If early reviews are any indication then it may just go to show that AMD's latest processor series — the Ryzen — has fallen short of fans' and critics' expectations.
The company launched its highly anticipated processors, the Ryzen 7 series 1800X, 1700X and 1700 a few days ago. Since then all three processors have been put to the test.
AMD is trying to challenge the benchmark which has been set by Intel's Kaby Lake processor — the Core i7 7700K — with its latest Ryzen series.
AMD Ryzen Processors: Specs
The Ryzen 7 series 1800X, 1700X and 1700 all feature octa-core processors with 16 threads. The 1800X houses a base clock of 3.5 GHz, while the 1700X comes with 3.4 GHz and the 1700 has a 3.0 GHz base clock.
Extended Frequency Range (XFR) is another added feature to the Ryzen series. This will make sure that the processors remain at an optimum temperature. XFR will be more prominent on the 1800X and the 1700X variants.
How Do They Fare?
While it is true that the Ryzen processors have followed through what AMD promised in 2015, the technologies are constantly evolving which has led to Intel's innovative designs faring better in the market.
Ryzen's all important challenge was to beat the Broadwell-E architecture present in Intel's chipsets, and the company has succeeded in doing that. However, it seems that AMD was too focused on the Broadwell-E aspect, while Intel has moved on and developed the Kaby Lake architecture which is even better.
The earlier report that the Ryzen 7 1800X will run at 95W TDP has been proven inaccurate by benchmark tests where the TDP has rocketed up to 140W.
For gamers too, the CPU has proven not to be as special as AMD had everyone believe, and the Kaby Lake processors belonging to Intel fared much better in this regard.
While web browsing and working on Microsoft Office, the Intel chipset proved to outshine the AMD Ryzen as well.
However, the Ryzen performed admirably in programs which needed the use of the multiple threads. In these programs, the processors managed to outperform its Kaby Lake rival.
Price
The AMD Ryzen 7 1800X is currently priced at $500, while the Ryzen 1700X costs $400. The lower end Ryzen 1700 is retailing at $330.
The prices are considerably high when compared with Intel's latest Core i7 7700K, which is priced at $350.
While it may be true that the new Ryzen series will do well in the market due to AMD's large fan following, the latest reviews and tests that have been conducted prove that the processors have failed to outpace Intel yet again.
