At stock settings the Ryzen 7 1700 surprises us at how cool it runs, in fact it is worth noting that the cooler being used here in our testing is a mid-range air cooler, while the Intel offerings were using an AIO water loop.
*Edit*
Here it is worth mentioning that Ryzen 'officially' supports DDR4 memory up to 2667MHz, however the fastest we have been able to achieve is around 3000MHz. There is some limitations of the kind of memory that you can use (whether it is single, or dual rank arrangement) with dual rank memory being limited to lower clockspeeds. However, in our testing you will see that Ryzen keeps pace with the Intel i7 CPUs (except against the quad channel chips) with lower memory frequencies. So bare this in mind when selecting a Ryzen setup and be sure to check the motherboard QVL list for tested/compatible memory (see the motherboard manufacturer website). It appears that there is still some optimisations being made and tweaked which is improving compatibility and stability, so you will also need to keep an eye out for later BIOS updates for your motherboard.
Overclocking Ryzen is very simple, the baseclock is locked (to 100MHz) and thus the only frequency adjustments that you need to make are on the CPU core ratio. This is one in 0.25X (25MHz) increments and allows a very fine control over the expectant CPU frequency. Your CPU results will vary depending on cooler/ Silicon lottery, but we managed to hit around 4.05GHz comfortably.
As some preliminary testing, we ran some CS:GO benchmarks. Notoriously CPU bound, these numbers will help give some a guideline as what they can expect.
CS:GO Max settings, 1080P Dust II, for 5 rounds W/ RX480
Ryzen 7 1700 stock speeds (memory, 2133mhz): 162.83 FPS avg
Ryzen 7 1700 stock speeds (memory, 3000mhz): 176.67 FPS avg
Ryzen 7 1700 Overlocked (4.05ghz, memory 3000MHz): 205.44 FPS avg
Further testing revealed that CS:GO is bound to using 4 cores. Should CS:GO be updated to use the Source Engine 2, it will be able to make better use of all its cores and threads.
*Edit*
Here it is worth mentioning that Ryzen 'officially' supports DDR4 memory up to 2667MHz, however the fastest we have been able to achieve is around 3000MHz. There is some limitations of the kind of memory that you can use (whether it is single, or dual rank arrangement) with dual rank memory being limited to lower clockspeeds. However, in our testing you will see that Ryzen keeps pace with the Intel i7 CPUs (except against the quad channel chips) with lower memory frequencies. So bare this in mind when selecting a Ryzen setup and be sure to check the motherboard QVL list for tested/compatible memory (see the motherboard manufacturer website). It appears that there is still some optimisations being made and tweaked which is improving compatibility and stability, so you will also need to keep an eye out for later BIOS updates for your motherboard.
Overclocking Ryzen is very simple, the baseclock is locked (to 100MHz) and thus the only frequency adjustments that you need to make are on the CPU core ratio. This is one in 0.25X (25MHz) increments and allows a very fine control over the expectant CPU frequency. Your CPU results will vary depending on cooler/ Silicon lottery, but we managed to hit around 4.05GHz comfortably.
As some preliminary testing, we ran some CS:GO benchmarks. Notoriously CPU bound, these numbers will help give some a guideline as what they can expect.
CS:GO Max settings, 1080P Dust II, for 5 rounds W/ RX480
Ryzen 7 1700 stock speeds (memory, 2133mhz): 162.83 FPS avg
Ryzen 7 1700 stock speeds (memory, 3000mhz): 176.67 FPS avg
Ryzen 7 1700 Overlocked (4.05ghz, memory 3000MHz): 205.44 FPS avg
Further testing revealed that CS:GO is bound to using 4 cores. Should CS:GO be updated to use the Source Engine 2, it will be able to make better use of all its cores and threads.
