AMD Ryzen 7 1800X vs. Intel Core i7-7700K: Next-gen flagship CPU matchup!

Note: This article was first published on Mar 2, 2017.

Well, here’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. AMD’s hotly anticipated Ryzen processors have finally dropped, and gamers and enthusiasts finally have an option other than Intel when it comes to selecting a CPU for their next rig.

Intel has had free reign of the high-end CPU market for too long now, which means they’ve been able to set their prices with impunity and without much worry of being price competitive. If you wanted performance, you just had to go with Intel.

AMD says Ryzen could change all that. For starters, its price is extremely attractive when set beside Intel’s Broadwell-E CPUs. Here’s a quick recap of the models (all are 8-core/16-thread parts) that are launching now and their prices:

• Ryzen 7 1800X (3.60GHz, 20MB L2+L3 cache) – S$818
• Ryzen 7 1700X (3.40GHz, 20MB L2+L3 cache) – S$599
• Ryzen 7 1700 (3.0GHz, 20MB L2+L3 cache) – S$499

On the other hand, the octa-core Intel Core i7-6900K (3.20GHz, 20MB L3 cache) that AMD has so often compared the Ryzen 7 1800X with retails for over S$1,500 here. The US pricing tells a similar story, with the Ryzen chip costing US$499 and the Intel one costing US$1,049 on Newegg. While that sounds great for serious content creators where Ryzen can offer a much more lucrative option, the price point of these chips and the enthusiasts who are interested in them are better pegged to Intel's current Kaby Lake processors. After all, at those prices, Ryzen will be assessed by the mainstream DIY folks and the bulk of them generally use it for some levels of content and office productivity tasks along with a good dose of gaming.

As such, for this review, we decided to pit the flagship Ryzen 7 1800X against Intel’s Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K to see how it stacks up against Intel’s mainstream processors.

We’ve already covered most of the key features of the Ryzen architecture here, so we won’t bore you with the details of the processor again.

The main feature to note is what AMD collectively calls SenseMI, a set of technologies that include Precision Boost and eXtended Frequency Range (XFR). These enable granular 25MHz increments in clock speeds, and allow speeds to boost beyond the official specifications. For the Ryzen 7 1800X, this is an extra 100MHz for a maximum boost speed of 4.1GHz.

Test setup

The configurations of the test setups we used are listed below. We’ve actually used different coolers for the AMD and Intel systems as the Noctua cooler provided by AMD is the only AM4-compatible cooler with us at the moment.

AMD Ryzen rig

• AMD Ryzen 7 1800X (3.60GHz, 20MB L2+L3 cache) with Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4
• Gigabyte Aorus AX370 Gaming 5
• 2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 at 2,667MHz (Auto timings: CAS 16-16-16-36)
• ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming (GeForce Driver Version 378.66)
• Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SATA 6Gbps solid state drive (one single NTFS partition)
• Windows 10 Home (64-bit)

Intel Kaby Lake rig

• Intel Core i7-7700K (4.20GHz, 8MB L3 cache) with Cooler Master MasterAir Maker 8
• ASUS ROG Maximus IX Formula
• 2 x 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws V DDR4-3000 at 2,400MHz (Auto timings: CAS 15-15-15-35)
• ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming (GeForce Driver Version 378.66)
• Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB SATA 6Gbps solid state drive (one single NTFS partition)
• Windows 10 Home (64-bit)

Here's a list of the benchmarks used:

• SYSmark 2014 ver 1.5
• SPECviewperf 12.1
• Cinebench R15
• Handbrake 1.0.2
• 3DMark (2013)
• Ashes of the Singularity
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

All the benchmarks were carried out in Windows High Performance mode (including that from Intel), as AMD tells us that this is needed to enable the full hardware functionality of the Ryzen processor's built-in SenseMI features. Both the voltage regulation and clock speed control feature of Ryzen's Pure Power and Precision Boost technologies can respond to varying workloads quickly (as fast as 1ms).  (Doesn't this sound like Intel's Speed Shift technology that first debuted in Skylake and improved again in Kaby Lake?) Under the default Balanced Performance mode, the OS can request which P-state to use, which could increase response times to as high as 30ms. High Performance mode instead hands over control from the OS to the processor, ensuring more granular control and maximum performance.

