given CPU by compressing and decompressing the load. The results are in MIPS and a higher count is preferable.

As expected AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review shines in this department with powerful 8 cores, 16 threads.

AIDA64

AIDA64 Extreme has a hardware detection engine unrivaled in its class. It provides detailed information about installed software and offers diagnostic functions and support for overclocking. As it is monitoring sensors in real time, it can gather accurate voltage, temperature and fan speed readings, while its diagnostic functions help detect and prevent hardware issues. It also offers a couple of benchmarks for measuring either the performance of individual hardware components or the whole system.

Similar: Best Ryzen 5 3600 Motherboard

Following built-in benchmarks were run in this software:

• CPU AES
• CPU Queen
• Memory

CPU AES

This integer benchmark measures CPU performance using AES (a.k.a. Rijndael) data encryption. It utilizes Vincent Rijmen, Antoon Bosselaers and Paulo Barreto’s public domain C code in ECB mode. CPU AES test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it’s hardware accelerated on VIA PadLock Security Engine capable VIA C3, VIA C7, VIA Nano and VIA QuadCore processors; and on Intel AES-NI instruction set extension capable processors.

The test consumes 48 MB memory, and it is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.

The result is self-explanatory.

CPU Queen

This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard.

Memory

This test measures the system memory’s read, write and copy speeds as well as the latency. Clearly, the Ballistix Elite kit that has been used is not liked by Ryzen. Same was the case with the Corsair kit.

PCMark 10

PCMark 10 is the latest version in the series of industry standard PC benchmarks. PCMark 10 features a comprehensive set of tests that cover the wide variety of tasks performed in the modern workplace. With express, extended, and custom run options to suit your needs, PCMark 10 is the complete PC benchmark for the modern office.

It is the ideal test for organizations that are evaluating PCs for a workforce with a range of performance needs. The tests in this benchmark cover a wide range of activities from everyday productivity tasks to demanding work with digital media content.

Surprisingly, we see varying results when using AMD Ryzen Balanced profile vs the Windows Balanced profile otherwise Intel i5 9600k is leading in the graph.

Performance Test

PassMark PerformanceTest allows you to objectively benchmark a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compare the results to other computers. I have used only CPU and Memory benchmarks.

As expected AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review is leading the chart in the CPU category with 99 percentile. Unfortunately, the memory results were sitting in 76 percentile with the Ballistix Elite kit and 72% with the Corsair kit. It was clear that Ryzen did not like both kits.

Super-PI

Super PI is a single threaded benchmark that calculates pi to a specific number of digits. It uses the Gauss-Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of a program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute pi to 232 digits.

The reported results are converted into seconds from minutes and seconds. It is not surprising to see Ryzen 7 2700X trailing behind the higher clocked Intel chips as this app is single threaded oriented and Ryzen 7 2700X still has lower clock per core. Please, keep in mind that XFR 2 was not enabled during the stock testing as XFR 2 is another way of overclocking the Ryzen second generation chips.

wPrime

wPrime uses a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we’re sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results.

It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum. Each thread is designed to do 1/n of the work, where n is the number of threads.

I have used the 1024M calculation. Reported time is in seconds. Please, take a note that you would need to set the thread count manually. For i5 9600k, it was set to 6, for i7 8700k it was set to 12 and for Ryzen 7 2700X it was set to 16. Without setting the proper thread count, the results would not be comparable.

As was expected, AMD Ryzen 7 2700X has a solid lead. This is because wPrime uses all cores/threads to their 100% and is a multi-threaded benchmark.

Fritz Chess

Fritz Chess benchmark tests the CPU performance in terms of as many chess board positions as possible. It is using Deep Fritz 12 engine.

Geekbench

Geekbench 4 measures your system’s power and tells you whether your computer is ready to roar. How strong is your mobile device or desktop computer? How will it perform when push comes to the crunch? These are the questions that Geekbench can answer. In Geekbench the result is in the form of Single Core and Multi-Core performance.

