Flagship AMD gaming CPU?

[fordongreeman]

What is AMD's flagship gaming CPU?

 

[Gam3r01]

They dont really have a flagship gaming CPU, something from the newer R5 and R7 lines should be plenty however.

 

[dragonstar914]

The 2700x has the highest rated clock speed and would give you the best performance in games but the 2700, 2600x, and 2600 are good too and could potentially reach the same speeds if you get a good overclocking chip. The 2700x is binned for better speed though.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Technically the Flagship Ryzen CPU is the 1950X. Mainstream would be the 2700X and 2600X.

I kinda don't like flagships, you never know what one officially is and it seems to just be a term tossed around that gives a couple of CPUs extra glory for no big reason.

 

[geofelt]

The ryzen 2700X is the best binned chip which can be overclocked to the 4.2-4.4 range.
It sports 16 threads but most games will not effectively use more than 4 of them.

Today, the best gaming cpu is the I7-8700k with 12 threads and an overclock in the 5.0 range.
Most games depend on the performance of the single master thread.
Partly, the reason is that it is simpler to code a single threaded game.
More technically, look at Amdahl's law to see why many threads give diminishing returns:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

Soon, if rumors are true, there will be a I9-9900K with 16 threads along with a I7-9700K and i5-9600k that are supposed to be better overclockers.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Then we have the i7 9700K with 8 cores 8 threads. LOL

 

[drea.drechsler]

What is AMD's flagship gaming CPU?

Define 'flagship', in this context.

You could say it's the 2700x since that is 'top of line' for general purpose productivity, or 1950x since that's top of the line for workstation. But you could also say 2500x since all you really need is 4 cores for gaming and you did put that 'for gaming' bit in there!

If by 'flagship' is meant 'highest performing' it becomes highly relative, and even speculative since since all AMD processors are overclock ready. Just consider that gaming only needs 4 cores at most so a 4 core overclocked to the nines could be just as high performing in games as the best 8 core, or maybe super good 8 core with 4 cores disabled could overclock even more? And then what about 'on nitrogen'. Confusing in the least!

So it all comes down to opinion and I go for 2500X since you did say 'for gaming'. For gaming BOTH the 1950x and 2700x are pure overkill so they're reserved for higher flagship duties than simple gaming.