Ryzen 7 1700x oc: AMD Ryzen 7 1700X: Overclocking & Test Setup

AMD Ryzen 7 1700X: Overclocking & Test Setup

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Overclocking And Test Setup

Overclocking

You can download AMD’s Ryzen Master utility from the company’s website. The tool makes overclocking from within Windows nice and convenient. However, we still prefer making firmware-based adjustments.

Our 1800X hit 4 GHz at 1.425V across all of its cores in our launch article, but we stepped that back to a more conservative 3.9 GHz overclock in this piece to represent a safer long-term frequency. We achieved Prime95 stability on both the 1800X and 1700X by dialing core voltage up to 1.3875V and bumping CPU SoC voltage to 1. 2V. We left Load Line Calibration set to Auto, but boosted the Crucial LPX memory modules to DDR4-2933 for our overclocked setups. That’s only a slight increase over the DDR4-2699 we used for the stock gaming configurations.

While we’ve seen many enthusiasts hit 4.0-4.1 GHz with much higher voltages, AMD says 1.35V is the «safe» ceiling for long-term overclocking. We didn’t run into any thermal issues at 3.9 GHz, and recorded 70°C (per AIDA) after a two-hour Prime95 run with the capable Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 heat sink in place. Waste heat appears to accumulate quickly at higher clock rates (we hit 82°C at 4 GHz using Corsair’s h200i v2). Invest in a beefy cooler if you plan on pushing the limits of Ryzen’s frequency headroom.

Test Setup

We’ve experienced general platform instability with numerous AM4-based motherboards and early firmware revisions. This is typically pinned on unoptimized AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture microcode. AGESA is a bootstrap protocol that initializes processor cores, memory, and the HyperTransport (now Infinity Fabric) controller. We’re using Asus’ Crosshair VI Hero for this round of testing, along with the latest 1001 firmware. This version demonstrated improved stability at stock and overclocked settings. We’ll continue to monitor the firmware updates from other vendors and note when they’ve achieved a similar degree of stability. AMD is expected to release an AGESA revision in late March that should enhance memory support, including opening up more sub-timings.

Early firmware updates yielded large performance increases over AMD’s original press kit. As time goes on, though, the gains get smaller and smaller. Asus mentioned that we shouldn’t expect big changes from future builds.

In general, we’ve recorded more performance variation from Ryzen processors than we’re accustomed to in a few games. Ashes of the Singularity is one example. Incidentally, that’s also a title expected to improve once the developer follows up on promises to optimize for AMD’s architecture. We suspect that some of this inconsistency stems from the impact of cross-CCX thread migration and other peculiarities of Zen. In response, we’ve disabled several transitory background services that fire up with little to no provocation and may promote thread migration, such as Windows Search and Defender. Frequent reboots during testing also helped weed out obvious outliers, yielding more consistent results. We’re again testing under Windows’ High performance power plan with HPET disabled. As we demonstrated in our Ryzen 7 1800X review, some games benefit from disabling SMT, though that also leads to lower performance in other titles. Plus, we don’t think you should be expected to toggle this feature on and off. As such, we’re leaving SMT enabled for today’s story.

As expected, we also encounter graphics bottlenecks in several titles at 2560×1440. AMD argues that its Ryzen processors fare best at higher resolutions, for obvious reasons: as you start shifting the burden to your GPU, host processing weaknesses are easier to mask. Further, outside of one exception in Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, we only recorded minor hierarchy changes between FHD and QHD in our Ryzen Versus Core i7 in 11 Popular Games article. In other words, the same performance trends at 1920×1080 carry over to 2560×1440.

For this piece, we split testing between our German and American labs. The team in the U.S. ran the gaming benchmarks, while the Germans measured performance in HPC and workstation apps, and then collected thermal/power data. They used MSI’s X370 XPower Gaming Titanium motherboard and we went with Asus’ Crosshair VI Hero and an EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 FE. We stuck with AMD’s recommended presets for our stock configurations to minimize issues attributable to the dissimilar boards.

If you want to know more about how the Tom’s Hardware DE system looks and is controlled, check out How We Test Graphics Cards.