As was the case with the Cinebench, the Geekbench was no exception to the form. In terms of the multi-core performance, the Ryzen 7 2700X has upper hand over the tested Intel chips whereas, in Single-Core performance, the tested Intel chips were leading. In multi-core performance, the Intel i7 8700k was trailing behind with a margin of approximately 6.96% and 7.99% whereas in single core performance the Intel i7 8700k was leading with approximately 15.9%.

Rendering Tests

I have run multiple rendering tests for evaluation. The results of these tests are mostly the rendering time and frames per second unless stated otherwise. Lower time and higher FPS are what we are looking for.

Blender

I have used blender benchmark app for this purpose in addition to rendering the BMW27 scenario in the main Blender software. The Blender Benchmark will compute performance for CUDA, OpenCL, and CPU, along with GPU performance. Blender Benchmark is a new platform to collect and display the results of hardware and software performance tests. Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite.

It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. For the purpose of this testing, a quick run method was used in the Blender Benchmark. BMW27 and Classroom rendering scenes have been used.

As expected the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X takes the lead using both profiles.

Corona

Corona is another simple to use rendering benchmark. It starts benching as soon as the software is run. It reports the results in the rendering time and rays per second.

Once again, we see the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X review shining on the graph.

FryBench

Frybench is a multi-core CPU benchmark based on fryrender. fryrender is a physically-based light simulator developed by RandomControl, a Spanish company located in Madrid. fryrender is a photo-realistic render engine where all elements involved in the generation of the final image (materials, lights, and cameras) are based on physically accurate models.

Once again AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review takes the lead which to be honest is what was expected.

V-Ray

V-Ray Benchmark is a free stand-alone application to help you test how fast your hardware renders. The benchmark includes two test scenes, one for GPUs and another for CPUs, depending on the processor type you’d like to measure.

AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review is where it was expected in the graph.

POV-Ray

The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a ray tracing program which generates images from a text-based scene description and is available for a variety of computer platforms. It was originally based on DKBTrace, written by David Kirk Buck and Aaron A. Collins for the Amiga computers.

There are also influences from the earlier Polyray[6] raytracer contributed by its author Alexander Enzmann. POV-Ray is free and open-source software with the source code available under the AGPLv3.

The result is in the points per second format. Higher the points, the better performance and no surprise there if AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review is on the top of the graph.

Indigo

Indigo Renderer is an unbiased, photorealistic GPU and CPU renderer aimed at ultimate image quality, by accurately simulating the physics of light. State of the art rendering performance, materials and cameras models – it’s all made simple through an interactive, photographic approach with few abstract settings, letting you concentrate on lighting and composing your imagery.

The result is in M Samples/sec; higher the better. No surprise there if AMD Ryzen 7 2700X is on the top spot.

Cinebench R15

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software Cinema 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Life of Pi or Prometheus and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and OS X).

This is too good a result in this price bracket. On stock clocks, the CPU score is crossing over 1800cb whereas single core score is 176cb for the Windows Balanced profile and 179 for the AMD Ryzen Balanced profile. On stock clocks, the single core score for Intel i5 9600k is 202 and it is 205 for the Intel i7 8700k.

Clearly, higher clock speeds of the Intel chips taking a lead in terms of single core performance. This test is there to show you the computation performance of a single core when it comes to multiple CPUs from different platforms. In multi-core/threading performance, none of the Intel chips comes closer to the AMD’s Ryzen 7 2700X Review. With Ryzen 7 2700X overclocked to 4.25GHz, the CPU score reaches 1918cb with a single-core score of 182.

Clearly, Ryzen 7 2700x will shine for the applications that are multi-threaded/multi-core supporting but a single core performance is slow as compared to the Intel chips. If only AMD was to put more aggressive clock speeds on the second generation Ryzen chips, this gap would have been reduced.

Seems like this may be what we would see in the third generation but who knows! One important note here is that when Ryzen 7 2700X was overclocked the Windows High Profile and Ryzen Balanced profile were crashing the software. It was only the Windows Balanced profile that enabled almost all the software to be tested with overclocking.

Transcoding

I have used two software Handbrake and X264 HD Benchmark to measure the transcoding performance of the CPU.

