The AMD Ryzen 1800X launched at a whopping £488/$499 just over a year ago. Furthermore, the 1700X was £332.60, so you would expect similar for the new processors, right? Wrong! The fastest Ryzen consumer CPU to date, the 2700X hits the market today for around £299.99. I say around, as retailers are competing and you may find one a little cheaper if you hunt around. That’s just £50 more than the current price of the 1700X, which is £248.99, so for one generation to the other, it’s pretty fantastic value for money.
AMD is pulling no punches here, and the second generation of Ryzen lands with a mighty performance punch. Is it the Intel killer, I think the jury is still out on that, as AMD has long walked a different path, and that’s perfectly fine. This is a CPU built for those who like to do a little or a lot of everything. From those like myself who spend their days doing photo and video editing from 9-5 ish. However, come evening time, I find myself transcoding video, playing VR games, and kicking and enjoy 4K gaming. Beyond that, a bit of game streaming thrown in for good measure. Of course, this makes Ryzen perfect for me, and my 1700X has been a real workhorse. However, the 2700X is the new AMD king, and I think it’s time I upgrade.
I’m sure many would like to see a gigantic leap in CPU performance, wouldn’t we all, but that’s not how the CPU market works. What we have here is a moderate boost in pretty much every aspect of the Ryzen CPU. The clock speeds are higher, the IPC is a bit better, the efficiency is improved, the software is better, and so on. Again, not by a quantum leap, but better is better.
Capable of hitting 4.3 GHz using Max Boost Clock, the need to overclock this CPU is minimal. If you plan on taxing the CPU hard all day long, an aftermarket cooler will allow the CPU to run much faster on its own. Keep that heat moving, and the boost will redline all day long for you. However, if you’re running a high-end cooling solution, then overclocking yourself to 4.2 or 4.3 GHz if you’ve got a good chip 24/7 is possible too and brings some sizable performance gains.
Launching at much less than the first generation did, the new Ryzen CPUs are sure to fly off the shelves. Ryzen Gen 1 represents incredible value for money right now. However, at around £50 more for the newer chips, X470 and a 2700X is far more valuable to the enthusiast, offering more features and performance for a relatively small increase in price.
With some of the best gaming performance we’ve ever seen from AMD CPUs, we really can’t complain there. Of course, it set some of the fastest benchmarks we’ve ever seen for a consumer CPU too. The next step up is a Threadripper, and even then the 2700X beat that in a fair few benchmarks. If you’re looking for a jack of all trades CPU for demanding workloads at a reasonable price, this is it!
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