AMD Ryzen 7 1800X CPU Review

[ubercake]

...

So there's my "review of the review". I don't speak as an AMD fanboy because I'm not, I'm driven by a hate for the corporate practices of Intel and NVidia, not a love for AMD. I speak as a long-time and well-decorated expert of Tom's Hardware who cannot believe what has happened to this site that was once the best in the world, bar none, for ethical reviews and a wonderful lack of bias. I love this site, I always have and it breaks my heart to see so irresponsible a review like this. I guess Intel's hands reach even into the places that I thought were clean.

You bring up some good points; the link to the video and this additional information. This makes me even more likely to pick up a 1700x if for nothing else but the science of it. But note that Tom's always puts out good reviews and I've never seen them not back up their info. If there are any corrections to be made to the benchmarks in the future, I'm sure they'll make them. The only reason most of us have been Intel biased for the past few years is AMD has not given us any reason not to be.

But I am curious about the Nvidia exposé? Are you talking about the 1/2GB VRAM issue?

I know about the fairly recent AMD Frametime/FRAPS exposé? Generations of video cards were affected by this and everyone at AMD seemed to keep responding "nothing to see here" until the FCAT test exposed them. I had my own personal experiences with AMD cards and these frametime issues. I tried to bring them up in the AMD forums (prior to the exposé) and was first told I was a troll and then eventually banned from their support forum for continuing to tell people I wasn't making the sh-t up.

AMD has had their share of issues even as an underdog, although I am happy to see them back in competition with Intel.

Intel has to know where things are headed. I've seen the price of the i7-7700k drop $50 at my local micro center in the past couple of weeks. It seems like all AMD has to do is release a higher-clocked 4- or 6-core and they will be totally competitive with the 7700K from a gaming standpoint. We all know it's coming...

 

[FormatC]

I also tested this week a Ryzen 7 1700X and 1700. All three CPUs may run stable at 3.8 Ghz, overclocked without any special oc-knowledge. This can be done by everone.

The Ryzen 7 1700 is 200(!) Euro cheaper than the Ryzen 7 1800X but at the end oc'ed as fast as the biggest model with oc. Together with a 100-Euro-mainboard and B350 chipset you get for 450 Euro a complete setup with a true and easy to overclock eight-core CPU. This is, what I missed so long: a payable solution with 16 Threads for medium money.

And to be honest:
This Ryzen 7 for 350 Euro is also a good gaming CPU. Not totally High-End (at the moment), but acceptable. What's really interesting for me is the good mix for PCs, used for gaming AND other productive things. This is atm absolutely unbeatable and I will give the Ryzen 7 1700 a recommended award in my German follow-up. To be honest: the "small" 1700 is overclocked the better 1800X. Well done, AMD because in the real life I'm a dirty miser 😀

 

[Memhorder]

Great review Paul and Igor. I'm sorry you catch as much flak as you do for not producing results people would like to see. All I can say is that your benches roughly line up with all the other reviews so I'm convinced you weren't Strong Armed by Intel or any other conspiracy theory.

I know this benching will be touched on again so I have an interesting Idea which may appeal to the most hardcore gamer The Streamer. I'm curious as to what will happen to the game benches if you were to run them while streaming and/or what ever other programmes that you need for a Stream. This was one of the selling points in the AMD demo. I don't see many reviewers exploring multiple processes like that other than Multi thread benches which AMD has an edge.

Also if it's possible it would be great to see a snapshot of HWMonitor or what ever program that monitor CPU usage on each core.

Thanks Again

 

[palladin9479]

Just to put this into perspective for some people, these are the high end chips designed to compete with Intel's mega priced products. The real "gaming" chips are yet to be released and here is an idea of what their going to cost.

http://wccftech.com/amd-ryzen-5-1500x-4core-8thread-cpu-leaked/

5 series will be 1500 / 1600 and include both the four and six core varieties. The four core one seems very interesting as it'll be under $200 USD and 3.5Ghz base speed while being overclockable. Now considering the "gaming" benchmarks of the eight core Ryzen likely wasn't using more then two or three cores, we should get similar "gaming" performance but at a much lower price point.