X264 HD Benchmark

x264 HD Benchmark is a benchmark that allows you to measure how fast your PC can encode a 1080p video clip into a high-quality x264 video file. It allows for an easy comparison because everyone running it will use the same video clip and software. The x264 video encoder has a fairly accurate internal benchmark (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encode and it also uses multi-core processors very efficiently.

All these factors make the x264 HD Benchmark an ideal tool in comparing the video encoding performance of different processors and systems.

Reported result is in FPS. It is calculated by summing up the FPS count on each run of each pass and dividing it by 4 as there are 4 runs per pass. The average result is what is reported on the graph. Higher FPS count means better performance.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a tool for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs. I have transcoded a 4k sample video into 1080p and 720p using Matroska x264 presets. The result is reported in terms of frame per second and encoding time.

Again, we are seeing AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review taking the top spot in the graph on both resolutions.

Same result what we saw on the FPS side.

Web-based benchmarks

Just to give an idea of how the CPUs impact the general web browsing, I have used two javascript based benchmarks.

Kraken

Kraken is a JavaScript performance benchmark created by Mozilla that measures the speed of several different test cases extracted from real-world applications and libraries.

Related: Best Ryzen 9 3900x Motherboard 2023

Processing time is reported in seconds; lower is better. Seems like Kraken is based on single threading hence higher clocks on the Intel i5 9600k favoring the results.

Octane

Octane 2.0 is a benchmark that measures a JavaScript engine’s performance by running a suite of tests representative of certain use cases in JavaScript applications. Please note that Octane is retired and no longer maintained. I have used it to give an idea of the performance only.

Once again, we are seeing Intel i5 9600k taking the top spot.

Gaming Benchmarks

Let’s start with the synthetic benchmarks. For this purpose, I have used 3DMark Fire Strike and Time Spy benchmarks.

Fire Strike

Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark for modern gaming PCs. Its ambitious real-time graphics are rendered with detail and complexity far beyond other DirectX 11 benchmarks and games. Fire Strike includes two graphics tests, a physics test and a combined test that stresses the CPU and GPU.

I have included the overall score and CPU score only to showcase the result coming from the CPU only and not the graphics card. The Ryzen 7 2700X is leading in terms of the CPU Score but surprisingly the overall score is lower than the Intel chips.

Time Spy

3DMark Time Spy is a DirectX 12 benchmark test for Windows 10 gaming PCs. Time Spy is one of the first DirectX 12 apps to be built the right way from the ground up to fully realize the performance gains that the new API offers. With its pure DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, Time Spy is the ideal test for benchmarking the latest graphics cards.

I have included the overall score and CPU score only to showcase the result coming from the CPU only and not the graphics card. The Ryzen 7 2700X is leading in terms of the CPU Score. DX12 is where the AMD Ryzen rises and shines.

Following games have been used for the testing:

• Assassin’s Creed Origins
• Grand Theft Auto – V
• Far Cry 5
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX11, DX12)
• DOOM (Vulkan)
• Ashes of the Singularity (DX12)

As we know the on lower resolutions, the gaming is more CPU bound so I have tested the gaming performance on 720P as well. It is there only to show the relative performance measure. For true gaming performance in terms of who is playing at what resolution, 1080p and higher is where the gamers are at. These resolutions are also present in the graphs. The average FPS are reported on the graphs.

Assassin’s Creed Origins

The Ryzen 7 2700X on stock clocks was giving 93 FPS. The Ryzen 7 2700X and Intel i5 9600k is doing 91 FPS. Only i7 8700k crosses the 100 marks in the graph. Overclocked gaming results are also included.

Once again, we are seeing almost similar results as were on the 720p resolution.

On stock clocks, the average FPS were 79 for the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X.

On higher resolution, gaming is more GPU bound than CPU bound and results are indicating the same.

Overall, this is a comparable performance from the Ryzen 7 2700X.

Far Cry 5

This game is showing us a significant difference in terms of average FPS for the chips with Ryzen 7 2700X sitting behind the Intel chips by as low as 28 FPS on stock clocks.

Again, we are seeing an almost similar result as is on the 720p. The lowest margin between Intel and AMD chips is 26 FPS.

As we are increasing the resolution, the gap between both sides chips is reducing. Though the Ryzen 7 2700X is still at the bottom but the margin is now only 8 FPS.

