To say that AMD's first-generation Ryzen family of desktop processors gave Intel's CPU division a 20,000-volt wakeup call would be the understatement of 2017.
Now it's 2018, and AMD isn't content to simply poke its rival and run.
With the Ryzen 7 2700X ($329), the Santa Clara chipmaker is ready for real mano-a-mano fisticuffs with no gloves and no ref.
This eight-core/16-thread chip builds on the success of the Ryzen 7 1800X and is a superb buy for budget-minded horsepower, and it's better situated in a more mature board-and-chipset ecosystem, to boot.
Casual power users will find it hard to top this CPU in terms of value.
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The Art of Zen
The AMD Ryzen 7 2700X processor I'm testing features a 3.7GHz base clock, a 4.3GHz maximum boost clock, and a 105-watt TDP.
When you buy this processor in a retail package, you'll also get AMD's Wraith Prism CPU cooler, which features a copper core, direct-contact heatpipes, a quiet high-velocity fan, and customizable RGB LEDs.
It's a very nice stock cooler, far more elegant than the usual Intel stock fare.
There's no on-die graphics under this processor's heat spreader, so those looking to upgrade to this chip must plan on getting a discrete graphics card, as well.
Overclockers will also be relieved to learn that the Ryzen 7 2700X still has a soldered-on heat spreader that's capable of shuttling heat away from the chip faster and more efficiently than the thermal interface material (TIM) between the die and heat spreader of Intel's flagship Core i7 processors.
(Nobody de-lids AMD's Ryzen processors.) Speaking of the Core i7-8700K, AMD is offering two more cores and four more threads, for roughly $100 less than Intel's flagship.
That's a calculation hard to ignore.
There's not a whole new architecture to delve into with what AMD is calling the "Zen+," or "Pinnacle Ridge," refresh, just some tweaks here and there to address the first-generation processor's primary weaknesses.
Furthermore, the Ryzen 7 2700X is built on Global Foundry's new 12nm Leading Performance (LP) FinFET manufacturing process, which is just a baby step forward compared to Zen's 14nm Low Power Plus (LPP) FinFET manufacturing process used in the Ryzen 7 1000-series chips.
In addition to being designed specifically for existing 14nm architectures like Zen, the new process offers, AMD claims, 10 to 15 percent better transistor performance.
AMD also made minor design adjustments to decrease the DRAM latencies by as much as 16 percent for the L1 and L3 caches, and up to 34 percent for the L2 cache.
Overall, AMD estimates that there's a 3 percent jump in instructions per clock (IPC) between Zen and Zen+.
A More Granular Boost
AMD's latest processors still have SenseMI machine intelligence baked into the silicon, but the new Precision Boost 2 now gives the Ryzen 7 2700X the ability to examine the current workload, factor in the cooling performance of the system, and punch those clock speeds higher, to the tune of between 300MHz and 500MHz (in 25MHz steps at a time), depending on the task at hand.
On the first-generation Ryzen processors, Precision Boost only really made a difference when one or two cores were engaged.
Even relatively lightweight workloads that used three cores or more would force the clock speed of all cores to the slower "all core boost" state.
With the 2000-series chips, Precision Boost 2 enables the clock speed to drop off only gradually as more cores are engaged, up to the full eight.
All things considered, AMD designed Precision Boost 2 to be relatively conservative.
However, if you're running a premium CPU cooler, such as a closed-loop liquid cooler, the SenseMI algorithms can detect the improved thermal headroom.
Extended Frequency Range 2 (XFR 2) is the clock-boosting feature that kicks into gear in these scenarios to deliver even higher frequencies under load.
It also works across every core and thread that's being pushed to the limit.
AMD states that this feature alone can add another 7 percent to the chip's performance.
Even though the Ryzen 7 2700X processor (and all Zen+ Pinnacle Ridge chips, for that matter) still work in X370 motherboards, AMD also introduced a new feature to its X470 chipset and platform.
I'm talking about AMD's StoreMI storage acceleration technology.
In short, the technology intelligently shuffles your most-used files to the fastest storage device in your system.
For the vast majority of enthusiasts who have a mixed storage environment comprising one or more fast SSDs and high-capacity hard drives, this feature gives you the best performance experience across everything you do with your PC.
