AMD Ryzen 7 2700 Processor Review

Ryzen 7 2700 The second generation of AMD Ryzen CPUs launched with a mighty bang last month. They propelled the performance of the Ryzen CPUs to new heights, breaking the 4 GHz barrier with ease, and delivering greatly improved performance. Not only that, they're rubbing shoulders with Intel in the gaming department now, and blazing their own trail when it comes to multi-tasking. Of course, the Ryzen 7 2700X we reviewed was amazing, but at £282 current price (£329 MSRP), it's a little more premium. The non-X part is just £248 (£259 MSRP), so a little more wallet-friendly. Features Equipped with the new AMD StoreMI technology, you can combine your HDD and SSD, and M.2 drives into one fast pool of storage. Furthermore, SenseMI and Ryzen Master Utility will help you unlock the best performance from your hardware with virtually no effort. Automatic frequency adjustment and boosts, easy configuration of your memory speeds, voltages and more. You don't have to dive into the BIOS and read the instruction book this time. Of course, the newer features of Ryzen Gen 2 are only supported on X470 motherboards, although the CPU will of course still work in any other AM4 motherboard. StoreMI Technology SenseMI Technology Ryzen™ Master Utility Specifications CPU Cores: 8 Threads: 16 Max Boost Clock: 4.1GHz Base Clock: 3.2GHz Cooler: Wraith Spire RGB TDP: 65W For in-depth specifications, please visit the official AMD product page here. What AMD Had to Say "Introducing the 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™ desktop processors designed for extreme gaming. With incredible performance and more advanced features, 2nd Generation AMD Ryzen™ desktop processors provide faster, smoother gaming experiences than you thought possible. Designed for gamers, streamers and enthusiasts that demand more. " - AMD Product Trailer https://youtu.be/Dr5xTsi8RZY How We Test Testing Procedure Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of motherboard, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there's always a margin for error when using any software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Testing Your Own System Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you're looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using our benchmarks and settings where possible. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware we tested to give you a ballpark figure of how much an upgrade this will provide you with. Intel Testbenches Z370 Motherboard - Gigabyte AORUS Ultra Gaming RAM - Crucial DDR4 3000MHz Quad-Channel 32GB + Optane CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X299 Motherboard - Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 9 RAM - Crucial DDR4 3000MHz Quad-Channel 32GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AMD Testbenches X399 (Threadripper) Motherboard – MSI X399 Gaming Pro Carbon AC RAM – Crucial Ballistix 32GB (4x8GB) 2400MHz CPU Cooler – CM Master Liquid 120mm (will be retested with Noctua D15S with dual fans in coming weeks) Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AM4 X470 (Pinnacle Ridge) Motherboard - Gigabyte X470 Gaming 7 RAM - GeIL DDR4 3200MHz Dual Channel 16GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AM4 X370 (Raven Ridge) Motherboard - MSI XPower Titanium X370 RAM - GeIL DDR4 3200MHz Dual Channel 16GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Games and Settings Used All games are tested on a 60 Hz display with V-Sync off for all tests. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Pure Hair Off Deus Ex (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay) Medium Preset Turf Effects Off Far Cry Primal (Uplay) Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download) FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark Unigine Superposition (download) 1080p Extreme Benchmark PCMark 10 Professional (download) Express Benchmark WPrime (download) 32M and 1024M Power usage recorded at 1024M 50% complete, thermals recorded at 75% complete CineBench R15 (download) CPU Multi CPU Single Handbrake (download) Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below) AIDA64 Engineer (download) CPU-Z (download) HWMonitor (download) Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps, and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the "normal" profile. Other Notes A rest period of 2-5 minutes is observed between each piece of software allowing the system to return to its idle power usage and temperatures. Background services like Windows Update are checked to not be running during the testing period by setting WiFi to Metered Connection. Updates All games, graphics card drivers, BIOS, Windows and everything else is always kept up to date with the latest available. Older benchmarks may not be retested until stated otherwise. However, all hardware will be tested with the best and latest firmware and software available to that hardware at the time of review. As of 1st of May 2018, all hardware was retested on their latest drivers. Anything after this date will again be using their most recent versions available to them. Thanks Thank you to Noctua, Crucial, ASUS, Gigabyte, Lian-Li, be quiet!, OCZ, for providing the hardware that helps makes these tests possible! Synthetic Benchmarks 3DMark: 