 

[InvalidError]

I know this benching will be touched on again so I have an interesting Idea which may appeal to the most hardcore gamer The Streamer. I'm curious as to what will happen to the game benches if you were to run them while streaming and/or what ever other programmes that you need for a Stream.

I agree that this would be one interesting test scenario. Run the game as normal but on top of that, add a webcam, feed the game video and webcam video to OBS in the common picture-in-picture streamer setup, then transcode the resulting video to 1080p/h264 as most live-streaming services don't go beyond that at the moment.

 

[Onus]

...To be honest: the "small" 1700 is overclocked the better 1800X. Well done, AMD because in the real life I'm a dirty miser 😀

Correction: that's "filthy miser;" 😀 keeping in mind that it takes one to know one. This will likely be my upgrade CPU as well. Soon... I think I should wait for the next iteration of AM4 boards and see what may have been tweaked or fixed.

 

[Memhorder]

Eat up some of them resources

 

[randomizer]

I also tested this week a Ryzen 7 1700X and 1700. All three CPUs may run stable at 3.8 Ghz, overclocked without any special oc-knowledge. This can be done by everone.

The Ryzen 7 1700 is 200(!) Euro cheaper than the Ryzen 7 1800X but at the end oc'ed as fast as the biggest model with oc. Together with a 100-Euro-mainboard and B350 chipset you get for 450 Euro a complete setup with a true and easy to overclock eight-core CPU. This is, what I missed so long: a payable solution with 16 Threads for medium money.

And to be honest:
This Ryzen 7 for 350 Euro is also a good gaming CPU. Not totally High-End (at the moment), but acceptable. What's really interesting for me is the good mix for PCs, used for gaming AND other productive things. This is atm absolutely unbeatable and I will give the Ryzen 7 1700 a recommended award in my German follow-up. To be honest: the "small" 1700 is overclocked the better 1800X. Well done, AMD because in the real life I'm a dirty miser 😀

It seems like the 1700X doesn't need to exist. The only gap it fills is a price gap.

 

[InvalidError]

It seems like the 1700X doesn't need to exist. The only gap it fills is a price gap.

Since there is next to no benefit to the 1800X over the 1700 manually OC'd, I agree that it makes the 1700X seem redundant. Scrap the 1700X and bring the 1800X down to its price point. That way, you are paying ~$80 for what is basically a guaranteed OC for the 1700.

 

[elbert]

How about some benchmarks of G.Skills flare X. Got my eye on the 3200 set.
https://www.gskill.com/en/press/view/g-skill-announces-flare-x-series-and-fortis-series-ddr4-memory-for-amd-ryzen

 

[FormatC]

Haha, memory....

Ryzen needs fast memory, that's a fact. But a productive system also needs stable memory, that's a basic. I was able to run two (!) modules rockstable at 3000, but only with one of my seven memory kits here (Corsair, Crucial and others failed). Let me check, if the G.Skill is running fast, I'm waiting for it. Or let's see, if some BIOS updates can help.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Haha, memory....

Ryzen needs fast memory, that's a fact. But a productive system also needs stable memory, that's a basic. I was able to run two (!) modules rockstable at 3000, but only with one of my seven memory kits here (Corsair, Crucial and others failed). Let me check, if the G.Skill is running fast, I'm waiting for it. Or let's see, if some BIOS updates can help.

So you're saying this weekend when I likely attempt to put my 1800X/Crosshair VI/Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4 3200 memory together it likely won't be particularly stable....

 

[InvalidError]

So you're saying this weekend when I likely attempt to put my 1800X/Crosshair VI/Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4 3200 memory together it likely won't be particularly stable....

It'll be stable, but at a lower clock frequency. Didn't AMD itself only guarantees up to 2667MT/s and even that came with some strings attached.

Some of that may be fixable by tuning DRAM bus termination parameters on the CPU and DIMMs with a BIOS update but that may not be sufficient to achieve broad memory compatibility and high speeds if some of the parameters that need tweaking aren't software-programmable.

 

[FormatC]

I think, 3000 will be run.

 

[FinneousPJ]

Will you be revising this article after the Win10 scheduler bug has been fixed?

Will you be reviewing the other R7 CPUs as well?

 

[Rogue Leader]

So you're saying this weekend when I likely attempt to put my 1800X/Crosshair VI/Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4 3200 memory together it likely won't be particularly stable....

