AMD Ryzen 7 vs Intel Core i7 Kaby Lake: Which CPU is best?

[Batu69]

AMD Ryzen 7 vs Core i7 Kaby Lake

 

COMPUTER CHIP FORERUNNERS AMD and Intel are the tech industry's longest-standing rivals when it comes to semiconductors. The pair have been battling for the attention of PC users, gamers, enthusiasts and manufacturers since the late '60s, and the fight between them is showing no sign of cooling off anytime soon.

 

Just when everyone thought Intel was the sure market leader, AMD went and launched its secret weapon, the Intel-killer known as Ryzen, claiming it to be its latest CPU to offer better performance at half the price or more of rival Intel Core i7 products.

 

But how do the specs stack up? While it's too early for us yet to say which is the best in terms of benchmark results, we can certainly pit the two chip rivals' respective processors to see which sounds best on paper. We compare the new AMD Ryzen chip to Intel's biggest and baddest offerings just how far it challenges the Core i7's supremacy in high-end computing.

 

Architectures
AMD's new Ryzen chip is based on its Zen microarchitecture, built on a 14nm FinFET manufacturing process and utilising a new AM4 socket. It also finally debuts AMD's Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) technology, which is similar to Intel's Hyper-Threading technology, where two threads are utilised per core.

 

Intel's latest Core i7 offering is based on the firm's Kaby Lake architecture, which is also produced using a 14-nanometer manufacturing process technology. It features faster CPU clock speeds, clock speed changes, and higher Turbo frequencies than previous versions, however, beyond these process and clock speed changes, little of the CPU architecture has changed from its predecessor, Skylake.

 

Chip families and specs
AMD's Ryzen offerings actually mimic the format of Intel's chip families in terms of both name and performance skews. For instance, the AMD Ryzen 7 line competes with the Intel Core i7, the Ryzen 5 with the Intel Core i5 and the budget-priced Ryzen 3 with Intel's Core i3. 

 

 

AMD's top-spec Ryzen CPU is the Ryzen 7 1800X processor, a CPU with eight cores, supporting the execution of 16 threads, a 3.6GHz base clock and the ability to boost up to 4GHz Turbo Clock. Intel's Kaby Lake equivalent is the Core i7 processor, the i7-7700K, which boasts a 4.2 GHz clock speed, four cores and an 8MB cache.

 

However, it's important to note that AMD's Ryzen 7 1800X processor isn't the only new chip in the new lineup. Just down the range is the Ryzen 7 1700X, an eight-core, 16-thread chip running at a slower 3.4GHz base and 3.8GHz Turbo Core. Then there's the Ryzen 7 1700, another eight-core chip with 16 threads, but running at a lower 3GHz base clock and 3.7GHz Turbo Core. Both the 1700X and 1800X have a TDP of 95W, while the regular 1700 is rated at 65W.

 

While all these high-end CPU offerings seem awfully expensive, AMD's cheaper and lower performance offerings - Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 3 processors - will be available later this year to rival Intel's Core i3 and Core i5 chips.

 

Performance
As for performance, most people generally consider Intel to be better than AMD, and according to performance expectations, the same could ring true with the companies' latest releases. For example, the prelim benchmarks of AMD's 3.6GHz Ryzen 1800X CPU compared to a Kaby Lake 4.2GHz Intel Core i7 7700K CPU is slightly weaker. However, because AMD is going after the resurgent PC gaming market, its Ryzen chips are overclockable and thus can be run at much faster speeds than advertised.  

 

The extra processor cores offered by Ryzen compared to Kaby Lake (eight instead of four) also mean that certain tasks should run much faster than Intel's equivalent chips. And given that the Kaby Lake CPU offering doesn't really offer much of a performance improvement over 2015's Skylake, gamers might well choose an AMD processor and motherboard for their next upgrade.

 

So if you need power and use your PC for processes such as 3D rendering, video encoding or gaming, and know that these tasks run better on multiple cores, then it might be worth investing in AMD.

Price
AMD's top-spec Ryzen CPU is the Ryzen 7 1800X processor can be found for £489 over at Amazon. Intel's flagship Core i7-7700K costs just £320 on Amazon, a significant difference in price. However, come down in performance a little and AMD's Ryzen 7 becomes more affordable. The Ryzen 7 1700X is currently priced at £390, while the Ryzen 7 1700 will set you back around £320, depending on where you buy it from.

 

Article source

[rudrax]

One thing AMD can't afford to do is to raise the price beyond Intel. People won't even care to consider them as a secondary option while buying a CPU even if there is a bit of performance gain, comparatively. Intel have won the trust of the people to such a extent that AMD will have to come up with a quantum leap over Intel in terms of performance keeping the price identical to Intel's or cut the price half for the similar performance gains near or slightly better than Intel. Only then AMD stands a chance against Intel in SiliconValley. 

