FRONTPAGE AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X CPU Review

[LRG5]

Ryzen 7 2700x ran stable 1 hour aida64 ( ram @ 3466 ) on x370



On H2O !!!

 

[Johan45]

I managed to get Win7 Installed on the CHVI/2700x combo. There is a differece in their xHCI driver( I assume) because my Ryzen Win7 install disc wouldn't work. I ended up using the USB 3 mid-board connectoe which isn't propritary for the KB/mouse and got it installed.

 

[LRG5]

Tested Ryzen7 2700x in Win10 with stock AMD Air cooling 39*C

 

[Woomack]

stock cooling ... it sounds like something is broken

Re Win7 testing ... officially this CPU is not designed for Win7 and Microsoft is making all situation quite ridiculous. Until all updates are installed then all is fine but once you install last Win7 updates then OS is throwing an error about unsupported CPU and it won't even search for new updates. All works fine but why they force people to move to Win10 in such a stupid way ... also some single core tests run better on Win7.

 

[LRG5]

All working well. Just cleaning the loop, and I want to see what the stock fan would do.



CPU on Auto and Ram @ 3466

 

[LRG5]

Woomack is this more like you like to see, on Air.

 

[Woomack]

The same stock cooler ? I like how it works without any special, expensive cooling. Intel could work on that in their K series.

I'm playing with TR on X399M Taichi right now and I don't think I will get Ryzen 2k anytime soon but who knows ... I have ASRock X370 ITX mobo which I could use.
Today I'm checking 4x16GB on TR. Yesterday I was trying to set 4000 using 4133/4266 kits but it seems like 4000 doesn't work on my board. 3866 works at XMP settings without adjusting anything, 4000 just freezes on d5 error code regardless of timings and voltages.

 

[Brando]

unless i misunderstand it seem like the new amd processors act like video cards reaching max speed if cooled well enough. has anyone seen the max speed of a stock chip with temps completely under control with a water cooler or a big tower heatsink? according to amd 4.3ghz is stock speed if temps are low enough. doesn't this make overclocking semi pointless?

 

[Blaylock]

Basically yes. So long as the CPU is within a predefined thermal margin it will clock itself up to its maximum speed.

 

[EarthDog]

unless i misunderstand it seem like the new amd processors act like video cards reaching max speed if cooled well enough. has anyone seen the max speed of a stock chip with temps completely under control with a water cooler or a big tower heatsink? according to amd 4.3ghz is stock speed if temps are low enough. doesn't this make overclocking semi pointless?

Sort of. The 'boost' clock is only on a couple of cores. You can overclock all cores to that speed with some luck. AMD cpus cant really get past that.

Video cards boost, but have overclocking headroom.

 

[Woomack]

Point is that max clock is only on single cores, not on all. Even my 1920X can go up to 4170MHz when everything is at auto ... but when all cores are under load then it runs below 4GHz ( more like 3.5-3.7GHz ). The same is in 1st and 2nd gen of Ryzen and TR is pretty much the same as any other 1st gen Ryzen. Difference is that 2nd gen boosts higher and I think that also has higher tolerance to temps. I mean it won't drop clock so fast at higher temps and won't have cold bug issues ... 1st gen has it even at +10-20°C.
You can see it in various tests around the forums and also in Shawn's posts ( recently posted some tests on LN2 ).

 

[LRG5]

The biggest improvement on the 2nd gen Ryzen I have seen is the latency and compatibility of the ram. And its very sensitive to temps and available power, but it is a step up for Ryzen

 

[Woomack]

RAM compatibility was fixed before 2nd gen release. It's just that people complain about it and most of them are not testing anything, only read and spread complains of other people.

 

[LRG5]

The new AGESA boot loader in BIOS help a lot too.

See "The Stilt" Chapter: Pinnacle Ridge (post# 1790)

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/ryzen-strictly-technical.2500572/page-72#post-39391302

 

[Woomack]

I thought that all are talking about memory latency and I've barely seen any difference ... while it's lower cache L2 latency that affects performance in some operations.
Memory controller is the same so what really counts here is lower L2 cache latency and chance on higher OC. Still nice improvement.