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Test Systems and Measurement Setups
Systems	Germany AMD 1Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700XMSI X370 XPower Gaming Titanium2x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 @2666 MT/sIntel LGA 2011-v3 Intel Core i7-6900K MSI X99S XPower Gaming Titanium 4 x 4GB Crucial Ballistix DDR4 2400Intel LGA 1151 Intel Core i7-7700K MSI Z270 Gaming 7 2 x 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200 @2400 MT/sAMD Socket AM3+ FX-9590 Asus Crosshair V Formula 2 x 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 2133 @1866 MT/sGermany All1x 1TB Toshiba OCZ RD400 (M. 2, System SSD)2x 960GB Toshiba OCZ TR150 (Storage, Images)be quiet Dark Power Pro 11, 850WWindows 10 Pro (All Updates)US AMD 1Ryzen 7 1800X, 1700XAsus ROG Crosshair VI Hero2x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 @2666 MT/sUS AMD 2AMD FX-8350MSI 970 Gaming2x Kingston HyperX DDR3-2133USA Intel 1Intel Core i7-7700KMSI Z270 Gaming M72x Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 @2400 MT/sUSA Intel 2Core i7-6900KASRock X99 Extreme44x Crucial DDR4-2400US All1TB Samsung PM863SilverStone ST1500, 1500WWindows 10 Pro (All Updates) Version 1607
Cooling	Germany- Alphacool Eispumpe VPP755 Pump — Alphacool NexXxoS UT60 Full Copper 240mm- Alphacool Eisblock XPX CPU-Alphacool Cape Corp Coolplex Pro 10 LT- 5x be quiet! Silent Wings 3 PWM- Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut US-Corsair h200iv2-Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4-Arctic MX-4
Case	Lian Li PC-T70 with Expansion Kit and Mods
Power Consumption Measurements	— Contact-free DC Measurement at PCIe Slot (Using a Riser Card) — Contact-free DC Measurement at External Auxiliary Power Supply Cable — Direct Voltage Measurement at Power Supply- 2 x Rohde & Schwarz HMO 3054, 500MHz Digital Multi-Channel Oscilloscope with Storage Function — 4 x Rohde & Schwarz HZO50 Current Probe (1mA — 30A, 100kHz, DC) — 4 x Rohde & Schwarz HZ355 (10:1 Probes, 500MHz) — 1 x Rohde & Schwarz HMC 8012 Digital Multimeter with Storage Function
Thermal Measurements	— 1 x Optris PI640 80Hz Infrared Camera- PI Connect Analysis Software with Profiles
Noise Measurements	— NTI Audio M2211 (with Calibration File)- Steinberg UR12 (with Phantom Power for Microphones)- Creative X7, Smaart v. 7- Custom-Made Proprietary Measurement Chamber, 3.5 x 1.8 x 2.2m (L x D x H)- Perpendicular to Center of Noise Source(s), Measurement Distance of 50cm- Noise Level in dB(A) (Slow), Real-time Frequency Analyzer (RTA) — Graphical Frequency Spectrum of Noise

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AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Review

Article NavigationPage 1: IntroductionPage 2: Technical SpecificationsPage 3: Test Setup & TestingPage 4: Temperatures & OverclockingPage 5: Power ConsumptionPage 6: Ray Tracing Performance POV-Ray 3.7Page 7: AES Encryption Performance — TrueCrypt 7.1a Page 8: Encoding Performance — X264 HDPage 9: Processing Features Performance — AIDA64Page 10: Memory Transfer Performance — AIDA64Page 11: Processing Power Performance Cinebench R15Page 12: Bandwidth Performance — SiSoftware SANDRAPage 13: Image Editing Performance — PCMark 8 PhotoshopPage 14: Overall System Performance — PCMark 8Page 15: VR Performance — VRMarkPage 16: 3D Performance — 3DMark FireStrikePage 17: Gaming Performance — Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMERPage 18: Conclusion

AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Review

👤by Tony Le Bourne
 Comments
📅02-04-17

Temperatures & Overclocking

Though running significantly warmer than the 65W TDP 1700 CPU, the 1700X does run a little cooler than the 1800X thanks to its overall lower clock speed, also our chip managed to overclock at a relatively decent voltage, meaning it ran just a little warmer than the 1800X under full load.