19133 Unigine: 5591 PCMark 10 (Express): 4881 WPrime: 4.055/109.84 CineBench R15: 162/1567 Handbrake: 53.2 The R7 2700 is the second highest specifications CPU in the second generation Ryzen CPU launch. With that in mind, it's no surprise that it performs pretty darn well in these benchmarks. Scoring 19133 in 3DMark was a bit average, but it was on-par with the older 1700X as expected. Scoring 4881 in PCMark 10 is a good strong position too, putting it on par with other Ryzen 7 CPUs, although that benchmark does seem to favour Intel and fewer cores quite strongly. Unigine was a real standout though, scoring 5591, our second highest score to date, with only the Ryzen 2600X scoring higher. It's when we get down the big number crunching benchmarks that Ryzen shines. The WPrime time was nicely ahead of the i7-8700K at just 4.055 seconds for 32M and 109.84 seconds for 1024M. Then again, in Cinebench, it scored 162/1567 compared to the 202 and 1418 of the 8700K. Yes, Intel has that single core performance lead, but AMD can brute-force a lead in overall performance with more cores. Intel kept the lead in Handbrake against the more affordable R7 2700, although the R7 2700X did pull ahead of Intel also. 3DMark Firestrike Unigine Superposition PCMark 10 Express WPrime Cinebench R15 Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K Gaming Performance Rise of the Tomb Raider: 166.62 FPS Deus Ex Mankind Divided: 77.3/102.5 FPS Ghost Recon Wildlands: 99.3/128.52 FPS Far Cry Primal: 78/105 FPS The gaming results are pretty solid here, not as great as I was hoping, but still delivering gaming performance that's unlikely to disappoint anyone. It's around the same as the older R7 1700, however, it's doing so at a lower TDP and power usage, so I'm not complaining about that. Of course, a 1080 Ti isn't a slow GPU either, so the pairing delivers framerates well in excess of 100. Rise of the Tomb Raider Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Ghost Recon: Wildlands Far Cry Primal Overclocking CPU-Z Overclocking is very easy on Ryzen 2, especially since the Master Utility can pretty much do it automatically. However, we were able to dial in a manual overclock in the BIOS, locking the CPU at a whopping 4.2 GHz with 1.4 volts on the CPU and 1.15 volts on the SoC voltage. Please keep in mind we're using a Noctua NH-D15s aftermarket cooler to handle the extra heat this will produce. Performance 3DMark: 19133 - 20751 WPrime: 4.055/109.84 - 3.373/90.5 CineBench R15: 162/1567 - 176/1892 Rise of the Tomb Raider: 166.62 - 166.62 Overclocking netted some very interesting results. For 3DMark, we saw the score shoot up from 19483 to a much more impressive 20751. That's an improvement of 8.45% and not bad for a free performance boost. However, it's WPrime that blows me away, with the time dropping down to just 90.5 seconds and a 17.6% reduction in calculation time, while Cinebench also saw a 20.7% improvement in performance. The oddball here is that Tomb Raider scored right one the dot, the exact flipping same as stock, didn't see that coming. Of course, overclocking doesn't come "free" and doing so took the power consumption at 100% CPU load from 115.8 to 181 watts. However, at 4.2 GHz, that's still clocking in at 17 watts less than a 4.0 GHz 1700X! Thermal performance was amazing too, maxing out at 61c for stock speeds and 63.8 while overclocked. The 1700X maxed out at 81c, so it shows how moving down to 12nm can make a big difference. 3DMark Firestrike WPrime Cinebench R15 Power Consumption Stock Overclocked Temperatures Stock Overclocked Final Thoughts How Much Does it Cost? The AMD Ryzen 7 2700 8-core 16-thread CPU with Wraith Spire RGB Cooler is available now from most major retailers. It's priced at just £248.50 on Amazon, which is quite a bit cheaper than the 2700X. The inclusion of a slick cooler certainly adds value and it's pretty capable too for those leaving the CPU at stock or using SenseMI. Those pushing manual clocks may want a larger cooler, but that's a given anyway. Overview AMD is on one heck of a roll this last year. The first generation Ryzen CPUs made a lasting impression on the market, enough of one for me to invest in the 1700X for my own personal work and gaming system. For content creators and rampant multi-taskers, they're great CPUs. The second generation is certainly incremental, but big improvements in thermal performance and power usage are not to be sniffed at. Down to 12nm The improvements in manufacturing are certainly showing in the reduced power and heat. However, this also means AMD was able to push those cores to performance a little bit harder than the first generation. Of course, this still feels like a fine-tuning of the first gen, which is absolutely fine. We'll have to wait a little while longer for true Zen 2 cores that'll drop to as low as 7nm, half the 14nm used for the first generation Ryzens. Should I Buy One? For the desktop PC gamer, the higher TDP X models are still the go-to for gaming and general performance though. They're a little faster, and a little more expensive, but you get what you pay for. However, if heat and power are a big concern to you, and they are for a lot of people, these perform pretty darn close for less money, with a lot lower heat and power usage that shouldn't be overlooked.