All the chips were neck-to-neck.

Overall, despite sitting at the bottom of the graphs, the Ryzen 7 2700X was giving comparable performance metrics and on high resolutions, this gap was coming to marginal.

Grand Theft Auto – V

The performance on 720p is almost similar to what we have seen in the Far Cry 5. This time the lowest margin is 24.65 FPS between the Intel i5 9600k and Ryzen 7 2700X.

Ryzen 7 2700X is trailing behind the Intel i5 9600k by 12.23 FPS. Clearly, this is a better situation than what we have seen in the Far Cry 5 on this resolution.

The marginal difference of 3.92 FPS is what are seeing between the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and Intel i5 9600k. the difference between Ryzen 7 2700X and i7 8700k is merely 6.33 FPS on stock clocks as well.

Once again, all chips are neck-to-neck on 4k resolution gaming.

Overall, Ryzen 7 2700X is giving a comparable performance and to be honest, I don’t see myself complaining at all so far.

DOOM

Just to have a Vulkan based game in the total result, DOOM was also benched with these chips.

Needless to say, the result is self-explanatory.

Again, all runs are in the 199 average FPS score.

A margin of 1.6 FPS is there which is negligible.

There is a difference of 1.9 FPS between the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and Intel i5 9600k. A difference of 4.8FPS is there between AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and Intel i7 8700k.

Ashes of Singularity

The Ashes of Singularity was the first title with the DX12 support. It has a built-in benchmark. I have benched this game on DX12 only. Under DX12 there are two benchmarks; one tests the CPU bound performance only and the other tests the graphics card performance. Both tests were used to determine the performance level.

First, let’s take a look at the results from the CPU benchmark. This game does not have 720p listed in the supported resolutions so I chose the next available resolution which is 1280×768.

CPU Benchmark

The AMD Ryzen 2 2700X was sitting between the Intel i5 9600k and i7 8700k on stock clocks with 47.7 FPS. The performance gain or loss is marginal.

We have almost similar results on this resolution as are on the 768p.

Again, we are seeing similar results.

Yet, similar results.

GPU Benchmark

Again, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X is sitting between the Intel i5 9600k and i7 8700k with i7 8700k leading by 7.9 FPS only on stock clocks.

On stock clocks, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and Intel i5 9600k are neck-to-neck whereas the Intel i7 8700k has a marginal lead of 4.1 FPS.

Though the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review is at the bottom on the stock clocks, the difference with the Intel i5 9600k is 0.8FPS whereas it is 4.2FPS with the Intel i7 8700k.

Once again, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review has given comparable performance though it is not meeting or crossing the Intel i7 8700k this performance level in this price range is too good in my opinion.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the second title in my test suite which is DX12 enabled. At first, I planned to bench it on DX12 only but I have also benched it on DX11.

DX11 Bench

On stock clocks, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X was trailing behind the Intel i5 9600k and i7 8700k by 20 and 24 FPS respectively.

On stock clocks, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review was trailing behind the Intel i5 9600k and i7 8700k by 14 and 17 FPS respectively.

On stock clocks, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X was trailing behind the Intel i5 9600k and i7 8700k by 7 and 8 FPS respectively.

On stock clocks, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review was at par with the Intel i5 9600k and there was only 1 FPS difference with respect to the Intel i7 8700k. This is understandable as on higher resolutions the gaming processing is more GPU bound.

DX12 Bench

On stock clocks, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review was trailing behind the Intel i5 9600k by 7 FPS only whereas the difference with respect to the Intel i7 8700k is 21 FPS.

On stock clocks, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review was trailing behind the Intel i5 9600k and i7 8700k by 3 and 9 FPS only respectively.

On stock clocks, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review was trailing behind the Intel i5 9600k and i7 8700k by 1 and 2 FPS only respectively.

On stock clocks, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review was leading with 1 FPS over the Intel chips. Marginal performance but then again this on higher resolution only.

In DX12, the AMD has stepped up the game as is evident in the DX12 gaming benchmarks of this game.

