Computer Shopper - July 2017

AM4 PROCESSOR
AMD Ryzen 7 1700
★★★★★
£300 • From www.overclockers.co.uk
VERDICT
Cool, efficient and a blazingly fast multitasker,
the cheapest Ryzen 7 is the one to buy
TO PUT IT harshly, the Ryzen 7 1700 is the runt
of AMD’s Zen architecture-based processor
family: it has the lowest base and boost clocks
of 3GHz and 3.7GHz respectively and, unlike
the fl agship 1800X (Shopper 352) and 1700X,
its Extended Frequency Range (XFR) boost
– which provides a bit of extra speed when
temperatures allow – is limited to just 50MHz.
It also doesn’t have the 1800X’s benefi t of
being an incredible bargain. Whereas that chip
sells at half the price of its closest Intel
competitor, the Core i7-6900K, the 1700 is
only around £30 cheaper than its direct rival,
the quad-core Core i7-7700K (Shopper 350).
Still, for that money you’re getting twice
the cores and twice the threads than the i7,
which is good news considering the Intel chip’s
much faster 4.2GHz base clock and 4.5GHz
boost clock. In practice, it becomes clear that
for everything that the 1800X doesn’t pass
down to its cheaper brethren, the 1700 does
at least share its best aspect: outstanding
multithreaded performance.
INTEL OUTDONE
Its score in our imaging benchmark, 124, is 20
points shy of the i7-7700K, likely due to the
latter’s greater single-core strength. However,
the 1700 races ahead otherwise, scoring 191 in
the video test, 203 in the multitasking test and
186 overall – all victories by greater margins
than the i7’s image test win. As ever, we ran
these tests with 8GB of RAM, swapping in a
compatible Auros AX370 Gaming 5
motherboard and Noctua NH-U12S air cooler.
The Ryzen 7 1700 thus becomes the
highest-scoring sub-£400 CPU we’ve tested
yet, making it a potentially excellent candidate
for home workstations and media-editing rigs.
It’s a ways off the 1800X, with its overall score
of 215 at stock speeds, but there’s no shame in
that when it costs nearly £200 more.
Conversely, the i7-7700K remains a better
pick for games. As with all Ryzen chips, the
1700 has no integrated graphics, so we tested
our usual suite of gaming benchmarks with
both our test rig’s Radeon R7 260X and a
much more powerful Nvidia GTX 1080
Founder’s Edition. At stock speeds with the
260X, the 1700-based system averaged 84fps
in Dirt Showdown running at 1080p, as well
as 33fps at 4K resolution. Switching to the
GTX 1080, these only rose to 107fps and
85fps respectively. For comparison, we’ve
recorded 169fps at 1080p and 93fps at 4K on
a GTX 1080/i7-7700K system.
SLOW PATROL
There was less of a stark difference in Metro:
Last Light Redux, where the 260X/1700
configuration managed 25fps at 1080p and
6fps at 4K, and the 1080/1700 configuration
recorded 77fps at 1080p and 20fps at 4K.
This fi nal frame rate is actually the very same
as the i7-7700K achieved with the same GPU,
although the Intel processor also squeezed a
little more out at 1080p, scoring 84fps.
There’s something peculiar about how
Ryzen struggles with Dirt Showdown in
particular, as the 1800X also tripped up in it
when paired with the same two graphics
cards. We suspect it’s because Dirt relies quite
heavily on single-threaded performance,
where neither the 1800X or 1700 as are
strong. It’s not that the 1700 is incapable of
The Ryzen 7 1700 is a potentially excellent candidate for
home workstations and media-editing rigs
allowing extreme frame rates in games, as a
quick side-step into Tomb Raider showed that
it helped the GTX 1080 produce 170fps with
Ultra settings at 1080p, but it’s also proven
itself inferior to the Intel alternative.
That said, we did note that in every test
with the 260X, the 1700 either matched or
came within 1fps of the 1800X, which is
clocked at considerably higher 3.6GHz
base/4GHz boost speeds – a surprise, to be
sure, but a welcome one.
The 1700 also seems more overclockfriendly
than the 1800X, as well as the
i7-7700K. Using AMD’s helpful Ryzen Master
utility, we tweaked core speeds and voltages
up to a stable 3.9GHz – any further caused
crashing during our 4K benchmarks, but this is
still a bigger increase than we could safely
coax out of the Intel and upper-tier AMD
chips with the same Noctua air cooler.
At a consistent 3.9GHz, the 1700 fi nally
matched the i7-7700K’s image test score of
144, and its improved video score of 204,
multitasking score of 231 and overall score of
208 put it within spitting distance of the
mighty 1800X itself. Sadly, though, this didn’t
do much for gaming; in fact, it didn’t really do
anything, as every Dirt Showdown and Metro
benchmark we ran returned identical (to the
nearest fps) results as at stock speeds.
COOL CUSTOMER
More impressive is the 1700’s TDP of 65W,
an absurdly low requirement for an octa-core
chip; it certainly puts the quad-core i7-7700K’s
91W TDP to shame. AMD’s processor also
runs much, much cooler; whereas the i7
fl uttered around 90-100°C during our 4K
benchmarks, even with water-cooling, the
air-cooled 1700 peaked at a mere 54°C at stock
speeds, maxing out at 71°C when overclocked
to 3.9GHz. Idle temperatures were good as
well: 34°C at stock speed, 41°C at 3.9GHz.
While the 1700 doesn’t offer the same
value as the 1800X, it stands up to its own
nemesis – the i7-7700K – admirably, claiming
greater multithreading performance, cooler,
more efficient running and easier overclocking.
You should still stick with Intel for a premium
gaming system, but for everything else, the
1700 is the CPU to go for – arguably, even
over the rest of the Ryzen 7 range.
James Archer
SPECIFICATIONS
SOCKET AM4 • CORES 8 • FREQUENCY (BOOST) 3GHz
(3.7GHz) • INTEGRATED GRAPHICS None •
WARRANTY Three years RTB • DETAILS www.amd.com •
PART CODE YD1700BBAEBOX
Windows overall
Multitasking
Dirt Showdown
0%
-50
186
203
84fps
Reference +50 +100
See page 72 for performance details
28 JULY 2017 | COMPUTER SHOPPER | ISSUE 353