[vitorio]

Source link: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/feature/pc-components/amd-vs-intel-amd-ryzen-vs-intel-kaby-lake-which-processor-is-best-3528212/

 

What are Intel and AMD up to now? At the start of 2017 both Intel and AMD were in the process of releasing their latest generation of CPUs. Intel is now on its seventh generation of Core processors - codenamed Kaby Lake - and AMD appears to have a stormer on its hands in the form of Ryzen. Intel's Kaby Lake range covers everything: desktops, laptops, tablets, 2-in-1s and servers. What we haven't yet seen is the ultra-high-end enthusiast chips (dubbed Kaby Lake X). AMD, on the other hand, is going after the resurgent PC gaming market. Its Ryzen chips are all overclockable and thanks to their many cores have matched or beaten Intel's equivalent chips. Given that the 7th-gen Kaby Lake doesn't really offer much of a performance improvement, gamers might well choose an AMD processor and motherboard for their next upgrade. However, AMD is also battling another company - Nvidia - in the gaming arena. Its current Polaris platform - including the RX 480 - is no match for Nvidia's Pascal, which has just given us the Titan Xp. But the upcoming Vega platform could bring similar performance at a lower price, or even beat Pascal entirely.

[trufpal]

5 hours ago, rudrax said:

One thing AMD can't afford to do is to raise the price beyond Intel. People won't even care to consider them as a secondary option while buying a CPU even if there is a bit of performance gain, comparatively. Intel have won the trust of the people to such a extent that AMD will have to come up with a quantum leap over Intel in terms of performance keeping the price identical to Intel's or cut the price half for the similar performance gains near or slightly better than Intel. Only then AMD stands a chance against Intel in SiliconValley. 

If we compare the price based on cores/thread counts then AMD actually already cut the price in a half!

• Ryzen 7 1800X (8c/16t) $470
• Intel Core i7-6900K (8c/16t) $1,050

Ryzen is actually pretty competitive in both price and performance compared to current gen Intel. Another thing worth to point out is all Ryzen processors are unlocked for overclocking. Unlike Intel which only possible to do on K version processors.

 

In the end it depends on what kind of workloads we would like to throw on our system. Like this section of the post point out.

8 hours ago, Batu69 said:

So if you need power and use your PC for processes such as 3D rendering, video encoding or gaming, and know that these tasks run better on multiple cores, then it might be worth investing in AMD.

 

From consumer standpoint, it nice to see AMD finally go into the right direction. That will make the market more competitive and hopefully will make Intel stop putting overpriced tag on their top tier processors.

[straycat19]

3 hours ago, trufpal said:

If we compare the price based on cores/thread counts then AMD actually already cut the price in a half!

 

Exactly.  Everyone wants to compare it to the i7-7700 which is half the chip of the Ryzen 7-1800x.  The Ryzen is the better chip and a better deal.  AMD may have fallen behind somewhat on processors but their offerings have always been cheaper than comparable intel chips.  The key word is comparable.  I started using AMD processors back in 1999 with the K6 III-400.  It was a good solid chip, cheaper than intel, but performance was very good.  For people who wanted bang for the buck without a high cost AMD was the way to go.  And when Intel came out with the Pentium III (also called the Pentium !!! by intel)  that used the Slot 1 socket, and stood up on  your motherboard like a daughterboard, AMD received a real boost.  AMD has always offered a solid CPU though Intel fanboys will never admit it because they have never used one.  The Slot 1 socket didn't catch on, thank the computer gods, and business got back to normal.  If you never saw one, here is a Slot 1 processor in its heatsink and without the heatsink.

 

 

[trufpal]

@straycat19

 

I'm disappointed that benchmarks nowadays are too focused on games. Intel might still have slight advantage in games but on tasks that rely on CPU's power Ryzen beats Intel. Still, apparently it's not enough to drive public perception who are gaming minded.

 

I've also read on some forums that many people claim that Ryzen showing it's true power when doing multiple heavy workloads simultaneously. Keep in mind there's no credible tests/benchmarks on this. So take it with grain of salt.

[nIGHT]

I really really like this good news!

Intel pricing is not the only ridiculous thing about them but also the almost stagnant innovation per chip release, features and offerings.

Now we have a choice(processor speed, # of cores, features ht or smt, etc) that is not only limited to the intel brand.

[rudrax]

It won't be a valid argument if we put two different generation CPUs for comparison. If that were so, then we could've compared the i7-3960X ($1099) with the Ryzen 7 1800X ($499), where Ryzen will vastly outperform the i7-3960X even though the price difference is half.

 

So the valid argument will be between i7-7700K ($349) and Ryzen 7 1700X ($399) or Ryzen 7 1700 ($326). We can only compare the Ryzen 7 1800X with Intel's upcoming $499 CPU in the same generation lineup.

 

You can see in the benchmarks below that the Ryzen 1700X performs slightly better (2-5 fps yield), which of course should complement the extra $49 bucks taken by Ryzen.

