AMD Ryzen 7 launched officially, outperforms Intel’s Core i7 for less

On Feb,22, 2017 there were a lot of people who wanted to see if what AMD had promised with its new AMD Ryzen 7 CPU family would come true, someday. AMD did not disappoint, and took out of their back pocket (literally – you will understand once you’ve watched the presentation video embedded below) the new generation of gaming oriented high end CPUs, the Ryzen 7.

AMD Ryzen 7 is here

Let’s say right from the start, that the primary objective of AMD was to demolish Intel’s Core i7 family of CPUs. They claimed outrageous gains and optimizations, and up to 40% increase in instructions per clock. Apparently, they went a bit far off, and managed a whopping 52% increase. But let’s look at the details.

Yesterday Lisa Su, AMD’s CEO and president, presented the first three CPUs: Ryzen 7 1700, Ryzen 7 1700X and the big boy, the Ryzen 7 1800x. Here their actual specs:

AMD Ryzen 7 1700

• 3.0 GHz clock rate; 3.7 GHz with boost
  AMD Wraith Spire cooler
  65 Watt TDP

AMD Ryzen 7 1700x

• 3.4 GHz clock rate; 3.8 GHz with boost
  Extended Frequency Range (XFR) in the presence of better cooling
  95 Watt TDP

AMD Ryzen 7 1800x

• 3.6 GHz clock rate; 4.0 GHz with boost
  Extended Frequency Range (XFR) in the presence of better cooling
  95 Watt TDP

All this comes at a price, you say. Indeed the new CPUs aren’t cheap, but they are sold at a fraction of the price of their INTEL counterparts. And this is amazing.

The focus of these CPU are, based on Lisa Su’s own words, “gamers and content creators“. Lisa Su proceeded then at showing some benchmarks with Cinebench R15 nT, and comparing the Ryzen 7 1700X in realtime to Intel’s Core i7 6900K, showing a gain of 4%. Not much you’d say. But bear in mind the price gap (more on that later). The same 1700X CPU was then compared against the Core i7 6800K, and the chart shown during the presentation announced a 39% increase. Again, using Lisa Su’s own words: “a heck of a lot of performance, in these processors”. Can’t argue with that.

Enters the Ryzen 7 1800X. The big boy starts at 3,6GHz and boosts up to 4GHz when needed, with a TDP of 95W only. The most interesting feature of these CPUs is, that they are “unlocked“: overclockers rejoice all around the world… These are the socalled “XFR Frequencies” (extended frequency range), that can be achieved with better cooling and good overclocking knowledge.

The Ryzen 7 1800X was then compared in realtime with the 6900K (a cpu that costs some 1100$) using Cinebench R15 nT, and managed to be faster by 9%. Don’t get me wrong, it was a close win, but still a win. Lisa Su went as far as saying that in single thread mode, the Ryzen 7 1800X was on par with the 6900K from Intel, so still you have your bang for the buck right there. “Fabulous”, she said. And we agree.

The Ryzen 7 1700 is very interesting too, since it is claimed to be the “world’s lowest power 8-core desktop processor” (based on Cinebench R15 nT score divided by wall power watts during testing). The usual product comparison saw the new AMD CPU fight against the Core i7 7700K (the latest Kaby Lake CPU), and again Cinebench R15 nT was used to show that even with a lower frequency than the counterpart, the Ryzen 7 1700 was able to achieve a 46% gain, thanks to the higher number of cores/threads. Enough said.

Gaming with the Ryzen 7 1800X

The gaming demo that followed, again compared the AMD solution (Ryzen 7 1800X) against Intel’s (Core i7 6900K) on a 4K-capable game (the new Sniper Elite 4). The focus of this demo was not to show how the CPUs fared one against each other, actually, but that the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X could actually “keep up” with the GPUs (2x Radeon RX 480 in crossfire).

Last but not least, Lisa Su showed a demo about content creation. Using Handbrake, an open source format video conversion tool and comparing again the Ryzen 7 1700 against the Core i7 7700K, the AMD solution was 10 seconds faster, winning “every single time”, with Lisa Su’s words.

And now we have to talk about prices, don’t we? Well, we were positively surprised, since the new family of Ryzen CPUs from AMD comes at a bargain:

AMD Ryzen 7 1700: MSRP $329

Just to recap, the little brother of the Ryzen family is some $20 cheaper than its competitor, the Intel Core i7 7700K Kaby Lake CPU. And you get a 46% increase in computing power with that! Ok, with 4 more cores, but again, that is amazing at this price point.

AMD Ryzen 7 1700X: MSRP $399

The middle of the bunch is apparently the sweet spot, where you can get more bang for your buck. Systems with these CPU will be sold like peanuts, we believe. Intel’s Core i7 6800K is $440.

AMD Ryzen 7 1800X: MSRP $499

And here comes the shocking revelation. The Ryzen 7 1800X retails for $499 while the competitor’s Core i7 6900K will take from your pocket some $1100. That is HALF the price for a CPU that performs better, under any circumstance.

To sum it all up, the Ryzen 7 family of CPUs revealed on the 22nd of February, 2017 was a revelation in both performace and price point. The CPUs will start to be available in quantity worldwide starting from March 2nd. Citing Lisa Su again, we “hope you guys have your money ready”.