AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen 2 2700X Zen+ CPU Review @ [H]

So I was thinking of building a AMD 2700X rig and this review was very good, but going by this and other reviews there doesn't seem to be much of a gain in gaming performance over pretty much what I have now which is the Intel I7 4790. I don't really do anything else that would benefit from having 8 cores, so I'm having second thought on spending $700+ for almost zero return. I'm also thinking possibly of going with the less expensive AMD 2600. Not sure what to do.:confused:
 
So I was thinking of building a AMD 2700X rig and this review was very good, but going by this and other reviews there doesn't seem to be much of a gain in gaming performance over pretty much what I have now which is the Intel I7 4790. I don't really do anything else that would benefit from having 8 cores, so I'm having second thought on spending $700+ for almost zero return. I'm also thinking possibly of going with the less expensive AMD 2600. Not sure what to do.:confused:
Yeah I've been going back and forth on what to do as well. I'm coming from a 2500k so any of these will be an upgrade, but I'm torn between 8700k, 2700x or even dropping down to a 2600x. I'm only gaming, so I don't need more than 6c/12t. The Ryzen chips will mean I'm not spending $60 on the CM ML240 as I'd probably stick with the stock cooler, but the 8700K is only $300, motherboards are the same price and if probably drop extra on faster RAM if I go Ryzen.
 
So I was thinking of building a AMD 2700X rig and this review was very good, but going by this and other reviews there doesn't seem to be much of a gain in gaming performance over pretty much what I have now which is the Intel I7 4790. I don't really do anything else that would benefit from having 8 cores, so I'm having second thought on spending $700+ for almost zero return. I'm also thinking possibly of going with the less expensive AMD 2600. Not sure what to do.:confused:

I had a 5960x which I believe 4790 is haswell as well. If it didn't shit the bed I would have been on that for another 3-5 years... so I get where you are coming from.

I do like to make family videos so the 8 cores is nice for that. It makes Adobe Premiere smooth and snappy.

To me, the 8700k and 2700x are pretty negligible. I went AMD since it's been a while and exciting they are in the ballpark again.
 
So I was thinking of building a AMD 2700X rig and this review was very good, but going by this and other reviews there doesn't seem to be much of a gain in gaming performance over pretty much what I have now which is the Intel I7 4790. I don't really do anything else that would benefit from having 8 cores, so I'm having second thought on spending $700+ for almost zero return. I'm also thinking possibly of going with the less expensive AMD 2600. Not sure what to do.:confused:

You have an HT quad-core- you can easily last another release or two without really feeling held back. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

Yeah I've been going back and forth on what to do as well. I'm coming from a 2500k so any of these will be an upgrade, but I'm torn between 8700k, 2700x or even dropping down to a 2600x. I'm only gaming, so I don't need more than 6c/12t. The Ryzen chips will mean I'm not spending $60 on the CM ML240 as I'd probably stick with the stock cooler, but the 8700K is only $300, motherboards are the same price and if probably drop extra on faster RAM if I go Ryzen.

The 8700k will still be faster for gaming longer- by the time games can make positive use the extra pair of cores on R7 CPUs, both the i7 and R7 will be 'slow'. Both will be a significant upgrade, but for purely gaming the 8700k is the better buy today.
 
Yeah I've been going back and forth on what to do as well. I'm coming from a 2500k so any of these will be an upgrade, but I'm torn between 8700k, 2700x or even dropping down to a 2600x. I'm only gaming, so I don't need more than 6c/12t. The Ryzen chips will mean I'm not spending $60 on the CM ML240 as I'd probably stick with the stock cooler, but the 8700K is only $300, motherboards are the same price and if probably drop extra on faster RAM if I go Ryzen.

The trick is to use highest speed ram, which adds to to cost, but is well worth it, if game performance is priority.

Here is another review where you have 2500k and can see the improvement in a few games. Both of those are european so use google translate, or just check the graphs.

In short, 2700X is about 10% slower in games vs 8700k in stock configuration, however when fastest ram is used it overtakes stock 8700k by few percent and is about 5% slower on average vs 8700k with same memory configuration. (8700k also benefits, just not as much).

If you look at minimum frame rates the difference is even lower, ie 8% advantage vs stock 8700k, and only 2% behind 8700k with the same memory config. In other words they are comparable.