Overclocking, Power Draw, Thermal Performance

Having discussed and looked at the crunching performance numbers, it is time to look into the power aspect of the chip and its overclocking potential. On stock clocks, with all the tweaking disabled, our sample was boosting to 4075MHz on its own average. At a few occasions, I saw a bump of up to 4347MHz on a core but only for like seconds.

Unfortunately, on stock clocks, the chip was drawing voltage in the range of 1.34V to 1.50V. The recommended safe voltage threshold for the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X is 1.40V. 60 tCase°C and 95A are the upper limit or defined thermal boundaries of the chip and AI algorithm will level off the Precision Boost 2 or XFR 2 as soon as either of these boundaries is met.

If the smart algorithms governing Precision Boost 2 and XFR 2 detect thermal conditions beneath these values (“headroom”), the 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™ processor will aggressively convert such headroom into meaningful performance for the user until a boundary condition is encountered.

In a heavily-multithreaded “all cores boost” scenario, this user-focused performance tuning permits the AMD Ryzen™ 7 2700X processor to ramp peak power draw up to the AMD Socket AM4 reference limit of 95 Amps. Thermal capacitance (“heat soak”) of the processor die, heat spreader, HSF, and junction solder allow the AMD Ryzen™ processor to amortize the tCase implications of peak power values over time, allowing the CPU to automatically increase performance while remaining inside the thermal boundaries defined by the TDP.

Here are some of the findings on our sample:

• 3700MHz on all cores was achieved using 1.10V
• Average turbo boost was 4050MHz
• 4374MHz was the maximum boost clock on any core drawing up to 1.50V (Only for secs)
• 4250MHZ was achieved but at 1.435V. With LLC the voltage was settling at 1.40V approximately. It was never a stable overclock plus high voltage was too much even for the 360mm liquid cooler.
• 4200MHz was achieved using 1.385V and LLC level 3. With LLC the settling voltage was 1.325V. Overclocking was attempted manually from the BIOS, not from the Ryzen Master.
• THE APU frequency was never settled on 100.0MHz as it was mostly on 99.8MHz which resulted in our actual overclock of 4191MHz.
• Our chip loves to eat more voltage to give high clocks.
• The reported CPU Voltage in the HWInfo64 and AIDA64 never matches. For instance, if AIDA64 was showing 1.390V for the 4191MHz the HWInfo64 was showing 1.325V. The reading of the HWInfo64 seems reliable as the LLC effect was clear in this software whereas AIDA64 was stuck at the BIOS fed voltage.

I have used AIDA64 to stress the CPU on stock and on the overclocked chip. Here are the results:

On stock settings under stress test using AID64, the maximum temperature was 63.1℃ whereas it was 78.2℃ when the chip was overclocked to 4.2GHz. This is with 360mm AIO cooler. The result is the actual temperature after offset adjustment.

My Kill-a-Watt meter malfunctioned and I was unable to ensure the standard testing to measure the power draw across three systems as all three were using different configurations and PSUs. So, in order to show the power consumption of the CPU only, I decided to show the CPU Power Package only which was recorded from the HWInfo64.

The system was put under a stress test using AIDA64 excluding the Graphics Card and System Memory. Reading was taken after 30 minutes running. This way I am showing the maximum of what the CPUs could draw under heavy load. It is for sure that under lighter loads, the power draw would be much less.

I can’t emphasize enough that power consumption would vary from system to system depending upon the components in use and their own power draw coupled with other devices like fans, storage drive(s), optical drives, PCIe devices etc. One simply can’t compare the results shown in the graph with their own to draw any conclusion hence it is imperative that one must read the testing methodology, configuration of the testbed beforehand.

AMD Ryzen Master

Ryzen Master is a name given to the powerful software to regulate almost every aspect of the Ryzen chips directly from the desktop. Though I am sort of a person who believes in manual tweaking the settings in the BIOS, the Ryzen Master is for sure a handy tool once you have booted in the Windows environment.

