AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Review

The Ryzen 7 1700X is one of AMD's high-end Desktop processors. It was released in 2017 with 8 cores and 16 threads. With base clock at 3.4GHz, max speed at 3.8GHz, and a 95W power rating. The Ryzen 7 1700X is based on the Summit Ridge 14nm family and is part of the Ryzen 7 series.

The AMD Ryzen 7 1700X marks yet another blast from Team AMD, ramping up the intensity of the AMD vs Intel processor war. Still, though, there’s more than just core counts when it comes to a mainstream processor, as single-core performance needs to be on point, especially if you’re hoping to play the best PC games.

Now, we're asking ourselves whether or not the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X finally dethrones the Core i7-7700K as the de facto ruler of the mainstream processors. Ultimately, it depends: the Ryzen 7 1700X doesn't reach the same single-core performance as Intel, but we're starting to see more games adopt multi-threaded CPUs, so that doesn't matter as much.

Over the last couple years, AMD has been reaching for dominance in the desktop CPU world, and with the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X, it's finally there.

AMD's Zen series has landed, upping the ante with Intel in its high-stakes game for desktop PC market dominance with a well-rounded lineup of new chips that push mainstream platforms to higher core counts and more raw compute than we've ever seen. As a result, Intel's commanding presence in the enthusiast space is threatened in a way we haven't seen in over a decade.

As we've seen, gaming remains an advantage for Intel, so if squeezing out every last frame is all you care about, Intel's processors are a good choice. Much of that performance advantage will be less noticeable when gaming at higher resolutions, or if you pair the processors with a lesser graphics card.

But, like most humans, if you do things other than gaming, the Ryzen 7 1700X offers a better mixture of performance in single- and multi-threaded applications. The Ryzen 7 1700X offers twice the threads of the price-comparable Core i7-7700K, and it wields them to great effect in threaded workloads. As such, rendering and encoding remain a strong suit of the Ryzen 7 chips, and AMD's improvements to AVX throughput have yielded impressive results.

What this all means is that the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X is an absolute beast when it comes to multi-threaded workloads, especially at this price point. If you're counting on doing some video editing or compiling one hell of an Excel spreadsheet, you're going to see firsthand a performance boost with the Ryzen 7 1700X.

If you're mostly playing games on your PC, you will be happy buying either processor. Both proved to be solid options and are evenly matched with a slight advantage to the Intel chip if you don't tune up the Core i7 processor. The base performance we showed for the Ryzen 7 1700X can be achieved with $90 memory, while the Core i7-7700K will require $110 - $120 memory in order to enable the frame rates shown here. It’s not a big cost difference and right now with anything less than an RTX 2070 or Vega 64 you’ll more than likely become GPU limited.

Today we’ll be taking a closer look at the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X 8-core desktop processor that was released in Mar 2017. AMD offers the Ryzen 7 1700X without integrated graphics. It runs $399 shipped and is ideal for those that plan on using it a system with a dedicated graphics card.

One of the nice things about the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X processors is that the retail boxed models come with a CPU cooler. So, you can pick something like the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X up for $399 and don’t need to spend any extra money on CPU cooling.

The AMD Ryzen 7 1700X retail boxed processor comes with the traditional ‘pancake’ CPU cooler. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done on this processor which is rated at 95W TDP. You do not need to have an aftermarket cooling solution unless you want to.

The AMD Ryzen 7 1700X seems to be a decent performing chip that is readily available for $399 at your favorite retailer. The main competition for this processor is the Core i7-7700K 4-Core unlocked desktop processor with Intel HD Graphics 630 graphics ($339 shipped).

Ryzen 7 hasn’t had the smoothest entrance into the computing world with lackluster gaming and some CPU temperatures high enough to raise concerns. But after a month of optimizations plus new drivers and BIOS updates, Ryzen 7 seems to have bypassed those same growing pains.

Now the biggest question is can AMD’s Ryzen 7 processor play games? The answer is simply yes as it got a respectable gaming score of 82% in our benchmarks.

Regardless of those external factors, the Ryzen 7 1700X proves it has the chops to be your main gaming system and a just as effective media creation platform – two things that are becoming intrinsically connected in this age of live-streaming, eSports and uploading gameplay videos.

The Ryzen 7 1700X clocks up to 3.8Ghz just as it promises on the box, and with AMD’s software you can take one of the cores all the way up to 3.9GHz. However, don’t expect to get much beyond that without seriously upgrading your cooling solution and manually tweaking voltages behind the operating system level.

That said, to squeeze out all the potential of this surprisingly potent high-end chip, you’ll want (and need) to splurge on an enthusiast-grade X370, X470, X570 motherboard.

Fresh from a successful roll-out of mainstream Ryzen 7 CPUs, AMD's attack on Intel now extends down into the high-end with its Ryzen 7 1700X processors, which the company is making available as of Mar 2017.

Right out of the gate, Ryzen 7 should sell for $399, going up against Intel's almost-$339 Core i7-7700K. In threaded workloads, the 8-core Ryzen 7 should enjoy an advantage against Intel's 4-core models. Of course, AMD doesn't give you integrated graphics like Intel does, but for enthusiasts building cheap gaming PCs, it isn't much of a draw anyway.

Like all other Summit Ridge chips, the Ryzen 7-series CPUs drop into any Socket AM4 motherboard. But most will find a home on boards equipped with the A320 chipset, which has provisions for overclocking and offers plenty of connectivity options. Unlike Intel, AMD plans to utilize its current socket until 2023, so upgrading to future models shouldn't require a new motherboard.