Beyond the core comparison between Ryzen and Kaby Lake, we've also provided selective comparisons with the best of Broadwell-E in certain tests as time was limited.

Performance results

SYSmark 2014 ver 1.5

SYSmark is a business productivity benchmark suite that measures the response times of tasks on a PC using real-world applications in the areas of office productivity, media creation, and data and financial analysis. Task response times from simulated user input are used to generate a performance rating that reflects actual user experience, so the faster a PC responds to application workloads, the higher its score will be. The method of measuring response times can take many forms, such as the time it takes for an application to show a pop-up completion message, or how long it takes a progress dialog to disappear and for a user to regain application control.

The Intel Core i7-7700K was overall around 15 per cent faster than the Ryzen 7 1800X. It looks like the lower clock speeds of the Ryzen 7 set it back against the higher clocked Core i7-7700K, even though the latter is just a 4-core/8-thread part. Developers often have to code their applications to explicitly take advantage of multiple cores, and it looks like most productivity apps haven’t progressed much to take advantage of more than four cores. 

Since AMD has been comparing their top Ryzen to Intel's Broadwell-E, we'll also share some numbers based from our recent Intel X99 motherboard shootout. Note that we tested with an Intel Core i7-6950X as opposed to AMD referencing the one rung lower Core i7-6900K. Well, one is a 10-core part running at lower clocks versus the 8-core part running higher clocks; logically speaking they should even out any differences, subject to the bias of each particular test scenario. We decided to showcase scores from an ASUS motherboard, since Kaby Lake test rig was also using the same board brand.

As can be seen from the tabulation, the best of Ryzen isn't quite a match for the best of Intel's mainstream or high-end where everyday-use applications are concerned. Still, it's quite a showing and is definitely the strongest performance AMD has put up in a long while.

SPECviewperf 12.1

SPECviewperf is used to measure the 3D graphics performance of systems in professional applications. Each individual workload, called a viewset, represents graphics and content from an actual real-world application. SPECviewperf actually runs a total of eight different viewsets, but we’ve picked the four which have the greatest performance variation across CPUs display here. 

The 3ds-max viewset comes from traces of the graphics workload generated by 3ds Max 2016, while maya-04 is derived from Autodesk’s Maya 2013 application. The catia-04 viewset involves the numerous rendering modes from the CATIA V6 R2012 application, and includes things like anti-aliasing, depth of field, and ambient occlusion. Finally, the sw-03 viewset comes from SolidWorks 2013 SP1, and involves various rendering modes including environment maps.

The Ryzen 7 didn’t do too well here, coming in behind the i7-7700K in all our workloads. This suggests that modeling and rendering applications like those here still aren’t very effective at making use of multiple cores, so you’re probably better off going for fewer cores and higher clock speeds (the Core i7-7700K can boost to 4.50GHz) if you do a lot of this sort of work.

Now, what if we compare it with the best of what Broadwell-E has to offer? Let's draw out the comparison once more, but this time just focusing on one viewset - maya-04:-

Well, as we deduced above, these rendering applications aren't quite as well threaded as we would like them to be and the Intel's mainstream Core i7-7700K comes out well ahead with its aggressive higher clocks, even though it's just a four-core part natively.

Cinebench R15

Cinebench R15 is a better indicator of the Ryzen’s 7 performance because of its ability to utilize up to 256 threads to evaluate a processor’s performance in a photorealistic 3D rendering. We ran both single-core and multi-core benchmarks to evaluate single-threaded performance and multi-threaded scalability here.

The multi-threaded benchmark is where the Ryzen 7 really shines, and it shot ahead of its Kaby Lake counterparts in the multi-core benchmark with its 8 cores and 16 threads. Here, it was 63 per cent faster than the quad-core Core i7-7700K.

It did lag behind in the single-threaded benchmark, which was expected of its lower base 3.60GHz clock speeds per core. Remember, the Kaby Lake part has a 4.20GHz base clock, and can boost till 4.50GHz, so it naturally came out ahead here.