This is using 6 modern titles, out of which some seriously used to favor Intel setup such a Star Wars Battlefront, where 1800x was 30% behind stock 8700k, and 2700x with fastest ram is equal to 8700k with fastest ram on both sides. In that comparison 2700x is 35% faster than stock 1800x. While this may seems excessive, the average for 6 games was 27% improvement for FPS averages and 31% for minimum frame rates for 2700x vs 1800x which puts it about par with 8700k (best RAM for both platforms).

One can OC 8700k to 5ghz, even 5.2ghz with golden sample CPU's, push memory even higher, but we are not talking about a large difference in total, as what used to be the case with first gen Ryzen, while you still get two extra cores with 2700X, and if games ever start using those extra threads, the difference should swing the other way.

In that other review where 2500k can be seen vs stock 2700x the difference was over 60% for GTA5, bit less in others, but again significant, certainly enough for me to upgrade.

I was waiting for the reviews to come out, and was likely to move to 2700x from 2500k before dependable on how it turns out. The showing is even better than expected, especially with how much more flexibility and improvement 2700x shows when used with top end memory.

Kind of bad luck that memory is at a recent time high in terms of price, but look like it's worth it for longer term peace of mind. I will only go with 16GB though.
 
I wish that they would have used the DDR4 3200 C14 FlareX stuff instead- the review gets the point across with the tests as-is, but DDR4 3466 at CAS15 or CAS16 is definitely higher latency while also being more expensive with 2x8GB Flare X at $229 on this side of the pond.

If Newegg had not shit the bed I'd have my 3200 CAS 14 memory here. Currently sitting on a 2700X and Asus X470 Pro with no ram.

I will be making a point to text the performance difference with high speed low latency settings vs "stock" not CAS14
 
That's about where I am parked at the moment. X99 has some lags and if I needed more threads I can toss a 10 core processor in.

Just curious, do you honestly think you need more cores? I can see the argument if you're heavily favoring encoding and such, just not for gaming scenarios. I can see the allure if you're still on a 4 core without additional threads, but other than that the benefits start to diminish.

You have an HT quad-core- you can easily last another release or two without really feeling held back. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?



The 8700k will still be faster for gaming longer- by the time games can make positive use the extra pair of cores on R7 CPUs, both the i7 and R7 will be 'slow'. Both will be a significant upgrade, but for purely gaming the 8700k is the better buy today.

The 8700k and Intels gaming advantage is actually becoming a more limited scenario. Sure we see gains around 1080p, but even those are waning. When you get to 4k, which is going to be the resolution of the next 5+ years, it's a draw. If the high end cpu market is essentially completely gpu bound anyway, is there really a need to spend money there?

However I know the argument of massive fps like 144 that competitive players are looking for, and there we still have a large market for the Intel crowd. However since 4k numbers are pretty much moot, I wonder how much higher fps gaming is going to be governing the decision making for current and future gaming builds.

Edit: added quote
 
The 8700k and Intels gaming advantage is actually becoming a more limited scenario. Sure we see gains around 1080p, but even those are waning. When you get to 4k, which is going to be the resolution of the next 5+ years, it's a draw. If the high end cpu market is essentially completely gpu bound anyway, is there really a need to spend money there?

However I know the argument of massive fps like 144 that competitive players are looking for, and there we still have a large market for the Intel crowd. However since 4k numbers are pretty much moot, I wonder how much higher fps gaming is going to be governing the decision making for current and future gaming builds.

I totally agree with your point under the stipulation that the OP is planning to upgrade in a few years. And they may!

But the additional single-core performance of the 8700k (along with having it across six cores with hyperthreading) can come into play in many ways for gaming: some games will increase in complexity, some games will increase in speed demands, all gaming markets are pushng toward higher framerates (including mobile!) for fluidity and responsiveness, VR is coming with a 90Hz standard and likely wanting more, and most obviously, GPUs will get faster.

The point is, where single-core performance matters, the 8700k has enough of a lead to snag the recommendation.


[and I will reiterate here: if single-core performance takes a back seat to multi-thread performance, just get an R7]
 
So I was thinking of building a AMD 2700X rig and this review was very good, but going by this and other reviews there doesn't seem to be much of a gain in gaming performance over pretty much what I have now which is the Intel I7 4790. I don't really do anything else that would benefit from having 8 cores, so I'm having second thought on spending $700+ for almost zero return. I'm also thinking possibly of going with the less expensive AMD 2600. Not sure what to do.:confused:
I would wait. The 4790 is plenty fast. Hell I am not even biting on upgrading my 2500K because I just use my desktop as a standard computer these days and remote work. I would try to hold out IMO unless your doing alot of content creation or just have the itch :) I would but I just moved into a new house and still tying to landscape of my backyard. It ain't cheap even doing some of the work your self...
 