*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.*

*Using f5d BIOS on the GIGABYTE AX370-Gaming 5 motherboard*
Despite running at similar temperatures to the 1800X, we were unable to boot at 4. 1GHz or over, so we can only assume that the 1700X may be lower binned than the 1800X; which we are able to boot in at 4.15GHz. So rather than trying to pump more voltage through the CPU, we decided to find a respectable frequency to boot in at (4.05GHz) and then find the lowest voltage required to keep it stable. This ended up being a rather impressive 1.387V, much lower than we anticipated, thus resulting in relatively low overclock temperatures (similar to the stock 1800X temperatures) as well as giving respectable power consumption levels. We also noted some play in the frequency of the first CPU core, but we were unable to determine if this was down to XFR or some other aspect of the sense MI technology.

18 pages

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3

4

5

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»

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: Technical SpecificationsPage 3: Test Setup & TestingPage 4: Temperatures & OverclockingPage 5: Power ConsumptionPage 6: Ray Tracing Performance POV-Ray 3. 7Page 7: AES Encryption Performance — TrueCrypt 7.1a Page 8: Encoding Performance — X264 HDPage 9: Processing Features Performance — AIDA64Page 10: Memory Transfer Performance — AIDA64Page 11: Processing Power Performance Cinebench R15Page 12: Bandwidth Performance — SiSoftware SANDRAPage 13: Image Editing Performance — PCMark 8 PhotoshopPage 14: Overall System Performance — PCMark 8Page 15: VR Performance — VRMarkPage 16: 3D Performance — 3DMark FireStrikePage 17: Gaming Performance — Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMERPage 18: Conclusion

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I Love You 3000 — Hardware on DTF

More than two years have passed since the appearance of AMD Ryzen 7 1800X, and during this time a lot has changed in the processor market. But how much has the Zen architecture itself changed over time?

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There are currently three generations of Ryzen desktop processors, each based on a different architecture. The Ryzen 1000 series is based on the Zen architecture, which was developed by the company’s most experienced engineers, including former AMD employee Jim Keller. Ryzen 2000-series received an improved Zen + architecture, which is more of a work on the bugs, an update, and not a step forward. nine0003

With the arrival of the Ryzen 3000 series, we were introduced to Zen2. A huge step forward, but not in the growth of the frequency potential, but in energy efficiency (transition to the 7 nm process technology), performance per clock (according to various estimates — up to 15%), improved memory controller, manufacturability and an increase in the number of cores available for the AMD socket AM4. Undoubtedly, such improvements have also affected the cost of processors, but demand creates supply.

Today, in one review, we will take a two-year path of development of the Ryzen processor architecture from Zen to Zen2 and find answers to questions about IPC growth, the impact of Ryzen 3xxx multi-chip structure on inter-core delays, improved power consumption and much more. nine0003

Test stand

• Processors: AMD Ryzen 5 1600X, AMD Ryzen 5 2600X, AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
• Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B450-I GAMING
• RAM: G.SKILL F4-3600C16D-16GTRG 3400 MHz CL14-15-14-14-28 CR1 LT
• Video card: ASUS GeForce RTX 2080 Ti STRIX OC
• Cooling system: Alphacool Eisbaer Extreme Liquid
• Drive: Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 512 GB
• Power Supply: ASUS ROG-THOR-1200P 1200W
• Enclosure: Cooler Master Test Bench V2.0.

Test Method

Tests will be carried out in three directions:

• Comparison of performance, frequencies, power consumption and temperature at factory operating modes of processors and fixed parameters of RAM, which is available to all three generations — 3400 MHz with timings CL14-15-14-14- 28 CR1 LT (shortened secondary timings). nine0020
• Comparison of performance at fixed processor frequencies (4000 MHz at the minimum voltage for stable operation) and RAM settings.
• Acceleration.

Factory mode

Although there were almost no changes in frequency characteristics between Zen and Zen+, the introduction of Precision Boost 2, XFR2 and Precision Boost Overdrive changed the way processors work under various loads. nine0003

System logic drivers, motherboard microcodes, and the Windows 10 scheduler have also gone a long way and a wide range of fixes. In version 1903, optimizations for Ryzen have already been announced, allowing for low-threaded loads to perform a task within a single CCX, which should significantly affect the final performance at the cost of uneven heat distribution.

Using the Cinebench R20 as an example, let’s see how the Ryzen 5 1600X, 2600X and 3600X perform under various loads. nine0003

At full load, the first generation Ryzen shows a fairly simple algorithm of operation: the frequency of the cores does not drop or rise above 3700 MHz, while the operating voltage was 1.26 V most of the time, and the temperature was from 47 to 49 ° C with power consumption according to indicators SVI2/SMU 105W.

