Ryzen 7 1700X CPU by AMD Review

Conclusions

We are glad to see how good is to have again competition on the high-end desktop CPUs market. It is clear on all tests that the Ryzen 7 1700X is far superior to the FX-8350, which is one of the most high-end processors from AMD until this launch.
Comparing the results of the Ryzen 7 1700X benchmarks to the Intel CPUs with similar price is not that simple. It is clear that, in some tests (like Cinebench R15), the Ryzen 7 1700X has an excellent performance, better than the Core i7-6800K, which is a more expensive CPU. On the other hand, in some programs and on most games, the Ryzen 7 1700X was not faster than it, being inferior even to the Core i7-7700K, that costs less than it.
It is good to keep in mind that we ran the games with a high-end video card, in Full HD resolution and intermediate graphics quality, because benchmarking this way, the video card is not demanded too much, and the CPU defines the bottleneck, so we are then benchmarking the CPU gaming performance. In a more typical situation, using a less expensive video card, or higher graphics quality and resolution, the video card becomes the bottleneck, and the influence of the CPU on the gaming performance is dramatically reduced.
There are two main reasons for this aparently inconsistent behavior: first, because the Ryzen 7 1700X (like, for example, the Core i7-6950X) rely on the high number of threads, and not on the single thread performance or high clock, to offer high computing power. So, it takes no advantage in programs that don’t use all those threads. Second, it uses a brand new architecture and cache topography, so it is possible that games, drivers, and programs are not optimized for these CPUs. That means it is possible that the performance on programs raise as the software becomes more mature and receive optimizations for this new architecture.
Right now, the Ryzen 7 1700X is an excellent option for anyone who needs to run programs that take advantage of the 16 available threads. In rendering programs like Cinema 4D (on which Cinebench R15 is based), it has an excellent performance and its cost/benefit ratio is awesome.
On the other hand, for anyone looking for a CPU for a gaming PC, the Ryzen 7 1700X is not the best option, because the competitor offers best performance, costing less. However, it is important to remember that the performance of the Ryzen 7 1700X on games is not bad at all: it simply doesn’t offer a better cost/relation ratio than the Core i7-7700K.
Another important point is that, even using a mainstream cooler, the Ryzen 7 1700X ran cold during all our tests. Keeping a room temperature around 22 degrees Celsius, the maximum temperature the CPU reached was 54 degrees Celsius during a stress test with Prime95.