Just curious, do you honestly think you need more cores? I can see the argument if you're heavily favoring encoding and such, just not for gaming scenarios. I can see the allure if you're still on a 4 core without additional threads, but other than that the benefits start to diminish.



The 8700k and Intels gaming advantage is actually becoming a more limited scenario. Sure we see gains around 1080p, but even those are waning. When you get to 4k, which is going to be the resolution of the next 5+ years, it's a draw. If the high end cpu market is essentially completely gpu bound anyway, is there really a need to spend money there?

However I know the argument of massive fps like 144 that competitive players are looking for, and there we still have a large market for the Intel crowd. However since 4k numbers are pretty much moot, I wonder how much higher fps gaming is going to be governing the decision making for current and future gaming builds.

Edit: added quote

The short, no. I do not envision a scenario where I would need more than the 6 cores I'm sitting on. I opted for the X99 setup as at the time I was able to get it for a bit less brand spankin new than what the Intel flavor of the moment was getting. And I got 2 more cores and a lot more PCIE lanes to play with.
 
So I was thinking of building a AMD 2700X rig and this review was very good, but going by this and other reviews there doesn't seem to be much of a gain in gaming performance over pretty much what I have now which is the Intel I7 4790. I don't really do anything else that would benefit from having 8 cores, so I'm having second thought on spending $700+ for almost zero return. I'm also thinking possibly of going with the less expensive AMD 2600. Not sure what to do.:confused:

if you don't do a lot of thread count heavy stuff then yeah either the 2600, 2500, or intel 8600k might be better options for you and won't completely break the bank.
 
Wow! WOW!
I don't have much to say on the topic, so sorry for that, but i do have some sort of "meta analysis":
I was able to read the 9 pages of comments, without skipping large chunks due to name calling, cherry picking, logical fallacies, etc! All this in a launch review!

Also got some useful info on the XFR2 / Overdrive stuff regarding X370/X470.

So... Thank you for that :) ANd good article too!

Keep it up! :)
(back to lurking... :p )
 
I totally agree with your point under the stipulation that the OP is planning to upgrade in a few years. And they may!

But the additional single-core performance of the 8700k (along with having it across six cores with hyperthreading) can come into play in many ways for gaming: some games will increase in complexity, some games will increase in speed demands, all gaming markets are pushng toward higher framerates (including mobile!) for fluidity and responsiveness, VR is coming with a 90Hz standard and likely wanting more, and most obviously, GPUs will get faster.

The point is, where single-core performance matters, the 8700k has enough of a lead to snag the recommendation.


[and I will reiterate here: if single-core performance takes a back seat to multi-thread performance, just get an R7]


I think your discussion of VR is a very important one, but does come with a lot of stipulations. First off, the VR market is much smaller than you will ever think it is, and people building a new VR box usually aren't spending $400 on a processor. A graphics card yes, but you can get a similar experience with a ryzen 1600 that you're going to get with a newer chip. For the enthusiast of the inthusiast, yeah, you're point is well received. When we're talking about sheer frame rates, especially at the resolution of VR that isn't going to be gpu bound, a faster, more powerful IPC will reign all day long. If I were to buy the bets VR rig for a small buisiness right now, I'd want an Intel chip. But realistically, will it make much of a difference? Probably not.

There's a part of me that wants Intel to show up with something game changing, but at the same time, I'm almost wondering if that's ever going to be in the cards again. We can often look at the server tech and development to predict what will trickle down to the desktop market, and in the case of Intel, I'm not really seeing anything that will be changing course anytime soon.

Wow! WOW!
I don't have much to say on the topic, so sorry for that, but i do have some sort of "meta analysis":
I was able to read the 9 pages of comments, without skipping large chunks due to name calling, cherry picking, logical fallacies, etc! All this in a launch review!

Also got some useful info on the XFR2 / Overdrive stuff regarding X370/X470.

So... Thank you for that :) ANd good article too!

