1700, 2700, 2700X?

mda

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Hello all,

I can't wait 3-4 months for 3rd Gen Ryzen at this point for my dev server.

I'm picking between the following CPUs:

1700 - 160$
2700 - 240$
2700X - 320$
-- all new. Prices are local prices.

Will be paired with 32 or 64GB of DDR4 3200 Corsair LPX CAS 16s.

Primary use cases:
Will be an ESXi server at night
Will be a 1080p gaming machine during the weekends, with either the 970 or 780 in my PC.

I'm thinking of EITHER the 1700 or the 2700X, though the 2700 has its appeal as well as a happy middle ground.

Motherboard will be a Crosshair 7 I'm picking up from a forum member.

Any opinions which I should go for?

My current thoughts:
1700 - sheer price
2700 - utilize the better mem controller for marginal price increase
2700X - I keep my machines till they die or repurpose them anyway, so may as well buy this. However, I'm also picking up a Gen3 Ryzen since either the CPU or the MB on my i5 box is starting to flake. I may not need the additional power of the 2700X over the 1700/2700

Thanks!
 
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Just got a 2700X myself, and TridentZ 4x16GB 3200 CL14 ram. Btw I could only get 64GB to run less than 3066 so I used 2933 as a sane/reliable choice.
 
One additional pro for the 2nd gen is the improved IMC I guess. Ninja edited that for something in favor of the 2700/X.
 
If you have a microcenter the r5 1600 is $80... but my thoughts are if you are looking for zen 2, get the 1700. You are paying 2x $ for maybe 15 /20% for the 2700x.

What kind of esxi vms are you planning on running?

Generally it's either an out of cores or memory that causes issues, where the 3xxx in theory can go up to 16 like threadripper.
 
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If you have a microcenter the r5 1600 is $80... but my thoughts are if you are looking for zen 2, get the 1700. You are paying 2x $ for maybe 15 /20% for the 2700x.

What kind of esxi vms are you planning on running?

Don't live in the US, unfortunately.

I plan to simulate what we have at work since the dumb dev servers are so slow... (Kentsfield era Xeons)

At work we have:
4c/4t i5 haswell - mySQL server
6c/12t xeon sandy bridge - oracle DB with EBS
+ a bunch of other random tests

I think all the CPUs on this list can handle that, since the 6c/12t sandy bridge era xeon is clocked pretty low anyway.

I do plan to get Zen2 but for my personal non dev server machine.
 
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I was meaning to say save money now and use savings for future drop in upgrade. The early info is saying AMD might have closed the single core ipc gap with Intel. I Personally went from haswell 4c8t xeon to a 1700x for a plex server/content creation workstation. Core for core pretty much equal just double the capacity. This is assuming you don't hit the ccx bottlenecks where ddr4 3200 should help.

For sql testing you should at least be on par with the old hardware of 10c16t with the 8c16t gen1 chip. If you could pull off a nvme ssd to hold your dbs you might even be able to outpace an older SAN disk array setup.

One issue that might be an issue that is probably already solved is getting GPU passthrough working in the am4 platform so you can game with full gpu.
 
I was meaning to say save money now and use savings for future drop in upgrade. The early info is saying AMD might have closed the single core ipc gap with Intel. I Personally went from haswell 4c8t xeon to a 1700x for a plex server/content creation workstation. Core for core pretty much equal just double the capacity. This is assuming you don't hit the ccx bottlenecks where ddr4 3200 should help.

For sql testing you should at least be on par with the old hardware of 10c16t with the 8c16t gen1 chip. If you could pull off a nvme ssd to hold your dbs you might even be able to outpace an older SAN disk array setup.

One issue that might be an issue that is probably already solved is getting GPU passthrough working in the am4 platform so you can game with full gpu.

Thanks. For SQL Testing -- neither of the cores are always fully loaded (thread-wise), so I think 8c/16t should be enough.

I have a SATA SSD specifically for that purpose so it should not be a problem.

I plan to dual boot windows and ESXi (ESXi on a USB stick) too to get around the passthrough problem...
 
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I would probably go with the 1700 as any other option is minimum 50% more money. No other option is 50% faster though. With the CH7 you can always drop in a Zen 2 chip if you need more speed or upgrade to a 2XXX series part after prices drop.

The only caveat is the memory. I definitely had better luck with the 2nd gen Ryzen compared to 1st gen, but I'm not sure if it's because of the board or the CPU. I had the best luck with the CH7, and when I used the same CPU in a different, cheaper board, my memory compatibility wasn't as good. But since you're using the CH7, I'd think you would be fine.
 
Brand new 1700 is $147 on Ebay… I have a 1700 @ 3.9ghz with the memory at 3000mhz.. no complaints here. Came from a Vanilla 2700.
 
I own but also vote for the 2700x. Especially if you used it for any type of production. Increased productivity should lead to increased profit.
 
Since this is used for production are you going overclock at all or no? If you are running more than 2 ram modules I'd definitely recommend the 2700 or 2700x for the better IMC, but if its just 2 ram modules then 1700 should be more than enough as the price increase ain't worth it.
 
1700 and moderate OC

The difference between 1700 and 2700 was minimal. Not worth the price increase in my opinion. Most memory issues were fixed on first gen Ryzen by firmware updates.
 
If overclocking, get the 1700. If not, get the 2700x.

I actually have all 3, the 1700 can do 3.9 all core, the 2700 4.0 all core and the 2700X does 4.05 all core using pbo and boosts to 4.35 single core. So overall the 2700x is fastest, and by a very large amount If not overclocking, but a fairly small amount if overclocking.

There are other considerations, at 3.8 the 1700 hit 85C on the stock cooler so going over that required better cooling, you might get a better or worse chip etc. but overall it's amazing for the price.
 
I agree 100% with what bobzdar said. I have a 1700 and a 2700x. If you are not going to overclock the chip (and you might not since you plan to do legit server duties with it) go 2700x. It dynamically overclocks itself without any of the tuning a manual OC requires. It is currently the ultimate AMD chip for "drop in and forget about it."

If you don't mind the legwork to OC, then the 1700 is an incredible value. I got mine at launch and I have not even once regretted the purchase. It is a bit anemic at stock speeds, though.
 
The most interesting Ryzen CPU as of today, on Amazon France, seems to be the 1700x, if you want the stable system without overclock, maybe with ECC RAM, and eventually dual SSD on raid 1 (different brands for safety) and would be great, rock stable, even on Windows 7. The 1700x is very close to the 1800x but costs about 20 euros more that the 1700 (around 20 dollars) and is clocking more than 10% higher. On a B350 board (the less expensive as of yet) it will make a great system for its value. Future 12 core Ryzen 3700 will be probably significantly more expensive and may not be compatible with Windows 7 as it looks like on the recent BIOS upgrades adapting Zen 2.
 
Nasty deals. Makes everything more difficult. Will need to confer with my wallet :|
 
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