Once more, let's break out further to see how a Broadwell-E compares in this mix:-

Over here, it comes within 15% range of the Intel Core i7-6950X and it solidifies AMD's stance that the Rzyen was made for well-threaded applications. In AMD's official marketing literature, it scored a tad higher than what we've experienced and is able to dethrone a Core i7-6900K (8C/16T) processor that was claimed to score 'only' 1474 points.

Handbrake 1.0.2

Handbrake is a video transcoder that converts videos into a format for use on PCs and portable electronic devices, and is a good indicator of a processor’s video encoding capabilities. YouTube content creators, Twitch streamers, and other video creators will be most interested in this performance metric.

The Ryzen 7 was very impressive here too, shaving about 35 per cent off the encode time compared to the Core i7-7700K. These additional cores will come in handy especially in CPU-intensive games, and one of AMD's main talking points is the improvement to multi-tasking. Instead of a straight performance bump, you should look forward to less of a performance hit when attempting to do multiple things, such as playing a game and streaming simultaneously.

Power consumption

To test power, we ran the energy-01 viewset in SPECviewperf 12.1 and recorded the peak power consumption. 

Power consumption figures were rather close across the processors, but it's nice to see Ryzen's 8-core chip consuming slightly less power than the quad-core Core i7-7700K. Ryzen's Pure Power and Precision Boost features are capable of modulating frequency, voltage, and temperature on-the-fly, and that appears to have worked out here. For once, it seems like AMD's power consumption figures are about on par with Intel's - but it's subjective when it comes to performance-per-watt comparisons since AMD isn't exactly leading in raw performance although it has put up a good show.

Remember, AMD recommends you to put Windows into High Performance mode in order to get the most out of Ryzen's hardware-based monitoring features.

What's even more interesting is to see how well an even more complex chip like the Core i7-6950X chalk up power consumption figures that are actually no more than the Core i7-7700K.

Gaming benchmarks and overclocking

3DMark (2013)

The synthetic 3DMark benchmark tests graphics and computational performance at different resolutions, starting at 1080p and going all the way up to 4K. A series of two graphics test, one physics test, and then a combined test stresses your hardware in turn to assess its performance. And because of the physics test that keeps the GPU load low while running gameplay physics simulations on the CPU, all three 3DMark Fire Strike tests scores also include an element of CPU performance.

The Core i7-7700K had an 11 per cent lead over the Ryzen 7 in Fire Strike, but the Ryzen 7 actually managed to inch ahead in the more demanding Fire Strike Extreme and Ultra benchmarks. AMD is positioning Ryzen 7 as a strong solution for 4K gaming, and that’s borne out in our 3DMark scores at least.

Now, let's take a peek at how Broadwell-E stacks up with the rest:-

Looks like AMD has made great progress and has caught up with the best of what Intel has to offer! However, as we all know, 3DMark is still a synthetic test at the end of the day and it only presents the possibility of what to expect if games are designed as ideally as the benchmark itself. The real-world games we've lined up below convey a slightly different story though.

Ashes of the Singularity

However, when it comes to running games at 1080p, the Ryzen 7 doesn’t do so well. In DirectX 12 mode at 1080p and High settings, the Core i7-7700K turned out to be a good 50 per cent faster. At Ultra settings, the performance differential was around 14 per cent, suggesting that the Ryzen chip is more competitive with demanding settings or higher resolutions.

It also seemed more capable of taking advantage of the features of DirectX 12, probably due to the new API’s ability to use multiple cores more effectively. At Ultra settings, performance increased by 28 per cent when moving from DirectX 11 to 12. 

That said, we’ve been told that Oxide Games, the developer of Ashes of the Singularity, is working to scale its Nitrous game engine to take better advantage of the full 8-core/16-thread architecture on Ryzen, so you might possibly expect better numbers in the future. As seen in the CPU-focused benchmark below, the higher clock speeds of the Core i7-7700K still helped it beat the Ryzen CPU.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is one of the most demanding games out there right now, and the Ryzen 7 came up close behind the Core i7-7700K. However, oddly enough for us, performance consistently dropped in DirectX 12 mode.

