AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Review – 2nd Gen Ryzen 4GHz+ out of the box

1. Introducing 2nd Gen Ryzen2. Productivity Testing3. Games Testing4. Overclocking, Power and Heat5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

2nd Gen Ryzen makes some useful but marginal improvements over what we must now call 1st Gen Ryzen. If you liked Ryzen 7 1800X you will be impressed by Ryzen 7 2700X and the combination of reduced latency, increased clock speed as well as the sophistication of Precision Boost 2. It also seems that AGESA has been improved and anything that improves DDR4 compatibility with Ryzen is a huge bonus.

We don’t much like the idea of customers being pressured to ditch their X370 motherboards in favour of a new X470, however the hardware we have seen so far looks very good. We are also pleased by the reduction in Ryzen prices, and the fact that existing stocks of 1st Gen Ryzen have dropped through the floor must surely be good for customers.

The headline message is that AMD has broken the 4GHz mark with 2nd Gen Ryzen, which is a useful step forward. We consistently saw the stock Ryzen 7 2700X beating the overclocked Ryzen 7 1800X, however we found that overclocking the Ryzen 7 2700X was a fruitless task. In essence the job has already been done by Precision Boost 2 and there are few extra gains to be found unless you get really serious with the cooling and power.

This raises the thought that Threadripper 2 is due later this year and will presumably use the tricks we have seen in 2nd Gen Ryzen. A faster Threadripper is a very appealing prospect.

The burning question is whether or not you should buy the new Ryzen 7 2700X and here it's not such good news for AMD.

If you already own a Ryzen 7 it would be crazy to spend the money on the new CPU and X470 motherboard as the return would be marginal. Any AMD customer looking for significant amounts of extra CPU performance could instead take the £400-£500 required for 2nd Gen Ryzen and X470 and consider it as half the money required for a 12-core Threadripper and X399 motherboard which will deliver a major leap in performance.

Those of you who own a recent Intel platform will likely upgrade to 8th Gen Coffee Lake and will be very happy with that decision, unless the shadow of security flaws such as Meltdown and Spectre causes you a significant amount of trauma.

Perhaps the biggest question is whether Ryzen 7 2700X will convince anyone to convert from Intel to AMD. Certainly you should look long and hard at 2nd Gen Ryzen but unless you do a huge amount of multi-threaded CPU intensive work we find it unlikely that you will cross over to Team Red.

You can buy the 2700X from Overclockers UK for £299.99 HERE.

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Pros

• New 12nm fabrication process.
• Precision Boost 2 works well, taking the 2700X over 4GHz out of the box.
• Memory compatibility does not seem an issue.
• Lower pricing at launch compared to its predecessor.

Cons

• Marginal improvement to be had over 1700X/1800X.
• Power draw could be better.
• Still behind Intel in terms of IPC.
• Limited overclocking potential due to the effectiveness of Precision Boost 2.

KitGuru says: Ryzen 7 2700X offers useful (but marginal) improvements over the original Ryzen 7.

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