AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU Review — Tom’s Hardware
Early Verdict
The 1700 performs well in heavily threaded workloads, but lags behind Intel’s quad cores in most gaming scenarios. However, the Ryzen 7 1700 also offers the lowest entry-level price point for a modern eight-core processor and features enough overclocking headroom to trade blows with the more expensive Ryzen models.
Cons
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Lower stock performance than other Ryzen 7 models
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Lower game performance than Intel processors
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Poorly optimized software ecosystem
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AMD is trying to claw back lost market share with its eight-core Ryzen processors, and in the process, the company is generating a tremendous amount of excitement. Most of the enthusiasm stems from competitive pricing and solid performance in content creation and productivity workloads, even if Ryzen isn’t shaping up to be universally superior, as many hoped prior to launch. The chips still suffer an IPC deficit compared to Intel’s Kaby Lake processors, and the unique Zen microarchitecture falls behind in some games at lower resolutions. While the Ryzen 7 CPUs we’ve tested provide a smooth experience in most titles, they don’t oust Intel from its comfortable position atop the benchmark charts. This makes it difficult to universally recommend those high-end parts.
But it appears the bottom of AMD’s Ryzen 7 stack offers the best value. The company claims that its Ryzen 7 1700 is the most efficient eight-core CPU available. And priced at $330, it’s undoubtedly the cheapest one with modern amenities. The 1700 wields the same design as its more expensive counterparts, including the same Zen-based architecture, two CCXes enabling 16 logical cores, and 16MB of L3 cache.
It also sports an unlocked ratio multiplier, AMD’s SenseMI suite, and Socket AM4 compatibility.
- AMD Ryzen 7 1700X (AMD Ryzen 7) at Newegg for $110.96
As a result, the Ryzen 7 1700 might hit a value sweet spot that the $500 Ryzen 7 1800X and $400 1700X couldn’t.
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
Ryzen 7 1700X
Ryzen 7 1700
The 1700’s 65W TDP stands out as its most notable differentiator compared to the higher-end 95W Ryzen 7s. A more conservative power rating means lower voltages (and heat), so its 3 GHz base and 3.7 GHz boost frequencies understandably trail the 1700X and 1800X as well.
Both X SKUs do benefit from AMD’s XFR (eXtended Frequency Range) technology, which provides an additional 100 MHz over the boost ceiling if your thermal solution is beefy enough. In contrast, the 1700 comes equipped with a reduced XFR feature set that doesn’t boost beyond 3.
7 GHz, though it does facilitate an all-core 3.1 GHz boost in threaded workloads. You also save a few bucks with the bundled 95W Wraith Spire cooler, and although we wouldn’t recommend using the stock heat sink for overclocking, it’s a nice addition.
The 1700 wades into a brutally competitive segment; its $330 price tag is only slightly lower than the $350 Core i7-7700K rocking a 4.2 GHz base and 4.5 GHz Turbo Boost clock rate. The Ryzen 7 1700 beckons with twice as many cores and double the L3 cache, though that doesn’t translate to more performance in every application. After all, even Intel’s Core i5-7600K competes with the top Ryzen 7s in certain workloads.
The Ryzens we’ve tested thus far suffer curious performance losses in some games. But AMD contends that many developers will patch their software to improve frame rates. Encouragingly, Stardock/Oxide recently patched Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation to optimize for Ryzen. Valve also released a patch for Dota 2.
Both updates improve performance, and more important, they hint at what we might see from other devs in the future.
In the meantime, Ryzen 7 1700 offers a great starting price for eight cores and an unlocked multiplier. We think it can match its bigger brothers with a bit of tuning. Let’s test that theory out.