It'll be stable, but at a lower clock frequency. Didn't AMD itself only guarantees up to 2667MT/s and even that came with some strings attached.

Some of that may be fixable by tuning DRAM bus termination parameters on the CPU and DIMMs with a BIOS update but that may not be sufficient to achieve broad memory compatibility and high speeds if some of the parameters that need tweaking aren't software-programmable.

I think, 3000 will be run.

Ok I will try that. The memory I bought, the 3000 version is the exact same timings as the Corsair Dominator thats "AMD certified" and on the QVL, as is the 3000 non LED Corsair Vengeance which is also on the QVL. So if instead of running XMP if I manually set it to the timings of the 3000 version I'd assume that will work. Then I can always test out XMP and see if it crashes or not. Maybe I'll get lucky.

 

[FormatC]

Will you be revising this article after the Win10 scheduler bug has been fixed?
Will you be reviewing the other R7 CPUs as well?

Yes, we will do this:

I've tested this 1700 @3.8 Ghz on a cheap mainbaord and it works awesome. The price for this combo is nice: only 440 Euro (19% VAT incl.). I also tested all Workstation and HPC benchmarks again - new BIOS, another memory kit (same vendor) with more time to proof each loop. At the end this are very similar results with a few more plausible values in two, three benchmarks.

Cheap, but sexy:

 

[FinneousPJ]

Will you be revising this article after the Win10 scheduler bug has been fixed?
Will you be reviewing the other R7 CPUs as well?

Yes, we will do this:

I've tested this 1700 @3.8 Ghz on a cheap mainbaord and it works awesome. The price for this combo is nice: only 440 Euro (19% VAT incl.). I also tested all Workstation and HPC benchmarks again - new BIOS, another memory kit (same vendor) with more time to proof each loop. At the end this are very similar results with a few more plausible values in two, three benchmarks.

Cheap, but sexy:

Very nice, can't wait. Any idea on the scheduler bug, is it official?

 

[madmatt30]

^ exactly the setup I'm still considering (apart from the full atx 350 prime)

Massive tempted but the fact is I still have a couple of skylake i5's here bnib & was going to keep one for myself.

If I sell one for £120ish it'll cost me £160-180 extra to do a 1700 build & im still debating whether I actually need the horsepower.

 

[quilciri]

There appears to be at least one downside to an overclocked 1700 vs. a 17/1800X...a large power draw difference under load.

https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Overclocking-AMD-Ryzen-7-1700-Real-Winner

 

[InvalidError]

There appears to be at least one downside to an overclocked 1700 vs. a 17/1800X...a large power draw difference under load.

If you overclock the R7-1700X/1800X to 4GHz, they end up using quite a bit more power as well since you lose some power management features. That gets much worse if core voltage gets nudged up in the process, be it intentionally or automatic.

On the "plus" side, most people who overclock have little to no care for power draw.

 

[anbello262]

Intel's chips are tested using Windows' Balanced profile, representing the way most of us configure our desktops.

I always use High Performance mode in desktops, and I would have guessed that most people buying such a powerful CPU would use high performance too. I thought it was only natural. I guess I was wrong.

I only understand Balanced or Power Saving if you're using a battery powered system, like a laptop.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Intel's chips are tested using Windows' Balanced profile, representing the way most of us configure our desktops.

I always use High Performance mode in desktops, and I would have guessed that most people buying such a powerful CPU would use high performance too. I thought it was only natural. I guess I was wrong.

I only understand Balanced or Power Saving if you're using a battery powered system, like a laptop.

Because using High Performance provides no noticeable benefits while causing your CPU to needlessly run at full voltage/frequency? Windows is pretty good at ramping up the CPU as needed (except for Ryzen apparently); unless you're trying to eke out a few extra points in a benchmark I don't see why you'd run High Performance.

 

[InvalidError]

I only understand Balanced or Power Saving if you're using a battery powered system, like a laptop.

All that balanced does when it works correctly is allow the platform's power-saving features to kick in while performance is not needed. When under heavy load and AC power, balanced will set all the parameters it controls to maximum and you should get practically the same performance as performance mode as long as load remains high enough for power management to hold it there.

 

[randomizer]

If Balanced creates a measurable performance difference at all it would probably only be for heavy, bursty loads.