Precision Boost Overdrive, At Your Own Risk?
Precision Boost Overdrive was a feature that was merely hinted at during the launch of the second-generation Ryzen 7 and 5 processors.
Now that the Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX has been launched, however, AMD has seen fit to explain this premium overclocking feature in greater detail.
Robert Hallock, Senior Technical Marketing Manager at AMD, explains Precision Boost Overdrive in broad strokes in this video.
In short, the feature uses three parameters—temperature, power consumption from the CPU, and the VRM (your motherboard's ability to supply power to the CPU)—to determine the how high the core frequency can climb before hitting one or more of these predefined limits.
Traditional BIOS-based overclocking effectively moves these goalposts to give the processor more room to boost.
Precision Boost Overdrive does exactly the same thing, only it's fully automated.
It requires a motherboard with a robust VRM, and it demands a better-than-stock CPU cooler, just like traditional overclocking.
And, yep, it voids your warranty, also just like traditional overclocking.
If that's not a primary concern for you, then you'll be happy to hear that enabling Precision Boost Overdrive can be done either from within the BIOS of select X470 motherboards, or via a switch in AMD's Ryzen Master overclocking utility, which you can download here.
Once the utility was downloaded and installed, I launched AMD Ryzen Master, switched to Creator Mode, clicked Precision Boost Overdrive, and then clicked Apply.
When I enabled the feature, my Cinebench R15 score went from 175 (single core) and 1,777 (multicore) to 179 and 1,807 respectively.
The MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC motherboard has a Precision Boost Overdrive feature in the BIOS menu, and as of version 7B77v12, this warranty-voiding feature was, surprisingly, set to "Auto" by default.
Let's Get Testing...
Before diving into my tried-and-true overclocking endeavors, I first ran our stock tests how this processor performs at its default settings, in a number of demanding desktop applications.
For my test setup, I installed the Ryzen 7 2700X into that MSI X470 Gaming M7 AC motherboard, and populated two of the DIMM slots with 16GB of dual-channel Crucial Ballistix Elite DDR4-3466 memory.
For the boot drive, I relied on the 500GB Samsung 850 EVO M.2 SATA SSD installed into the topmost M.2 slot on this motherboard.
I installed the components into the Phanteks Enthoo Pro Tempered Glass Edition case, with a Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L RGB closed-loop cooler keeping my CPU temperatures in check.
For the graphics card, an MSI Radeon R9 290 Gaming 4G handled my display output.
To compare this processor's scores with other viable options currently on the market, I included in the chart scores for the six-core/12-thread Intel Core i7-8700K mentioned earlier (the most direct Intel competition for this chip), as well as six-core six-thread Intel Core i5-8400, and the eight-core 16-thread Intel Core i7-7820X.
To represent the AMD side, I also worked in the eight-core 16-thread AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, the six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 1600X, the six-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 2600X (I'm also in the process of reviewing that chip), and for kicks and perspective, the 16-core/32-thread Ryzen Threadripper 2950X.
Cinebench R15
Maxon's 64-bit Cinebench R15 is a CPU-centric test that lets me gauge both the single-core and multicore performance of the various processors I tested.
The resulting scores are proprietary numbers that represent the processor's performance while rendering a complex CPU-intensive image.
This is considered a synthetic benchmark.
With its higher core count, it's no surprise that the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X bested the Core i7-8700K.
The impressive feat was the Ryzen's besting of the Skylake Core i7-7820X processor from Intel's Core X Series, too.
That said, the single-core performance is still not quite up to par compared to Intel's best performers.
iTunes 10.6 Conversion Test
The iTunes 10.6 Encoding Test, as good an example as you'll find here of "legacy software," is laughably single-threaded, which means that more cores don't do AMD's chip any favors.
This test is designed to illustrate the performance you might expect when running software you just can't quit, but that doesn't scale well.
Although the Ryzen 7 2700X's higher clock speed helps it beat the first-gen Ryzen processors, Intel's processors have a distinct, though narrow, advantage.
Handbrake 0.9.9
Handbrake is a classic, and popular workstation utility that is used to convert video files between formats.
Typically, the more threads and cores your processor has, the better it will perform in this application.
