AMD Ryzen 7 1700X CPU Review

1. Even Better Value: Ryzen 7 1700X2. Overclocking the Ryzen 7 1700X3. Testing Methodology4. CPU Tests 1: Cinebench, Handbrake, x265 Encoding5. CPU Tests 2: 7-Zip, Kraken, WPrime6. CPU & Memory Tests: SiSoft Sandra7. Gaming Tests 1: FutureMark8. Gaming Tests 2: GTA V, Metro LL, Witcher 3 (DX11)9. Gaming Tests 3: Ashes, GoW4, ROTTR, Total War (DX12)10. 4K Gaming Tests: GoW4, GTA V, Witcher 311. Technical: Power Consumption & Temperatures12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

The market for people buying an expensive CPU and using it for gaming at 1080p is likely to be very slim. What 1080p does is give a good indication of the CPU's raw gaming performance as GPU power is sufficient to push frame rates to a level where the CPU and memory limitations can be observed.

We supplement the 1080p gaming results with a trio of games tested at 4K. That multiple-hundred pound saving against Intel's competing 8C16T CPU could buy a nice 4K monitor, so we will show how Ryzen 7 performs at such a resolution.

Gears of War 4

We run the built-in benchmark using a 4K resolution and the same settings as the 1080p test (Ultra quality preset, Async Compute enabled).

Note: The Core i7-2700K and i7-4790K are not shown in Gears of War 4 as the game download was too large to install on their system SSD and the clunky Windows Store platform gives errors when moving games installed on a secondary SSD between test systems.

Grand Theft Auto V

We run the built-in benchmark using a 4K resolution and the same settings as the 1080p test (generally Maximum quality settings including Advanced Graphics).

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt

We run our custom 107-second benchmark in a densely-populated town area using a 4K resolution and the same settings as the 1080p test (Maximum quality, Nvidia settings disabled).

4K Gaming Performance Overview:

Throw Ryzen 7 1700X into a GPU-limited situation where performance above 60 FPS is superficial and it handles itself well. You are unlikely to notice a difference between the 1700X and higher-priced (and lower, for that matter) Intel CPUs except for that fact that Ryzen 7 has significant spare processing power to conduct background operations, such as game streaming.

If you are a content creator who needs processing power for day-to-day tasks but you also want to fire up a 4K game in the evenings, Ryzen 7's 1700X is a competent choice in such a scenario.

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