[SOLVED] Ryzen 7 2700 Overclocked or 2700X?

hftvhftv

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I'll be needing an entire platform upgrade shortly, as my FX 8350 is getting a bit weak for newer games. I'd like to know if it's worth spending the extra money for a Ryzen 7 2700X vs the non X variant. I plan on overclocking with my Swiftech H240X equipped with Noctua industrialPPC 3000RPM fans. My previous results overclocking the 8350 were 4.7GHz at 1.51V on an Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0.
 

TJ Hooker

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Yeah, unfortunately I've never seen much evidence for any meaningful binning between X and non-X models. I mean, if you wanted to get the absolute max overclock you may be better off with X CPU, but we're talking 100 MHz (maybe 200 MHz) at most, and that's if you get lucky.
 
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hftvhftv

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Yeah, unfortunately I've never seen much evidence for any meaningful binning between X and non-X models. I mean, if you wanted to get the absolute max overclock you may be better off with X CPU, but we're talking 100 MHz (maybe 200 MHz) at most, and that's if you get lucky.
Good to know, the savings would be worth the maybe 200MHz less clock speeds.
 
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DMAN999

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I agree with TJ.
I went with a 2600 instead of a 2600x myself. I run mine at 3.95 GHz and it benches as well as (and in many cases better than) stock 2600x rigs.
I did OC it to 4 and 4.075 GHz but the difference in performance between them was minimal so I went with the lower OC for 24/7 use.
 
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If you don't want the hassle of trying to overclock, go with the X model. If you like a project to tinker on and constantly be fiddling with, go with the non-X and overclock it. Having both a 2700X and 1700 Ryzen CPU in front of me daily, the X model is easily is the simpler to use device where best performance is concerned. It boosts to 4.35 on air cooling with default settings, but the all core boost leaves a bit to be desired at around ~4. All of my attempts to overclock the 2700X for all-core performance were met with a healthy dose of disappointment as it's already tuned for it's best performance to power / heat generation. There's little practical gain in every day tasks trying to overclock the Ryzen+ CPU unless you simply want to turn out better benchmark numbers while throwing power consumption to the dogs.

First gen Ryzen however, with it's older boost algorithm, lets you get a lot more work done when you boost the all core speeds within their stable range, provided you're at least in the ball-park of what the single core boost states were.
 

hftvhftv

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If you don't want the hassle of trying to overclock, go with the X model. If you like a project to tinker on and constantly be fiddling with, go with the non-X and overclock it. Having both a 2700X and 1700 Ryzen CPU in front of me daily, the X model is easily is the simpler to use device where best performance is concerned. It boosts to 4.35 on air cooling with default settings, but the all core boost leaves a bit to be desired at around ~4. All of my attempts to overclock the 2700X for all-core performance were met with a healthy dose of disappointment as it's already tuned for it's best performance to power / heat generation. There's little practical gain in every day tasks trying to overclock the Ryzen+ CPU unless you simply want to turn out better benchmark numbers while throwing power consumption to the dogs.

First gen Ryzen however, with it's older boost algorithm, lets you get a lot more work done when you boost the all core speeds within their stable range, provided you're at least in the ball-park of what the single core boost states were.
It's unfortunate Ryzen doesn't overclock as well as the FX series did, it was one of the few benefits Bulldozer/Vishera had.
 
I'm not sure I feel the same way. I will say, I enjoyed the heck out of tinkering on my FX 8370 CPU, but while the FX line of CPUs, also something I have in front of me regularly, clocked well, it performed very badly per clock cycle. Even Ryzen performs poorly for what it's capable of, because of a weak front end, the back end is consistently starved for work to be retired. So, the easiest low hanging fruit for AMD is actually just pairing the back end with a better front end. It would easily clobber Intel's Skylake architecture at that point, which all their current CPUs are based on.

I've had a high clocked FX system, but unfortunately big frequencies don't match actual work being done, no matter how fun it is to turn the boost clocks way up.

On the plus side, Ryzen 2 is supposed to boost better than Ryzen+, along with having better IPC, but of course that's only hearsay and irrelevant until purchaseable parts are actually shipping.

All that aside, there is a certain quality of experience one gets from having 8+ threads at their disposal on a Windows platform. Even if the threads are weak as can be, the quality of the experience is something that is better experienced than described. How does one describe the feeling of a V8 motor to a person that has only ever known the experience of driving a highly rated 4 banger? The AMD FX CPUs may have been bad at overall work being done, but you still got to enjoy some buttered leather moments while waiting to get from point A to B.
 

spencer.cleaves2

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Just to give my input: I over-clocked my 2700 to 4.0GHz on all 8 cores with air cooling (Cryorig H5 Ultimate) and had no thermal issues or stability issues. I could probably push a bit more out of it, but it has been very stable and I get 144FPS in all the games I play so I didn't bother.
 
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hftvhftv

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I'm not sure I feel the same way. I will say, I enjoyed the heck out of tinkering on my FX 8370 CPU, but while the FX line of CPUs, also something I have in front of me regularly, clocked well, it performed very badly per clock cycle. Even Ryzen performs poorly for what it's capable of, because of a weak front end, the back end is consistently starved for work to be retired. So, the easiest low hanging fruit for AMD is actually just pairing the back end with a better front end. It would easily clobber Intel's Skylake architecture at that point, which all their current CPUs are based on.

I've had a high clocked FX system, but unfortunately big frequencies don't match actual work being done, no matter how fun it is to turn the boost clocks way up.

On the plus side, Ryzen 2 is supposed to boost better than Ryzen+, along with having better IPC, but of course that's only hearsay and irrelevant until purchaseable parts are actually shipping.

All that aside, there is a certain quality of experience one gets from having 8+ threads at their disposal on a Windows platform. Even if the threads are weak as can be, the quality of the experience is something that is better experienced than described. How does one describe the feeling of a V8 motor to a person that has only ever known the experience of driving a highly rated 4 banger? The AMD FX CPUs may have been bad at overall work being done, but you still got to enjoy some buttered leather moments while waiting to get from point A to B.
I actually was deceived by AMD marketing back when I first built my first PC, I thought the "8 core" processor was so much better than an i7 3770K at the time, even though it was a faster CPU.