"After seeing this, I'm keen to do an in-depth 2500K revisit and compare it to CPUs such as the R5 1600 and i5-7600K."
I would love that, similarly to the comparison of the old i7-2600k and newer processors.
Great article! Thank you!
The R5 is not included here, but I seriously doubt the R5 would do better than the R7. See:
https://m.hardocp.com/article/2017/05/26/definitive_amd_ryzen_7_realworld_gaming_guide/13
And they wrote:
"
Overall, the Intel Kaby Lake 7700K CPU at 5GHz Z270 system provided the highest performance while gaming. Didn’t matter if it was single-GPU, multi-GPU, 1080p, or 1440p, or 4K, the most wins (at least in terms of raw data) are with the 7700K at an overclocked 5GHz.
Overall, the AMD Ryzen 7 1700X at an overclocked 4GHz provided the same performance and gameplay experience as the Intel 2600K on Z68 at 4.5GHz. It was most competitive with the 2600K CPU with both overclocked to the highest levels.
"
In short, you won't be getting better bang for the buck, fps per dollar going ryzen 5 over ryzen 3, and you certainly won't be getting better gaming performance with the R5 over the 7700k. All you get is mediocre for paying more to get caught in the middle.
You left out the flipside quote from that same review:
I would be remiss if I did not mention our six year old Intel Core i7-2600K, quite frankly it makes Intel and AMD look bad on the gaming front.
Pretty much any argument against replacing a Sandy Bridge Core i7 with a Ryzen 7 CPU also applies when considering "upgrading" from that Sandy Bridge to a Kaby Lake Core i7. Unless you
absolutely need some new feature (M.2 slots, more SATA 3, USB3.0, etc.), you're going to spend hundreds of dollars for very little improvement (literally, just looking at the tests with nVidia GPUs, the Kaby Lake averaged only 2.9% faster than the Sandy Bridge Core i7...& it's clocked 11% faster. So much for "IPC improvements" over 5 generations...).
Just for comparison, though, I looked at how much those builds would cost, based on [H]ardOCP's article. They were specific on some pieces, but vague on others, so I made some assumptions to have some common ground:
- 16GB G.Skill Trident-Z DDR4-3600 RAM ([H]ardOCP didn't specify what they used)
- Cooler Master Hyper TX3 ([H]ardOCP didn't specify what they used, so I picked one that works with both Ryzen & Kaby Lake)
- Since the Founder's Editions aren't available for purchase on PCPartPicker, I picked models that seemed to match the FE specs. Also, since the RX 480 line is notorious for being unavailable, & those that are in stock super-inflated in price, I didn't bother with those builds.
Intel i7-7700K builds:
Ryzen 7 1700X builds:
You'll note, in general, that right now the Ryzen build is running about $42 more. Most of that is because of the price difference on the CPU (currently ~$35USD). However, they also picked a slightly more expensive Ryzen motherboard. I'm not sure why, because the boards have some differences in features. I found it significant, though, that they did their testing with DDR4-3600 RAM, when the Ryzen motherboard won't run it at that speed (tops off at DDR4-3200). However, since I found only about a $20USD difference in price between 16GB sets of DDR4-3000 & DDR4-3600 RAM, it's not worth quibbling over.
Here's the thing, though: unless you
absolutely need 1 or more of the following, there's
no reason to pick the Gigabyte AX370-Gaming 5 board over their AB350-Gaming 3 board, otherwise you're spending money you don't need to:
-- 1 extra PCIe slot (runs at x8)
-- Supports SLI (2x or Quad) & 3x/4x CrossFire
-- 2 SATA Express connectors
-- 2 extra SATA III connectors
-- 1 U.2 connector
-- USB-C port
-- 5 exra USB 3.1 ports (1 Gen 2, 4 Gen 1; loses 1 USB 2.0/1.1 port)
-- Clear CMOS, Power, Reset, & OC buttons on motherboard
-- 2 BIOS switches
Remember, Kaby Lake CPUs
must have a Z270 motherboard to overclock, but the Ryzen CPUs can overclock on an X370
or a B350 motherboard. And, since the only SLI/CrossFire testing that [H]ardOCP did was with the RX 480, you don't need SLI on your motherboard, just CrossFire...& Gigabyte's AB350-Gaming 3 motherboard provides that. Going with the B350 board saves you $89 on your build costs, which means the Ryzen builds end up now being $47USD cheaper. That may not seem much, but for these builds that's roughly a 3-5% reduction in cost (6% if you don't need to buy a GPU).
Why is that significant? Because out of the 30 test results I compared (10 games, 3 GPU/Resolution combinations = 30 tests), only 9 out of the 30 tests showed a performance difference greater than 5% between the #1 CPU & the #3 CPU -- & of those 9 results, 2 of them were in situations where that bottom CPU wasn't the Ryzen 7, it was the Sandy Bridge i7 (GTA V @ 4K, Battlefield 1 @ 1080p with GTX 1060). And out of those 30 tests, the only truly significant result for average FPS was with GTA V @ 1440p (11.9FPS drop from Kaby Lake Core i7 to Ryzen 7 1700X, or 15.85% drop); the closest to that result was with Fallout 4 @ 1440p, but I'd hesitate to call it significant (8.89% drop, but only 6.9FPS total drop). And in 29 out of the 30 tests, not only did the Ryzen 7 average at least 60FPS at that resolution, the
only test that it failed to achieve that performance, the Kaby Lake Core i7 also failed to achieve it (Watch Dogs 2 @ 4K with GTX 1080Ti; Ryzen managed 56FPS average, i7-7700K only made it to 59.2FPS average). In fact, ignoring the 2 test results where the 1700X beat the 7700K (Sniper Elite 4 & Tom Clancy's The Division, both with GTX 1060 @ 1080p), the 7700K on average was only 4.55% faster than the 1700X.
And that hasn't even touched on the fact that in general testers have been able to oveclock a Ryzen 7 1700 to the same speeds as the 1700X. That's another $60 off the Ryzen cost, or a drop of 8-15% compared to the Kaby Lake build. Spending 8-15% more just to get a 5% improvement in performance doesn't seem very cost-effective. And there's a tangible difference in this, as that's more than enough to cover the cost difference between a GTX 1060 & a GTX 1080 (or, in other words, barring the cost for the monitor, it's enough to cover the cost to move from 1080p gaming to 1440p gaming).[/B]
