AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Review: 2700X And 2600X Deliver More Performance Per Dollar

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, April 19, 2018, 09:05 AM EDT

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Ryzen 7 2700X And Ryzen 5 2600X: Physics, Gaming, And Graphics

For our next series of tests, we moved on to some game-related metrics with 3DMark, specifically the physics benchmark that's part of the Fire Strike test, along with a couple of actual games. For the 3DMark Physics test, we simply create a custom 3DMark run consisting solely of the physics test, which is CPU dependent, and report the results...

Gaming: 3DMark Physics

Taking the GPU out of the Equation

Once again we see the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X outpace the Core i7-8700K and Core i7-7820X -- only the higher core count processors finish ahead in this multi-threaded benchmark. The Ryzen 5 2600X also performs well here. It clearly outruns the Ryzen 5 1600X and just misses the mark set by the pricier Core i7-8700K.

High Resolution Gaming Tests

1080P and 4K Gaming With GeForce GTX 1080

We also ran some high-resolution game and graphics tests on our test rigs 3DMark, Middle Earth: Shadow Of War and Rise Of The Tomb Raider. We used 3DMark's Fire Strike Extreme preset, and both of the games were run in two different configurations -- either 1080p with Medium details, or 4K with High/Very High details. The lower resolution tests are more CPU bound, while the higher resolution tests are more GPU bound.

The 3DMark Fire Strike CPU and game test results are tightly grouped, because they are mostly GPU limited, but you can see the overall score taper off with processors below the Ryzen 5 1600X mark. Because the Physics score is factored into the overall score, the Threadripper and Ryzen 7 2700X take the overall lead, however.

Moving on to the 1080p game tests, we see an interesting trend. Intel's latest Core architecture employed in its 8th Gen processors, produces the highest overall framerates at 1080p. The 2nd Gen Ryzen processors, however, aren't too far behind and they clearly have an advantage over their first-generation counterparts.

With the resolution cranked up to 4K and image quality details increased, the larger performance deltas witnessed in the 1080p tests essentially vanish and all of the platforms are limited by the GPU.