AMD has further refined the Ryzen Master with the release of their second generation chips. Here are some of the new features:

• Package Power Tracking (“PPT”): The PPT% indicates the distance to the maximum power that can be delivered to the socket by the motherboard across various voltage rails. 100% indicates maximum capacity.
• Thermal Design Current (“TDC”): The TDC% indicates the distance to the maximum current that can be delivered by the motherboard voltage regulators when they have been heated to a steady state through sustained operation. 100% indicates maximum capacity.
• Electrical Design Current (“EDC”): The EDC% indicates the distance to the maximum current that can be delivered by the motherboard voltage regulators in a peak/transient condition. 100% indicates maximum capacity.
• Fastest Core Detection: The stars represent the fastest core(s) within each CCX, while the gold star indicates the fastest silicon in the entire device. The circles represent the second fastest cores within the CCXes. This can be extremely useful for breaking single-core clock speed records.
• Per CCX Overclocking: In AMD Ryzen™ Master 1.3, it is now possible to independently control the clock speed of each CCX.

The “% of capacity” readouts depend on BIOS support, which may vary from motherboard to motherboard. Core 3 and 7 of our sample have gold star indicating that these are favorite cores to work upon in case of tweaking for single core performance.

Rest of the cores are marked with the circle. 4 cores are shown under CCX1 and 4 cores are shown under CCX2. Each CCX2 can be controlled individually under manual control mode.

Voltage control can be either auto or manual. If using manual settings for the clock speeds then an only manual mode for voltage can be used. Three control modes are provided; Auto, Precision Boost mode, and Manual. Additional settings are provided in the additional control and memory related settings are provided in the Memory Control.

At the bottom, we have 5 profiles. Current profile shows the present loaded settings. Creator Mode is Ryzen optimized for the professionals who would love to use multi-threaded powerful CPU whereas the Game mode loads optimal settings for a better gaming experience. The user can create two profiles as per the requirements. These profiles can be exported and imported as well.

Conclusion

AMD has been on their toes to bring an all-together new architecture and they did not disappoint when the first generation Ryzen series CPUs were launched based on the Zen architecture. It was a revival of the AMD and since then AMD has been making some waves as in 2018, they launched their second generation of the Ryzen series CPUs based on Zen+ architecture and now in 2019, we are hearing the more powerful – rumored – third-generation Ryzen coming soon.

This was not all as the company was also releasing HEDT series of CPUs dubbed ThreadRipper using TR socket. The Zen architecture is using 1331 pins AM4 socket and best thing with their Ryzen series is that the motherboard based on the first generation socket is compatible with the second generation.

The second generation AMD Ryzen 7 2700X review code-named Pinnacle Ridge packs 8 cores and 16 threads rated at a base clock of 3.7GHz with a turbo boost of 4.3GHz. The chip is rated at 105W TDP and has the support of up to 2933MHz DDR4 memory in Dual Channel. 2933 MT/s is supported on motherboards with at least six PCB layers only, otherwise 2667 MT/s (four-layer boards) is supported.

The suffix X indicates that the chip is unlocked. It packs 4.8 billion transistors in the die package of 213mm². Much like what we have seen with the first generation of the Ryzen CPUs, the second generation CPUs also bear the same consideration for the RAM as not all of the DDR4 kits may be Ryzen compatible. While they would work on the Ryzen but the performance might not be at par similarly, scaling with the high-speed RAM benefits Ryzen.

We have 16MB L3$ cached shared between the CCX units whereas there is 64K I$ L1 cache with 32K D$ per core and 512K L2$ cache per core. To make things more attractive, this chip comes with their Wraith Prism CPU Cooler in the bundle. The Ryzen 7 2700X supports instruction sets/extensions MMX, EMMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, SSE4a, AVX, AVX2, ABM, , BMI1, BMI2, FMA3, AES, SHA, ADX, CLMUL, F16C, x86-16, x86-32, and x86-64.

Though previous generation chipsets are compatible with the second generation CPUs, AMD has released new chipsets which are still based on socket AM4 to reap the true performance potential from their new chips. The new chipsets are dubbed as X470 for enthusiasts, B450 for mainstream users and A300 for the small form factor along with the Ryzen second generation chips. All these chipsets still feature the same AM4 socket.