I loaded up a 12-minute 4K video clip titled Tears Of Steel and used the software to convert it into a 1080p MPEG-4 video.
In this real-world test, the Ryzen 7 2700X performed exceptionally well, lagging behind only one processor priced significantly higher, the mighty Threadripper 2950X, and essentially tying the pricier Core i7-7820X.
If you do a lot of video editing, using applications that scale well across multiple cores and threads, the Ryzen 7 2700X is a solid competitor.
POV-Ray 3.7
This benchmark is another one that's generally considered synthetic; however, the highly threaded nature of the utility is getting to be more and more representative of the applications available today.
I ran POV-Ray using both the multi-threaded "All CPUs" setting and the hamstrung "One CPU" setting.
The benchmark tasks the processor with rendering a complex photo-realistic image using ray tracing.
Only the 16-core Threadripper beat the Ryzen 7 2700X when the processor was fully unleashed.
When limited to a single core, however, AMD's processor performs well but lags behind the more expensive Intel Coffee Lake and Skylake chips.
It's interesting to note that the Intel Core i5-8400 is significantly slower, due to that chip's lower clock speed and lack of support for Hyper-Threading.
Blender 2.77a
Another of the real-world benchmarks used here is Blender, a popular open-source 3D rendering application that people far more creative and talented than I use to craft 3D visual effects, animations, and models.
Our test file consists of a cartoonish flying-squirrel render that takes less than a minute to complete with most modern processors.
Blender was one of the first-gen Ryzen's weakest benchmarks, and here, it's clear that the new secret sauce in the Ryzen 7 2700X, in addition to this processor's higher clock speed, has helped it gain ground.
Intel's flagship still has a slight edge, though.
7-Zip File Compression
7-Zip is a widely used file-compression utility that features a built-in compression/decompression benchmark.
It is a real-world test that generally utilizes as many cores and threads as your processor has to offer.
Here again, it's clear: When the application can handle multiple cores, the Skylake Core i7-7820X and Threadripper 2950X are the only chips that score better than the Ryzen 7 2700X in this lot.
When you look at the performance leap from the Ryzen 7 1800X to the Ryzen 7 2700X (two processors with the same core and thread count) the improvement between the first-generation and second-generation Ryzen chips comes into sharp focus.
And here, AMD manages to leapfrog Intel's flagship Coffee Lake processor.
Ryzen Gaming, Revisited
When the first-generation Ryzen processors debuted, Intel's contemporary crop of chips consistently beat them in one specific application: gaming at 1080p.
With modern games, midrange and high-end discrete graphics cards barely break a sweat at this resolution, forcing the processor to perform a lot of the heavy lifting.
It's not a new problem, but Intel's decade of dominance has afforded the company's processors countless generation-on-generation game optimizations.
Ryzen had none of those inherited optimizations when it launched, and as a result, Intel's processors were enjoying significant and noticeable frame rate advantages across a range of popular games.
The problem was much less pronounced at 1440p and all but nonexistent at 4K, but it was enough for many low-resolution gamers to write off Ryzen.
Fast-forward to today.
Does the Ryzen 7 2700X suffer from the same problems? Based on some limited gaming testing we've performed, things are much better this time around, but AMD still hasn't achieved complete parity with Intel in some games.
Last year, when running Far Cry Primal (on the High preset) at 1080p, AMD's flagship Ryzen 7 1800X processor paired with a GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition card scored an average of 84fps for the duration of the built-in benchmark.
The same test, with the same discrete graphics card and the new Ryzen 7 2700X, yielded 105fps, for a 25 percent increase.
Intel's Core i7-8700K scored 138fps, so Intel's advantage is still evident, even if you'd be hard-pressed to notice it most of the time, given such high averages.
Rise Of The Tomb Raider (tested at DX11, on the Very High preset), on the other hand, showed no frame-rate increase between the old and new Ryzen processors, though Intel still showed a roughly 20 percent advantage at 1080p.
At 4K, all systems performed nearly identically (within one or two frames per second), as you'd expect most systems to when equipped with the same discrete graphics card.
My advice for PC gamers is less to avoid Ryzen and more to invest in a higher-resolution, high-refresh-rate, or ultra-wide monitor to go with your uber-powerful graphics card.
Under most circumstances, the...