Keep it up! :)
(back to lurking... :p )

Glad to have you on the boards. I lurked from around 99 till 2010 so I know the feeling. You'll find that a lot our regular community is fairly educated regarding hardware and tends to focus on real discussions that hold merit both scientifically and spiritually. The tennis match of vendors you see on sites like wccf tech and their ilk of fanboy smashing is pretty rediculous when you put it into perspective. Don't get me wrong though, not many of us here are above a good dick or fart joke.

What kind of rig are you rocking? Thinking of picking up a 2700?

cheers

The short, no. I do not envision a scenario where I would need more than the 6 cores I'm sitting on. I opted for the X99 setup as at the time I was able to get it for a bit less brand spankin new than what the Intel flavor of the moment was getting. And I got 2 more cores and a lot more PCIE lanes to play with.

Having a threadripper for my daily driver has really made me appreciate the raw power of threads. Managing video projects is better than ever and I don't have to find anything else to do while they're rendering or encoding since there's always extra threads for surfing or doing side content while I wait. It's really changed the way that I work on a lot of projects. Having run a 6 core/12thread Intel chip for awhile I had thought I was already maxed out on my experience. It was great for gaming and content, and honestly I just never felt like I needed more. But holy cow when you get a watercooled 16 core 32 thread chip running a hair under 4ghz 24/7 it's a serious smoke show. I honestly couldn't believe how much more umph it had in many of the everyday tasks I rely on. If they can improve on their Threadripper series, I really feel like Intel is going to have a hard time maintaining market share anywhere close to the high end desktop.

But to be honest, It's all perspective, if I hadn't just decided to go for it, I didn't feel like I was missing anything and was already getting the bets gaming experience I could need. I'll be honest with you though, It feels good to see your list of cpu threads fill up the entire left side of the screen ;p
 
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So given your manual overclocking was done with CPB on (and wouldn't easily reach 4.3)... does this mean there's probably a little room to tweak to hit the magical 4.4-4.5 number?
 
So given your manual overclocking was done with CPB on (and wouldn't easily reach 4.3)... does this mean there's probably a little room to tweak to hit the magical 4.4-4.5 number?
I honestly do not know right now.
 
Glad to have you on the boards. I lurked from around 99 till 2010 so I know the feeling. You'll find that a lot our regular community is fairly educated regarding hardware and tends to focus on real discussions that hold merit both scientifically and spiritually. The tennis match of vendors you see on sites like wccf tech and their ilk of fanboy smashing is pretty rediculous when you put it into perspective. Don't get me wrong though, not many of us here are above a good dick or fart joke.

Thanks.
I started here, many years ago, in the storage section (many crazy people there, doing the same crazy stuff i was doing at the time. Very good information too.)

1 year ago, for the ryzen debut, i couldn't read 90% of the threads here... Because of the "mud throwing". My point is it's improved much!
What kind of rig are you rocking? Thinking of picking up a 2700?
I have lots of computers. This one is a venerable x5660 (xeon, 6 cores, 2.8GHz) with 24GB RAM. Most of the time it's downclocked to 2.5GHz :p (sorry, i know it's against site rules! But i value the quiet)
To be honest, I'm not going to buy a 2700X, unless any of my current boxes die. If that happens, the current AMD offers would be on the top of my list.

I was thinking about a threadripper, a few months ago, mostly because of the RAM support -- 128GB and many/good cores are tempting for my VMs... But the RAM pricing makes that hard to justify, atm... Still, it's good to be informed about the new tech out there :D
 
My understanding is that when you enable CPB in the BIOS it enables PB2.....without CPB enabled, PB2 will not activate. The different terminology used by mobo manufacturers and AMD for this is confusing. In essence they are one and the same thing it seems. (It seems that CPB in the bios is a switch for PB2). Happy to be proven wrong.
 
My understanding is that when you enable CPB in the BIOS it enables PB2.....without CPB enabled, PB2 will not activate. The different terminology used by mobo manufacturers and AMD for this is confusing. In essence they are one and the same thing it seems. (It seems that CPB in the bios is a switch for PB2). Happy to be proven wrong.
Trust me, I am talking to ASUS about this now and trying to get to the bottom of everything. The XFR/Performance Enhancer settings do not seem to be working as those should, but I need to do more work to figure this all out. All the benchmarks I have pulled right now have been full-core loads and I need to go back and do 1 and 2 thread numbers as well.
 
Well, maybe I am not wrong in how I did it after all. Figuring this out now. Some of the nomenclature and descriptions are a bit confusing. Still need to play with this some.