The

Ryzen 2600X has a smart clock boost system, and as a result, jumps from 3825 to 3900 MHz. The voltage in automatic mode corresponds to the VID of the processor, so we observe similar changes in state here. Despite the best technical process in terms of numerical indicators, in reality, no magic happened: increased frequencies increased the growth in power consumption to 115 W, followed by temperatures — from 52 to 55 ° C. nine0003

The third generation of Ryzen and the SMU to work with them are in the process of being upgraded, and at the moment we are seeing one of the transitional states: the average processor frequency is hovering around 4150 MHz at 1. 35 V, and according to SVI2, the processor power consumption was only 56 W, which looks more like a monitoring error. At the same time, it is impossible to compare all three processors in terms of heating: the area of ​​\u200b\u200bcrystals of processors of the first and second generation Ryzen is almost three times larger than the CCD of the 3000 series. Higher heat flow means higher heat dissipation requirements, less pleasant temperatures. nine0003

But after seeing the result, you forget about all the nuances: there is an incredible 35% performance difference between the Ryzen 5 1600X and 3600X! At the same time, the 2600X is only 8% ahead of its predecessor.

Let’s move on to single-core performance. This test has already lasted noticeably longer, and during this time it is possible to analyze the work of the Windows scheduler and system logic driver in relation to the “veteran” represented by the Ryzen 5 1600X.

And in this case, no improvement is seen: reaching the maximum acceleration frequency of the processor happened very rarely, and there is no connection to the core. Are all these improvements that we were told about on the Internet — a lie? Or maybe the lack of Precision Boost 2 affects? It is enough to look at the average core frequencies and see that there is no “favorite” during testing. nine0003

In other respects, XFR operation and compliance with passport characteristics are visible: the frequency at a low-flow load rises to 4100 MHz at some 1.5 V and above.

Ryzen 5 2600X speaks unequivocally — the scheduler works, the load is concentrated on 1-2 cores within one CCX. As a result, the frequency of the fourth core averaged 4000 MHz, and the maximum value of individual cores reached 4250 MHz at voltages no higher than 1.487 V. There are no deviations from the promised, while the processor consumes and heats up very moderately. nine0003

The scheduler handles the 3600X well too, allowing two cores to run at 4250-4300 MHz on average. The peak voltage is even lower than the 2600X, the temperature is slightly higher. It is worth noting that the processor did not reach the passport 4400 MHz even once during the entire test. AMD is aware of the issue, and new BIOS versions with the corrected SMU will be available to us soon. So far, 4350 MHz looks like the ultimate dream.

Some exceed the declared frequency, others do not reach it. As a result, in single-core performance, the gap between the Ryzen 5 3600X and its predecessors has decreased, and between the first and second generation, the same 8%. nine0003

But what about without AVX searches? I was able to find it in LinX 0.7.0, adapted for Ryzen processors. The volume of the task is 23118, which allows you to “fry” the crystals quite well.

With the Ryzen 5 1600X, everything is very clear, no change in operation.

For 2600X, everything is a little different: in an attempt to stay within the thermal package, the frequency is reset to 3700 MHz at a voltage of 1.16-1.22 V. As a result, power consumption is slightly lower than that of 1600X, and temperatures are higher.

Zen2 processors have doubled the number of floating point registers, so AVX2 operations for the 3600X create a noticeably greater load than Cinebench R20, which also uses these instructions. On average, the core frequency was 4100 MHz, leaving the processor within safe temperatures. nine0003

The potential of Zen2 has been revealed: more than two times superiority over its predecessors in terms of final performance!

But the difference in frequencies and voltages does not allow us to appreciate the full benefits of progress. It’s time to fix!

Comparison IPC

The frequency of all three processors was set to 4000 MHz with a minimum voltage that ensured stable operation of the system. Its stability was tested in LinX 0.7.0 with a task size of 34000.

nine0002 For the Ryzen 5 1600X, the operating voltage was 1.3 V. At the same time, the processor temperature did not exceed 58 ° C, and the power consumption was 127 W.

The

2600X at 4 GHz required 0.1 V less, but the increased performance resulted in the same heat dissipation and power consumption as the 1600X.