At Ultra settings, all the CPUs actually performed quite close to each other, and it looks like the GPU may actually be the limiting factor here. There was also no discernible improvement in moving from DirectX 11 to 12 at these settings.  

Overclocking

Finally, we overclocked the Ryzen 7 1800X using AMD’s own RyzenMaster utility to see how far it could go. We managed to hit 4.05GHz at 1.4V with our Noctua cooler, which is a bit disappointing given that the XFR boost actually goes up to 4.1GHz. Still, we were working with a relatively modest Noctua air cooler, and it's entirely possible that you may see better results with a more robust cooling solution. 

That said, this translated into an 8 per cent increase in the Cinebench R15 multi-threaded benchmark, and a small 3 per cent increase in the single-threaded scores. In comparison, the Core i-7700K managed a 13 per cent improvement in multi-threaded scores, and a 12 per cent boost in single-threaded numbers.

Overclocking was a lot more impressive on the Kaby Lake chips, and we were able to overclock the Intel processor to over 5.0GHz on air.

So while the Intel chips clock higher and will probably lead in the moderately threaded workloads as seen from some of the earlier non-overclocked results, the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X still has a significant lead in performance. This again suggests that AMD Ryzen excels well in applications that are highly designed to scale with the presence of multiple cores/threads even though it couldn't be clocked as much.

Conclusion

There’s no doubt that the Ryzen 7 1800X is the most exciting processor from AMD in a long while. Intel is clearly already feeling the heat, and it has since slashed the prices across its Kaby Lake and Broadwell-E line-up.

However, the 8-core/16-thread architecture of the Ryzen 7 chips will need applications that are able to fully utilize all the threads. Unfortunately, games generally haven’t been the best at doing this, although that looks set to change with DirectX 12. But if you have been on the fence with your upgrade, and gaming performance is a priority, you may still be better off with a chip like the Core i7-7700K at this point in time, which has fewer cores but higher base and boost clocks. And the results do bore out results in favor of Intel. The lackluster overclocking headroom on the Ryzen 7 1800X also tilts the balance in favor of the Core i7-7700K, which simply appears the more sensible choice for those who don't need crazy multi-core scaling and performance.

This doesn’t mean that the Ryzen 7 chip is bad at games, it's a brand new architecture with a lot of nifty new hardware-specific features that developers will need to optimize for. Once developers begin to catch on and support more cores, AMD's Ryzen architecture will be quite the beast, as evinced by its multi-threaded Cinebench scores and even Handbrake performance. 

How else would the Ryzen 7 entice gamers? Probably with its video encoding capabilities, which means a better experience for avid Twitch streamers. Streaming is very CPU-intensive, and Ryzen's strength in this area will be to allow better multi-tasking performance and less drop off in frame rates while streaming. 

For power users, AMD’s new chip is probably most attractive when compared against the far pricier octa-core Broadwell-E CPUs. However, the cheaper Intel Core i7-7700K, which costs around S$500-plus here, manages to hold its own in gaming performance, content creation and general productivity tasks. So, if you compare Ryzen with Kaby Lake, which then moves the price advantage back to Intel's favor, it’s difficult to recommend Ryzen over it. In fact, the Ryzen 7 stack's price point can be confusing as it has an architecture to compete against Broadwell-E, but priced in-between Kaby Lake and Broadwell-E.  Yet, it's not a complete workstation CPU derivative like the Broadwell-E that has much more native PCIe lanes made available direct from the CPU. So who exactly stands to gain from the Ryzen 7? With its price points and performance, the processor looks like an excellent mega-tasker at a much more palatable price point as opposed to the Intel Broadwell-E processors.

All in, Ryzen 7 solidly puts AMD back into the mindshare of enthusiast PCs. The Zen architecture is definitely much more exciting than Intel's incremental Kaby Lake and proof that AMD is able fight Intel head to head in terms of innovation. However, the new processor clearly needs developer support to properly utilize its multiple cores and threads to really shine. While those may not be too common today, AMD’s debut of its relatively affordable 8-core chips vis-à-vis Intel could provide the much-needed impetus to change that as high-end octa-core parts become more palatable for mainstream consumers. When that happens, AMD will be remembered as the one that kickstarted it all.

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