Core Performance Boost is AMDs function for allowing higher frequency when the CPU is not fully loaded, similar to Turbo Mode on Intel platforms, ie., it allows the CPU to boost higher for 1T/2T/xT loads. If it’s disabled, Precision Boost and XFR2 doesn’t work as you noticed and performance suffers.

As for Performance Enhancer, it allows a greater degree of overclocking, both core and memory plus extending XFR if you are not TDP restrained in certain situations. Performance level 3 will make the biggest difference as stated in the guide when overclocking (for cold water, P4 is for the LN2/Phase setups), when core/memory values are stock, as noticed, probably not going to make any difference on the core side, you might see the ability to extend memory further. P1 and P2 adhere to AMD rules, in certain apps you might see a difference in P2 with really good cooling, something like a long encode as you can hold full XFR2 over the course of the run. P3 will help extend an OC and hold it.

Seems that I may not be wrong in how we were doing this......I am going to remove my previous message on errors until I am sure, looks like I might have been a bit premature. The Level 2 (default) Performance Enhancer I was using adheres to AMD specification, so it looks like I did the right thing in my testing. I am going to get on the phone and chat with ASUS tomorrow to make sure.
 
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Yeah I realised that my B350 mobo with the 1600 in only implemented the original PB yet with the 2700X it implemented PB2. To me that indicated that PB is defined in the cpu and only enabled/disabled by the mobo. Even when fully loaded my 2700X is way over base (3.7g) at 4.017 on all cores.
 
Yeah I realised that my B350 mobo with the 1600 in only implemented the original PB yet with the 2700X it implemented PB2. To me that indicated that PB is defined in the cpu and only enabled/disabled by the mobo. Even when fully loaded my 2700X is way over base (3.7g) at 4.017 on all cores.

I'll be going from a 1700 to a 2700x on a B350 .. so good to know
 
maybe to you...

No need to get defensive. It's the truth. Go back and read the press on previous CPUs and then come back and tell me how AMD was a superior offering at ANY point prior to Ryzen/Threadripper/Epyc.
 
Great to hear. You are just being thorough and keeping things honest. Thanks for the update and honestly, for any reviews I use your results as a baseline for everything now. You are one of the few that have been doing this for a long time and I respect that. A 6 minute youtube review just doesn't cut it for me.
I am working on a deeper dive on Precision Boost 2 now. That is when I thought I had found an error on my part, and trust me, I learned a long time ago, if there is an error, I need to be the first one to point it out. I would rather slander myself in today's world. :)
 
Thanks for following up with ASUS, Kyle. I'm glad to see that the original results were legit, and it was definitely PB2 doing the work. I was going to be sad if AMD's positive reviews were simply due to motherboard manufacturers. Glad we're not going back to the days of AMD being nearly irrelevant so soon lol.
 
maybe a side by side that includes playing whatever game *COUGH* Hunt:Showdown .. and.. Streaming whatever game, performance review.
 
You might want to do the same, try

Athlon
Athlon XP
Athlon 64

There was a good 5-6 year stretch, from 1999-2005, where AMD was a minimum tied for performance, and mostly faster, and cheaper to boot.

Depends on how old you are though, if you remember that or not.


No need to get defensive. It's the truth. Go back and read the press on previous CPUs and then come back and tell me how AMD was a superior offering at ANY point prior to Ryzen/Threadripper/Epyc.
 
In all honesty, I would be curious to see a "performance while streaming" type review. There's been a lot of attention drawn to it lately, and not many benchmarks I've seen.
 
In all honesty, I would be curious to see a "performance while streaming" type review. There's been a lot of attention drawn to it lately, and not many benchmarks I've seen.

AdoredTV talked about it. Interesting fact: when gaming and streaming, the 8700k will produce faster GAME frame rates than the 2700X, but the 2700X will drop less frames from the stream.

This produced a profound embarrassment for one particular streamer, who was ranting about how his 8700k gamed faster than a 1950X Threadripper, how he had higher FPS right then and there, and how AMD sucks... while his stream was jerky as hell, totally unwatchable, and dropping a shitload of frames.
 
You might want to do the same, try

Athlon
Athlon XP
Athlon 64

There was a good 5-6 year stretch, from 1999-2005, where AMD was a minimum tied for performance, and mostly faster, and cheaper to boot.

Depends on how old you are though, if you remember that or not.

You forgot the Athlon X2 - they really tore the Pentium-D a new one :)
 
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