If for these processors the 4 GHz bar is overclocking, then the 3600X worked in the reduced frequency mode. A voltage of 1.137 V ensured stable operation at 60 W and 63 ° C at the maximum. nine0003

Lowering the operating frequency of the 3600X has narrowed the gap from its predecessors, but the double superiority has not disappeared.

SiSoftware Sandra allows you to explore the “innards” of processors in terms of machine performance: how quickly and how much data can be transferred from point A to point B per unit of time. : communication between cores from different CCX generated high latency. In the third generation Ryzen processors, the memory controller and other I / O elements were moved to a separate die. This solved the problem of uneven memory access when using multiple CCDs (Ryzen 93900X/3950X) that plagued us for two generations of AMD Threadripper. And as practice has shown, the exchange between cores in processors based on the Zen2 architecture is much faster.

If Zen+ improved the latency between cores from different CCX by 10ns, then in Zen2 the improvement reaches 40ns!

The inter-core throughput has also been increased.

The first level cache has become more than 2 times faster, the volume of the third level cache per CCX has also doubled. However, with an increase in RAM accesses, the superiority of Zen2 is replaced by a lag, and we will consider this case a little later. nine0003

Despite the excellent performance of internuclear exchange, the speed of access to RAM has decreased. Although the difference with a monolithic crystal in a chiplet structure is not so impressive.

The difference in latency between Zen and Zen + is also clearly visible: all the announced fixes really take place, and the latency reductions of the L2 and L3 caches indicate some kind of problem in the design of the first generation Ryzen.

The 3DMark test suite clearly shows that the improvements between Zen and Zen + at the same frequency do not exceed 5-6%, sometimes showing a smaller difference. Zen2, on the other hand, shows up to a 20% performance improvement over Zen, especially in combined tests. nine0003

The memory performance of the 3600X, other things being equal, is noticeably worse than that of its predecessors, which we can see in the AIDA64 cache and memory test. Both the memory controller in a separate chip and the limitation of the write bus to 16 bytes on the CCD have an effect, which led to a twofold drop in throughput in the corresponding tasks. In versions with 2 CCDs, there is no such problem, and the overall memory bandwidth is higher due to the multithreading of operations.

In other tests, the degradation in memory bandwidth and latency affected only Photoworxx, which is tied to the performance of the memory subsystem. In other cases, when using floating point operations, due to the increased volume of L3, the increase was significant and reached 100%. nine0003

In Cinebench R20, the difference between the first and second generation of Ryzen can be called cosmetic, and Zen2 flashed an increase of up to 15% in single-threaded operations and up to 22% in multi-threaded operations.

The

Corona lacks many of the new architecture’s improvements, but the lead is still impressive.

In CPU-Z version 1.90, Ryzen 5 1600X and 2600X show exactly the same result, but 3600X goes 7-9% ahead.

PCMark 10 reflects the performance of processors in real-life tasks that we perform every day: surfing, photo and video processing, working with documents, games and multimedia playback. Once again Zen2 shows itself in a great light. nine0003

In V-Ray 3600X will show 10% more rays than 2600X. So the RTX 2080 Ti is not far away.

WinRAR is sensitive to memory performance, and doubling the size of L3 offsets the decrease in bandwidth.

Testing in games was carried out at a resolution of 1920×1080, graphics settings — maximum, except for anti-aliasing. Nevertheless, the performance of the video card in almost all cases turned out to be sufficient so that it was not a limiting factor. nine0003

The

Ryzen 5 3600X shows measurable performance gains that are especially noticeable in random events. And framerate stability provides the best gaming experience.

There is a significant difference between 1600X and 2600X in some games. Perhaps not the last role in this is played by the Windows 10 1903 scheduler, which sympathizes with the second and third generations of Ryzen.

Acceleration

For my Ryzen 5 1600X, 4000 MHz at 1.3 V is the maximum frequency, further increase in voltage was not advisable. Therefore, 1.3 V became the starting point for other test participants. nine0003
The

Ryzen 5 2600 X hit 4200 MHz, which is a good result.

For 3600X, despite 7 nm and higher frequencies in the specifications, it was not possible to achieve above 4300 MHz. And yes, the results are excellent.

In doing so, I couldn’t help but take advantage of another Zen2 innovation — an improved memory controller. Achieving 3800 MHz in uclk=mem (1:1) mode was not difficult even with timings of 14-16-14-14-28.

Comprehensive overclocking had a positive effect on the delays and throughput of the system as a whole.