Torn between the Ryzen 7 1700 and i7 7700K

[taskdask]

Yes, it seems I also have to join the crowd of people having difficulties deciding between the R7 1700 and the i7 7700K. My apologies.

I think (but I'm not entirely certain) that I will spend a good amount of my time gaming. At the moment, I suppose I would be playing games like Civ6, Fallout 4, Overwatch, Total War: Warhammer and The Witcher 3 mostly. But when not gaming, I'd probably be browsing the web, binging YouTube-videos, playing around in Google Sketchup and doing a fair amount of music production. In short, I wouldn't only be gaming on the system. However, when gaming I would definitely appreciate having top notch performances. Same goes for when I'm doing other stuff.

I do understand that the R7 1700 beats the i7 7700K when it comes to multi-threaded performance, and it seems to perform quite well in most games. There is also an argument to be made about "future proofing", namely that one could assume that game developers sooner or later will make games that perform better with more cores and threads available. But, who knows how long it'll take before that is actually commonplace?

The i7 7700K on the other hand is, at the moment, the undeniable winner in terms of raw performance in current gen games. For the average joe like myself who just wants to have an awesome experience when gaming and a good performance when doing other stuff, it seems to be a good purchase still. Does its fewer cores and threads matter at the moment? In gaming, no, but for multi-threaded tasks and compared to the R7, yes. Will it matter for gaming in the future? Most likely, but when?

As a side note, I'm not a big fan of the i7 7700K's temperatures and apparent awfully applied thermal paste. Makes me consider whether I should delid the processor and apply liquid metal before setting up a system with it. But I'm also kind of bummed that there are so few AIO coolers that come with an AM4 backplate as of right now. I guess I'm growing a bit impatient.

Sorry for the long post. I'll be pairing whichever processor I ultimately end up with with either the GTX 1080 or the GTX 1080 Ti.


TL;DR
So, please good people of Tom's Hardware, persuade me to pick whichever processor you think I should go with. The R7 1700 or the i7 7700K?

 

[chemmajorp53]

I wouldn't make this between the 1700 and the 7700k, I'd make it between the 1600 with a b350 board and 3200MHz Samsung B-Die RAM and the 7700k. The 1600 is a better deal than the 1700 if most of what you're doing is gaming and most chips OC to 3.9 just fine on the stock cooler. I'd imagine the 7700k will actually be better in most music production software than a 1600/1700, but it's up to you. Flip a coin, you can probably get the Ryzen setup of CPU/RAM/Mobo for ~$100-120 less.

 

[envy14tpe]

If you get a higher end GPU and want a CPU that is mostly gaming....then 1700 or 7700k are the right CPUs to think about.

Witcher 3 and Total War Hammer are the ones to look at...Overwatch is easy to get massive fps. Here is an article from Gamers Nexus (one of the best tech sources for detailed info and reliability) http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2849-amd-r7-1700x-review-odd-one-out/page-4

In those games 7700k beats the 1700 by a lot. So, for gaming the 7700k is easily the better choice for you.

As for music production, from googling, seems like both CPUs are great but make sure to have 16gb of RAM.

 

[Gigabytes]

If you get a higher end GPU and want a CPU that is mostly gaming....then 1700 or 7700k are the right CPUs to think about.

Witcher 3 and Total War Hammer are the ones to look at...Overwatch is easy to get massive fps. Here is an article from Gamers Nexus (one of the best tech sources for detailed info and reliability) http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2849-amd-r7-1700x-review-odd-one-out/page-4

In those games 7700k beats the 1700 by a lot. So, for gaming the 7700k is easily the better choice for you.

As for music production, from googling, seems like both CPUs are great but make sure to have 16gb of RAM.

Hope you didn't say that with a strait face. Optimizations dude.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-game-optimization-aots-escalation,34021.html

Frankly I cannot think of a reason to buy any Intel consumer cpu.

 

[envy14tpe]

If you get a higher end GPU and want a CPU that is mostly gaming....then 1700 or 7700k are the right CPUs to think about.

Witcher 3 and Total War Hammer are the ones to look at...Overwatch is easy to get massive fps. Here is an article from Gamers Nexus (one of the best tech sources for detailed info and reliability) http://www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/2849-amd-r7-1700x-review-odd-one-out/page-4

In those games 7700k beats the 1700 by a lot. So, for gaming the 7700k is easily the better choice for you.

As for music production, from googling, seems like both CPUs are great but make sure to have 16gb of RAM.

Hope you didn't say that with a strait face. Optimizations dude.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-game-optimization-aots-escalation,34021.html

Frankly I cannot think of a reason to buy any Intel consumer cpu.

I'm happy to see the new Ryzen CPUs but tired of all this waiting/optimization claims. Yes Ryzen does well in Ashes of Singularity, but who plays that game? And what about all the other games that are popular and yet 7700k beats Ryzen?

OP listed some games. Let's see how the CPUs faired:
Total War , Warhammer : Intel wins
7700k = 186fps ave, 127fps 1% Low
1700= 120fps ave, 88fps 1%Low
Civ 6 : Intel wins
7700k gives higher fps, lower frametimes, and lower uneveness.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-1700x-review,4987-4.html
Witcher 3 : Intel wins
Higher fps again and they said, "The 1700 continues to show unimpressive gaming performance to those who are interested in high-refresh rates and frame rates above 60 FPS. Intel’s Core i7-7700K is still king"
http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/amd-ryzen-7-1700-cpu-review/10/
Overwatch : Tie
Both CPUs give over 200fps so it doesn't really matter.
http://www.techspot.com/review/1345-amd-ryzen-7-1800x-1700x/page4.html

So, again, in terms of gaming the 7700k is the better buy for the games OP plays.

 

[Spring1898]

Under this circumstance, since you are not doing video encoding/editing, you will probably be better served by the 7700k
I am not familiar with music editing requirements (my friend uses an Ivy Bridge quad core based system for his band), but I would imagine given the smaller file sizes and data streams the advantages that the additional cores of the 1700 has would be less significant than what one would see in video editing. But perhaps others can clarify.


Regardless the 7700k is no slouch when it comes to editing and tasks, and since your main interest for absolute gaming performance that lends itself to the 7700k.

As far as day-to-day useability for non-intensive activities, you are unlikely to see a difference between the processors (or even a 4 core i5)


As already mentioned, in the games you play the 7700k will enable you to reach higher frame rates, so long as the GPU you pair it with suffices, although it is unlikely the 1700 will give you unsatisfactory performance.
Therefore, if you want the best gaming experience the 7700k is your choice.
If you care more about efficiency in Music production, then perhaps the 1700 is better.
What matters more to you?


As far as future ability, kaby lake (when delidded and proper TIM applied) is a fantastic overclocking chip. you will likely be able to pull around 5ghz on a properly tuned and cooled chip. I suspect that will be at least as powerful as a stock Coffee Lake chip, meaning there won't be a big incentive to upgrade next rotation.

What we know about Coffee lake (the next gen Intel i-series line up to "begin" release later this year) they will be offering 6 core i5's and i7's, which would undoubtedly be superior in virtually every aspect to the 7700k "IF" they have the same clock speeds and can overclock as well. Traditionally, the X-platform Intel chips have lower clocks and decreased overclockability relative to their processors with 4 cores. It remains to be seen if that will be the case on these consumer 6 cores, but anything else about Zen optimization, Zen2, Coffee lake, is only speculation and too far out to be concerned with now.

But I will say, that by the time optimization, either for Zen or for applications with multithreaded support, becomes the defining factor, we will already be past the current generation of CPU's. Meaning, buy based on what is available now.