Here are some of the salient features in the new X470 chipset:

• Design optimized for 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen processors, including an updated power infrastructure guaranteed to support the power requirements behind the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X’s performance leadership.
• Out of the box support for all socket AM4 processors, including the new 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen Processors.*
• An incrementally lower TDP for the physical chipset silicon.
• AMD StoreMI storage acceleration

If I have to sum up to the core of the Zen+ architecture without going into the details; it is the efficiency, lower latencies, and higher clock speeds. You may call it tweaking but AMD is definitely upping their game. To put it simply, the voltage requirement for a certain level of clocks in Ryzen second generation is considerably low as compared to the voltage requirement for the same level of clocks in the Ryzen first generation.

This AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review is highly beneficial as it has allowed the AMD to better bin their chips and to provide more headroom for boost clocks much thanks to much-improved Precision Boost 2 and XFR 2. So, the question is what are the key changes in the Zen+ over the Zen? Here are some key points to that end:

• A reduction in L1 Cache latency of approximately 13%
• A reduction in L2 Cache latency of approximately 34%
• A reduction in L3 Cache latency of approximately 16%
• A reduction in DRAM latency of approximately 11%
• Contributing to a single-threaded IPC improvement of approximately 3%
• Official support for JEDEC DDR4-2933 (up from 2667)

Unfortunately, I did not see any AVX Offset option in the BIOS which is now a common feature on the Intel platform. I would like to see a similar option in the coming generation as it is highly beneficial. Well, this is what is on the paper but what about the performance of the Ryzen 7 2700X.

We have spun this AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review chip for some time now and used multiple benchmarking tools and real applications like Blender, Handbrake to see what this chip could do for your multi-threading needs and damn, this chip is right on the spot. Almost in all the rendering transcoding, multi-core performance tests, this chip is way past the Intel counterpart in our test suite aka i7 8700k. But, when it comes to single-core performance, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review is still behind the Intel.

Hey, what about gaming performance? Now, this is an interesting part as we are still seeing AMD not meeting or crossing the Intel in the gaming performance but they have definitely reduced the gap and done that in quite a good manner. This chip has performed admirably well and has given comparable performance competition though i7 8700k is still no match in the games.

The reason why this chip was lacking behind can be attributed to the still lower clocks as compared to the Intel’s higher clocks and slow single core performance. If you take a peek at our graphs, one thing is for sure, there is no way, I could say 2700X could not perform. Even if it sits at the bottom, the lower numbers by no mean are that low to recommend the competitive offering.

Overclocking and boosting is still silicon bound and largely depend upon the cooling solution. Ryzen would love powerful cooling solution without a doubt and its power consumption is still more than the Intel. How much of a power saving we are talking about with respect to the first gen Ryzen is something that I can’t shed light on as I could not test 1700X/1800X for that matter due to their non-availability.

You can manually overclock it or enable XFR 2 to work in tandem with the Precision Boost 2 and rely on AMD’s AI algorithm to do the work. Really, can’t go wrong either and it all boils down to the silicon itself and the cooling solution.

The launch price of the Intel i7 8700k was much higher and it still is high. In order to determine the value proposition of the CPU, we simply can’t compare their prices and make a head-on move as CPUs need a motherboard, RAM, Coolers to work. Since Ryzen 7 2700X comes with its own cooler and use can select either from X470/B450 chipsets the savings are apparent.

So, here is what we are gonna do. We will select components on the NewEgg and will make a sample configuration using the entry level components and calculate the total price. This will be done for both platforms.

Moving from Z370 to non-Z chipset will lose the unlocked perks of the chip. Though keep in mind that for overclocking you would need much better cooling for both Chips as both run hot and Ryzen would love higher speed RAM as these would facilitate the inifinity fabric in boosting the performance. Not only the higher speed of the DDR4 would be beneficial but tight timings would as well do the job.

Coming to the big question of if AMD Ryzen 7 2700X is worth it or not, based on my testing and experience, I can say that yes it is. Ryzen 7 2700X is offering you almost a complete package in terms of multi-threading performance and better gaming performance without breaking your wallet.

What else we could have asked for! At the end of the day, I would pick up AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, hook it up with the high-speed Ryzen optimized DDR4 kit and start using it as my daily driver. Needless to say, the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X comes recommended by us.

I will conclude this content by saying thanks to AMD for giving us the opportunity to review their Ryzen 7 2700X CPU.