MORE: Best CPUs
MORE: Intel & AMD Processor Hierarchy
MORE: Everything Zen: AMD Presents New Microarchitecture At HotChips
MORE: Intel Kaby Lake Core i7-7700K, i7-7700, i5-7600K, i5-7600 Review
MORE: Broadwell-E: Intel Core i7-6950X, 6900K, 6850K & 6800K Review
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Introduction
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Paul Alcorn is the Deputy Managing Editor for Tom’s Hardware US. He writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage and enterprise hardware.
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 review: a bargain-priced 8-core that just needs some overclocked lovin’
The Ryzen 7 1700 is the cheapest of the first AMD Ryzen CPUs and also now one of my favourites, and not just because I’m a financially-focused bread head. For me this is where AMD’s octa-core Ryzen 7 CPUs genuinely give Intel a bit of a headache when it comes to gaming chips, offering eight cores and 16 threads of processing power for less than the cost of a standard quad-core Core i7 7700K.
How much impact has Ryzen had on our CPU guide? Check out our pick of the top gaming processors.
Its numerical compatriot, the Ryzen 7 1700X, sits slightly above this cheaper octa-core in terms of nailed-on clockspeeds and higher overclocking potential and makes the $500 Ryzen 7 1800X look rather irrelevant. But if you’re willing to take a punt on running the straight $330 (£305) 1700 overclocked then you get a really powerful multi-threaded chip for a great price.
It may still be missing the gaming chops of its Intel rivals, but that’s a lot more forgivable at this more mainstream price point.
Though things may change around again once the Ryzen 5 chips are available in a week or so…
Click on the jump links below to leap to your section of choice.
- AMD Ryzen 7 1700 benchmarks
- AMD Ryzen 7 1700 performance
- AMD Ryzen 7 1700 verdict
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 specs
The R7 1700 is a very slightly different processing beast from its ‘X’ toting stablemates. The ‘X’ suffix denotes a Ryzen chip sporting the fullest implementation of AMD’s extended frequency range (XFR) which allows the CPU to dynamically boost its clockspeed (over its stated Turbo clocks) by another 100MHz if there is sufficient cooling headroom.
Without that tag though the Ryzen 7 1700 doesn’t require the same level of thermal support, hence the chip’s 65W TDP. And yet, because of AMD’s more open approach to overclocking support, if you do have a decent cooler you can easily hit the same levels of performance with a little light overclocking.
On the surface the ‘X’ suffix might seem a lot like Intel’s K-series, but it actually makes a lot less difference when you’re choosing which AMD CPU gets your vote. Where Intel locks the multipliers, and hence castrates non K-series chips’ overclocking potential, all the Ryzen processors are set to remain completely unlocked and overclockable.
The only limits AMD is putting in place lie on the chipset side. The top-end X370 gets all the overclocking bells and whistling things, while the B350 still gets itself some OC capabilities too. The bottom rung of the AMD chipset ladder, the A320, doesn’t get any overclocking support at all.
The stock clockspeeds for the Ryzen 7 1700 are inevitably the most conservative of the octa-core triumvirate. The somewhat miserly 3GHz base clock isn’t too much of a worry as, even with all cores filled with tasks, you’ll see the 1700 push itself beyond that arbitrary frequency – our sample stuck around the 3.2GHz mark at 1005 load. It’s peak single-core clock of 3.
7GHz is more like it though, being only 100MHz behind the top speed of the 1700X.
And that’s where the differences largely end, even compared with the $500 R7 1800X. The Ryzen 7 1700 is still rocking SMT so it’s got the full thread-count of 16 and retains the same level of cache memory, the same number of PCIe 3.0 lanes and the same basic 14nm Zen core design. It is, to all intents and purposes, just a slightly down-clocked version of the full-fat 1800X.
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 benchmarks
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 performance
The drop in single and all-core clockspeeds is really all that’s responsible for the lower performance of the Ryzen 7 1700 against the other two AMD chips we’ve tested. It’s most obvious in the CPU-intensive benchmarks of Cinebench’s rendering and X264’s encoding tests. The single-threaded speeds are well down on the 1800X and a little behind the 1700X and the same rings true for its multi-threaded performance too.