 

[Johan45]

unless i misunderstand it seem like the new amd processors act like video cards reaching max speed if cooled well enough. has anyone seen the max speed of a stock chip with temps completely under control with a water cooler or a big tower heatsink? according to amd 4.3ghz is stock speed if temps are low enough. doesn't this make overclocking semi pointless?

Basically yes. So long as the CPU is within a predefined thermal margin it will clock itself up to its maximum speed.

Just a bit of clarification on the new iteration of AMD's performance boost. It does work quite a bit differently than it did on the release of Ryzen. Initially, if you take the 1800X as and example, it had a base clock speed of 3.6 GHz(3.7 XFR) but the boost only really worked on two cores up to 4.1 GHz. Now with ZEN + the 2700X has a base speed of 3.7, all core boost up to 4.0 during stability testing and up to two cores will hit 4.35 GHz. XFR this tim around only seems to add about 50 MHz. AMD has also included the option ( Performance Boost Overdrive) which will let you adjust the all-core boost up to the limit of your cooling. So in a sense that was correct Brando, it just doesn't do it on it's own. I found it very simple though, didn't alter any voltages just raised the boost level and the system ran stable up to 4200 MHz

 

[Brando]

Just a bit of clarification on the new iteration of AMD's performance boost. It does work quite a bit differently than it did on the release of Ryzen. Initially, if you take the 1800X as and example, it had a base clock speed of 3.6 GHz(3.7 XFR) but the boost only really worked on two cores up to 4.1 GHz. Now with ZEN + the 2700X has a base speed of 3.7, all core boost up to 4.0 during stability testing and up to two cores will hit 4.35 GHz. XFR this tim around only seems to add about 50 MHz. AMD has also included the option ( Performance Boost Overdrive) which will let you adjust the all-core boost up to the limit of your cooling. So in a sense that was correct Brando, it just doesn't do it on it's own. I found it very simple though, didn't alter any voltages just raised the boost level and the system ran stable up to 4200 MHz

that's pretty cool actually. it looks like a 2700x system with a good heatsink at stock with performance boost overdrive on will basically be an 8 core equivalent of my oc'd 5820k or close to it. now that i'm an old man i appreciate stability. the only thing keeping me from upgrading is the ridiculous price of ram right now. apparently it's $250 for a $90 set of memory. waiting for that to drop.

 

[Johan45]

Yeah AMD is definitely improving. This time next year should (hopefully) be much more exciting when they do a full makeover and die shrink to 7nm. If they can get the core speeds up to 4.8 ish. Intel will have their hands full. They might be slightly behind on IPC (which should also be improved) but their SMT is much more efficient in most cases, pair that with on par core speed, that should leave a pretty even playing field. Then it comes down to price which has always been AMD's strongest lure lately.

 

[Brando]

Yeah AMD is definitely improving. This time next year should (hopefully) be much more exciting when they do a full makeover and die shrink to 7nm. If they can get the core speeds up to 4.8 ish. Intel will have their hands full. They might be slightly behind on IPC (which should also be improved) but their SMT is much more efficient in most cases, pair that with on par core speed, that should leave a pretty even playing field. Then it comes down to price which has always been AMD's strongest lure lately.

interesting. how many cores need to be involved before the superior amd smt lets ryzen pull ahead of coffeelake at the same # of cores? i would think pretty much everything uses at least 2 cores these days unless it's really old.

 

[Johan45]

Wasn't exactly sure what the question was but here's one of the charts from the review. Shows the 2600X Vs the 8700K both 6c/12t. You can see in the first three the 2600X was in the lead, x26 Intel has a much better system in the CL chips compared to AMD and their KL or SL chipse for handling AVX. Their score in this benchmark skyrocketed on coffeelake. Then you have 7ZIP which loves low latency which is another Intel strong point.