 

DX11 gaming

DX12 gaming

Vulkan & OpenGL gaming

3D Mark FS

 

So looking at the above benchmarks, I won't consider buying a Ryzen 7 1700X over i7-7700K paying $49 extra bucks for just 2-5 fps yield. I would only consider buying the Ryzen 7 1700X if it were $99 cheaper i.e. $299. Only with this kind of performance-price different AMD will be able to make impact.

@trufpal

 

[Sylence]

Intel fanboys don't like to talk about dispatchers Intel uses in programs, games etc to lower performance for AMD CPUs?

[trufpal]

2 hours ago, rudrax said:

It won't be a valid argument if we put two different generation CPUs for comparison. If that were so, then we could've compared the i7-3960X ($1099) with the Ryzen 7 1800X ($499), where Ryzen will vastly outperform the i7-3960X even though the price difference is half.

 

So the valid argument will be between i7-7700K ($349) and Ryzen 7 1700X ($399) or Ryzen 7 1700 ($326). We can only compare the Ryzen 7 1800X with Intel's upcoming $499 CPU in the same generation lineup.

 

You can see in the benchmarks below that the Ryzen 1700X performs slightly better (2-5 fps yield), which of course should complement the extra $49 bucks taken by Ryzen.

 

DX11 gaming

DX12 gaming

Vulkan & OpenGL gaming

3D Mark FS

 

So looking at the above benchmarks, I won't consider buying a Ryzen 7 1700X over i7-7700K paying $49 extra bucks for just 2-5 fps yield. I would only consider buying the Ryzen 7 1700X if it were $99 cheaper i.e. $299. Only with this kind of performance-price different AMD will be able to make impact.

@trufpal

 

Let me ask this then. Are you aware that from 6th to 7th gen Intel isn't much of a jump in terms of performance? 7700K is better in single core performance, but on multicore 6900K wrecked it by significant margin. So it still relevant to compare 6th gen Intel to Ryzen. Even more relevant that Intel costs ridiculous amounts of money at similar cores/threads.

 

I don't know about legitreviews. But for some reason the name itself threw me off and i'm not gonna give my 100% trust to it. Ryzen gaming benchmarks from other sources seems to disagree with your source. Here's some example:

• DX12: Hitman from Guru3D (complete tests also available)
• Game benchmarks from hardwarecanucks (complete tests available here as well)

Ryzen in general still can't beat Intel in gaming (albeit the gap isn't big) that's the reality. But as i said before, in tasks that rely more on CPU it able to beat Intel. That being said, Ryzen is a great option for people who need extra cores for their workloads. It will get the job done for them while still very very capable for gaming with far cheaper price than Intel's counterparts.

[pc71520]

AMD...more value for money...

[rudrax]

1 hour ago, trufpal said:

Let me ask this then. Are you aware that from 6th to 7th gen Intel isn't much of a jump in terms of performance? 7700K is better in single core performance, but on multicore 6900K wrecked it by significant margin. So it still relevant to compare 6th gen Intel to Ryzen. Even more relevant that Intel costs ridiculous amounts of money at similar cores/threads.

 

I don't know about legitreviews. But for some reason the name itself threw me off and i'm not gonna give my 100% trust to it. Ryzen gaming benchmarks from other sources seems to disagree with your source. Here's some example:

• DX12: Hitman from Guru3D (complete tests also available)
• Game benchmarks from hardwarecanucks (complete tests available here as well)

Ryzen in general still can't beat Intel in gaming (albeit the gap isn't big) that's the reality. But as i said before, in tasks that rely more on CPU it able to beat Intel. That being said, Ryzen is a great option for people who need extra cores for their workloads. It will get the job done for them while still very very capable for gaming with far cheaper price than Intel's counterparts.

Even though it is 10%, the Kaby Lake is still a jump over Skylake. We should consider what the both sides have their latest to offer. Ryzen is the latest thing in the market. So if you compare it to a $1099 i7-3960X Sandy Bridge, there will be no point as the development at that time frame wasn't so advanced as of now. We have to compare what both the sides have to offer in current time frame. So comparing Ryzen with Skylake is not valid. And about the core/thread thing, how many practical applications are there that can utilize all 8 cores/16 threads efficiently? Of course they are very few. 50% of the practical applications hardly uses 4 cores. So having more cores is practically just a show off thing in real world because we install applications that we need not those that uses all 8 cores but we don't need it.

 

Your benchmark sources shows Ryzen 7 1700X loosing the battle with i7-7700K. My source was showing Ryzen 7 1700X winning the battle even if by smallest margin. I can understand that as heat and humidity can effect performance in different places. IMO, i7-7700K and Ryzen 7 1700X are identical in terms of performance where the 7700K is $49 cheaper. Now you tell me, why will people choose Ryzen 7 1700X over i7-7700K paying $49 more for almost the same performance? Just because it has 8 cores? I don't think so.