That said we’re still talking about Zen’s excellent multi-core performance here, with those 16 threads still capable of eating properly threaded applications for breakfast, second breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea, dinner and supper.
AMD’s Ryzen chips are like the greedy hobbits of the productivity processor world.
Even the very cheapest of AMD’s Ryzen 7 range can bat aside the otherwise competitive Core i7 6800K in these CPU-intensive tasks and is a long way ahead of the slightly more expensive quad-core, eight-thread i7 7700K in all but the single-threaded tests.
As ever though it’s that single-threaded performance which makes the Intel Core design a more sensible choice from a straight gaming point of view. But with the extra productivity performance on offer, for around the same price as an Intel quad-core, the choice becomes a lot less clear cut for anyone looking to do anything else with their machine outside of simply gaming.
The Ryzen 7 1700’s gaming performance also makes things tough for the other chips in the octa-core range. At stock speeds there really isn’t a lot between this lower-caste Ryzen 7 and the two ‘X’ chips, and when you level out the clockspeed differences via overclocking you can make that delta even smaller.
In the overclocking stakes though you won’t quite get to the same levels as the more expensive Ryzen chips. Our 1700 sample tapped out at 3.9GHz and, with our basic overclocking, we couldn’t get it to hold stably at 4GHz. The 1700X managed to stick at 4GHz while the 1800X topped 4.1GHz. That said, the Ryzen 7 1700 runs noticeably cooler at 3.9GHz than the toasty 1800X at its overclocked peaks. Even taking into account the sensor discrepancy which artificially notes temperatures 20॰C higher on the ‘X’ chips the 1700 peaks at just 63॰C while the 1800X delivers an adjusted maximum temperature of 72॰C.
- Check out Amazon US, Newegg, Amazon UK and Overclockers for pricing.
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 verdict
The Ryzen 7 1700 is really what I was hoping for from the first octa-core Zen-based chips. It’s around the same price as Intel’s eight-threaded quad-core i7 7700K, if a little cheaper, and runs rings around it from a straight CPU performance point of view.
Despite all the hype, hope and bluster AMD’s Zen cores were never going to best Intel’s single-threaded/gaming performance, but the 1700 is just as capable on that front as either of its bigger Ryzen brothers.
I’m still not going to recommend any of the octa-core Ryzens as the go-to processors for gamers purely looking to get the highest frame rates out of their graphics silicon, but with the combination of price and multi-threaded performance the twin 1700 and 1700X CPUs bring high-end desktop productivity down to a truly unprecedented price point.
And if you’re likely to spend as much time rendering or encoding as you are gaming then the Ryzen 7 1700 really is a tough one to beat.
You do though need to run the Ryzen 7 1700 in an overclocked state to be able to get the best balance of performance out of it, and that will possibly limit the lifespan of the chip. Because Zen is still only a very new processor design we can’t really speak to the longevity of the hardware, especially when it’s being run outside its stock parameters, but considering the temperature of the 1700 stays relatively low I’m not hugely worried.
If you are though, and when you’re still spending over three hundred clams on a slice of silicon that’s understandable, the Ryzen 7 1700X might well be a better pick.
- Check outAmazon US,Newegg,Amazon UKandOverclockersfor pricing.
Test and Review: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 – Best value Ryzen?
03/16/2017 16:27
#1
Zabaikalec2010
Some kind of ambiguous impression from the article, not to say that it is bad, but it does not turn out to be «super» to call it. By game: Far Cry Primal only has dual charts. From memory: there is no overclocking, although Intel with DDR4 has frequencies of 3000 and 3200 …
Conclusions (part) from Ukrainian overs to 1800X
«A fast memory controller, a large number of floating point calculation units should have a beneficial effect on the gameplay. But in order for expectations to coincide with reality, several conditions must be met. potential.Second, the processor must be overclocked to 4 GHz, since it does not get very hot at this frequency with appropriate cooling, even air.
Third, to solve the problem with energy-saving functions in the Windows 10 operating system. performance drops.While we have to wait for the next «magic patch» from the Redmond company, you can use the trick in the form of manually configuring these functions, or disable SMT technology.Yes, deactivating multithreading will increase the average fps too.Even if you don’t do all this, platform AM4 there is one advantage, which is that you juice minimum fps, which should affect the smoothness of the gameplay. In any case, our testing revealed exactly this point. Whether this will be the case in a large number of games, and whether it will be so with other solutions of the Zen architecture, we will soon find out.»
I hope that in the final testing of the R7 line there will be full-fledged testing and conclusions.
quote — reply
03/17/2017 00:28
#2
dchekanov
Let me remind you that this test concerns, first of all, the normal operation mode.
By memory and 4 GHz — this all refers to overclocking, and not to the normal mode of operation. In the article, the processor is overclocked to 4 GHz, there are tests. The memory itself AMD claims at a maximum of 2666 MHz. Anything above that is overclocking beyond stock specs. nine0003
There will be a separate test about SMT. Disabling SMT is, again, not a regular mode.
Here we did not have the task of bringing the AMD processor to maximum performance, there will be a separate material on optimization.
We wanted to test the processors in the form in which they will receive the consumer. In the same way, we test Intel processors.
Performance tests were carried out in Max Performance mode, power consumption — Balanced
quote — reply
03/17/2017 09:46
#3
Zabaikalec2010
Hello Dmitry, thank you for the detailed answer!
But you must admit, it is strange to see the phrase:
«We were able to hit 4 GHz on all eight cores, although this required a very high VCore voltage level of 1.
417 V»,
read in the description of the test configuration about the frequency for Intel 3000/3200 processors (which is also not standard), then read the comparison of all Sisoft Sandra 2016.SP1 processors in the article
Memory,
and get the answer in conclusion:
«Let me remind you that this test concerns, first of all, the normal mode of operation.
From memory and 4 GHz — this all refers to overclocking, and not to normal operation. In the article, the processor is overclocked to 4 GHz, there are tests. The memory itself AMD claims at a maximum of 2666 MHz. Everything above is overclocking beyond the standard specifications.»
One gets the impression that they simply did not have time to do detailed testing, because it turns out «here we will overclock, we will not be here, but here we will test everything in a heap.»
I respect hardwareluxx, but this article is not like the previous ones. I will wait for the final release and thank you for your understanding.
Quote — Reply
Posts: 637
Another weak review. I agree with Dmitry that it is correct to test in normal mode, but AMD itself recommends setting High Performance in the Windows power settings, and not Balanced, as in the article. Plus, nothing prevented the author from giving an announcement of a future article, like: «Overclocking and optimization of Ryzen in games.» nine0009 This would smooth out the negative impression.
Let the author look at the review on computerbase, there is a lot of statistics and the review itself is magnificent.
I would like to see the following:
1. More games. Be sure to multiplayer BF1 for 64 helmets.
2. Game test with off/on SMT, overclocked to 3200 MHz and higher with RAM. An AMD representative told a Reddit participant that the frequency of the Infinity Fabric bus directly depends on the frequency of the RAM.
3. Game test in Windows 7 and Windows 10. Windows 10 was recently updated, I wonder how this affected the performance of Ryzen? nine0009 4.
Show frametime in games, compared to competitor 7700K. Many users praise the smoothness of the gameplay with Ryzen, but words cannot be sewn into the case.
5. Show core loading in games. On gamegpu, this has become a good tradition.
6. Show temperatures, power consumption of processors in stock and overclocking with a convenient graph, with competitors.
7. Indicate the frequencies of processors and video cards on the graphs. I’ve been asking about this for a long time, but things are still there …
I hope the editors will take into account the comments and make an excellent review, which can be proudly referred to in battles with Intel fans! nine0003
quote — reply
03/20/2017 03:52
#5
dchekanov
In our articles we always use High Performance in performance tests and Balanced in power consumption test.
quote — reply
04/10/2017 08:46
#6
Aksakal
Of course I can’t tell you to test hardware.
But still
It’s time Lord! it’s time to start making more detailed graphics, paying attention to the minimum fps and testing the smoothness of the game (microfreezes, etc. etc.)
It’s no secret that the time has come for change, now gamers have become more adequate, they look not only at the maximum FPS (because, in fact, no one is interested in the difference between 200 and 150 FPS), but the minimum FPS and smooth gameplay are our everything.
And Ruzen (apparently) provides exactly the best minimum FPS.
so
IMHO — isn’t it time to change the principles of testing???
quote — reply
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 Benchmark: Affordable Octa-Core | ichip.ru
Test Results
With the release of the Ryzen 7 1700, AMD is raising the benchmark for midrange desktop processors. When performing «multi-core» tasks, this processor is incredibly high-performance and efficient. It shows a noticeable weakness, however, in the PCMark 8 benchmark.
0009 Low TDP
Drawbacks
Slightly weak in PCMark 8
No integrated graphics unit
Low base clock
AMD Ryzen 7 test results 1700
- Excellent value for money
- Place in the overall rating
9 out of 176
- Value for money: 79
- CPU performance (100%): 77.3
Test results
Test Method
Rate
1700 is one of three new Ryzen 7 processors from AMD with Zen microarchitecture, with a base clock speed of 3.0 GHz, boosted to 3.7 GHz. An octa-core CPU with 16 threads using Extended Frequency Range (XFR) technology can overclock the core by another 50 MHz.
Like all previously available Ryzen CPUs, the R7 1700 has a free multiplier for overclocking. For more details on the architecture and current chipsets, see the Ryzen 7 1800X Processor Benchmarking Report. nine0003
Giant performance with one drawback
Despite the rather low clock speed, the AMD Ryzen 7 1700 performs decently enough in the benchmarks.
With excellent results in terms of rendering speed, encryption and encoding, this processor could also successfully perform in the top segment.
The processor is best suited for highly scalable «multi-core» applications. And here’s something else that matters a lot: AMD lowers the TDP to 65W vs. 95 W for the current Intel Core i7-7700K.
It would be AMD’s complete victory over Intel in our mainstream processor rankings if the R7 1700 didn’t allow itself to be snubbed slack in PCMark 8. In the Creative Suite, it’s far behind the competition when it comes to image and video processing and web surfing. from the Intel camp with higher clock speeds.
However, in all other tasks, the AMD Ryzen 7 1700 clearly ranks first, for «creative» tasks it achieves only 14th place in our respective ranking. It is possible that this problem will be solved by upcoming BIOS and Windows updates — but it is possible that it will not. nine0003
You might be interested:
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X benchmark: top performance at a reasonable price
Alternative: Intel Core i7-7700K (4.
2 GHz) LGA 1151
Currently, there is no processor that is both better and cheaper. Good value for money can only be found in the best mainstream processors: the Intel Core i7-7700K is a good choice for anyone who can give up on the excess of multi-core, but still needs high processor performance. nine0003
Due to the extreme clock speed, this CPU in the PCMark 8 benchmark successfully beats even some much more expensive models. In addition, even with air cooling, you can get a stable processor performance at clock speeds above 5 GHz.
AMD Ryzen 7 1700 specs and test results
| Value for money |
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| Rated frequency |  0 GHz |
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| CPU test: PCMark 8 | |
| CPU test: Excel 2010 SP1 — sim. Monte Carlo | |
| CPU test: Cinebench R15 (max. CPU cores) | |
| CPU test: WinRAR 4.01 (64 bit) | |
| Test: TrueCrypt 7.1 AES-Twofish-Serpent | |
CPU Test: HandBrake 0.
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