I have been kindly sent the Ryzen 7 1800X and the MSI X370 XPOWER Gaming to review from AMD… and the performance is something to be reckoned with.
R7 1800X: The Specifications and Appearance
The AMD Ryzen 7 1800X is the top of the line, 8 core, 16 thread CPU AMD released today, March 2nd, for $500.
The CPU has a base clock of 3.6 Ghz (although I typically see it sit right at 3.7 Ghz under load) and will boost all the way up to 4.1 Ghz with XFR provided there is ample temperature headroom. For more detailed information on the CPU cache, and speed see the below photo:
The physical appearance of the CPU is more or less akin to that of previous generation AMD CPU’s like the FX 8370, except for the fact that it has a Ryzen logo on the CPU.
Also in the above photo is the MSI X370 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM which is the motherboard I am using in this review, which I will refer to as the MSI Titanium from now on in the review.
Test Rig
- AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
- MSI X370 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM
- 16 GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000 MHz DDR4 @ 2400Mhz
- 2 Tb Seagate HDD
- Sapphire R9 390 Nitro w/Backplate
- Corsair AX 750
- Enermax T40 Cooler
The motherboard
The MSI X370 XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM is a really good motherboard. The BIOS is easy to navigate through for overclocking settings- all you need to do to overclock is set the target frequency, and set enough volts to make sure the CPU will run well. The only issues I have found so far with it are ones caused by it having BIOS code that, being early BIOS revision, make certian things not work as well as they could. The only big one is the memory- it is in my testing very unhappy with anyhting more than 2666 Mhz, but later BIOS revision will likely remedy this issue.
From an aesthetics aspect, I personally like the motherboard. I’ve never been one for white themed builds, but this motherboard has a very good look to it. And has RGB lighting both underneath the motherboard, and along the traces of the audio PCB. One of the most interesting things I found about the motherboard is that the LED readout doubles as the temperature readout when the PC is in the OS.
The R7 1800X: Rendering and Basic overclocking scores
First up to test the Ryzen 7 1800X is Cinebench R15 and R11.5. Both are at stock clock speeds.
First up is Cinebench R15 where the stock Ryzen 7 1800X is sitting at 1591 CB, right about where the AMD slides had it at 1601. This is a very impressive showing from the CPU, putting it in well above the 5960X at stock and even what the the 6900K usually does at stock settings.
For a frame of reference, the FX 8370 when clocked to 5 ghz got a score of 765 in Cinebench R15.
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This is, at least in rendering tasks like Cinebench R15, a whopping 2.08 times faster than the last CPU AMD has released.
Next up is the older Cinebench, Cinbench R11.5- where the Ryzen 7 1800X also scores incredibly well in.
Again comparing it to the FX 8370 which is seen below while at a 5.3 Ghz overclock:
The FX 8370 was only able to score 8.7 at 5.3 Ghz. Where the Ryzen 7 1800X is able to handily beat it at stock speeds by getting a score of 17.77, which is almost double that of the 8370’s score.
Another benchmark that is useful to compare the sheer compute power of CPUs is GPUPI. I ran the Ryzen 7 1800X on the “1B Hwbot Both” Setting and got a score of 3 minutes, 41 seconds.
This is almost half the time an FX 8370 that is at 5 Ghz takes, which is 7 minutes and 12 seconds.
Another multi threaded benchmark is Wprime. The Ryzen 7 1800X does pretty well here too, finishing the benchmark in 1 minute and 31 seconds for the 1024M test.
Compared to the max overclock I have on the FX 8370 of 5.307 Ghz which scored 3 minutes, 25 seconds:
The Ryzen 7 1800X is, at least in wprime, 2.25 times faster than a 5.3 Ghz FX 8370.
Moving on to a couple of scores with the Ryzen 7 1800X while overclocked to 4Ghz on all cores with XFR enabled, the performance is quite impressive as well. For only a 400 Mhz bump in the base clock, the performance of the CPU in Cinebench R15 goes from 1591 all the way to 1724, a 9% increase for the 11% clock speed increase. Which is incredibly good scaling.
A different synthetic benchmark that is fairly good at measuring the CPU performance is CPUz’s built in benchmark and you can see here while at 4 Ghz it outperforms the i7 5960X by a massive margin in single and multi-thread applications, despite having similar core counts. AMD has really gotten it right for this test anyway.
Gaming Benchmarks
I’ll be testing a variety of games, the first is Deus EX: Mankind Divided. The Ryzen 7 1800X paired with an R9 390 did pretty well here, and this is at the Ultra preset at 1920×1200. The average FPS is 41.2, with a minimum of 16.8, and a max of 55 FPS.
Next is Hitman Absolution, and the settings are below for it:
The result of the benchmark:
As you can see there is no bottle necking here. The 1800X has more than enough power to let the R9 390 really show what it can do, and achieved an average FPS of 75.9, with a minimum of 62 and maximum of 96 FPS.
Next up: Middle Earth Shadows of Mordor. This was run at the Ultra preset and while at 1920×1200. Another good run for the system, and it scored an average FPS of 91.6 FPS with a minimum of 59.3 and a maximum of 140.54 FPS.
Lastly, what may seem like an odd choice but this is a game I have been using to benchmark how well a CPU can handle insane number of draw calls- Empire Total War. I loaded up a 4v4 battle, with myself and 7 AI armies in it. Why is this such a stress on the CPU? Because each and every person in each unit in the game gets draw calls- which adds to an incredible amount of them while in a 4v4 battle.
A photo of the battle:
The settings I used are below:
The performance of the Ryzen 7 1800X is quite impressive. Under the same exact kind of load, an FX 8370 averages 25 FPS with dips into the 10s. The Ryzen 7 1800X kept a stable 55 average FPS, with a minimum of 39 FPS and a maximum of 80 FPS over a 30 minute battle.
Overclocking the Ryzen 7 1800X
The MSI Titanium and the Ryzen 7 1800X are an absolute breeze to overclock with. You simply set the CPU target speed in the BIOS, and then give it enough volts to be stable at that speed. However, cooling the 1800X is another story. Using an Enermax T40 cooler, I overclocked the 1800X to 4 Ghz from the stock 3.6 Ghz and it was very borderline overheating. This brings up another interesting point: the new thermal max for the 1800X is 80 degrees Celsius, vs the 70C of the FX 83xx CPU’s. With that in mind, I was able to get to the 4 Ghz mark under air cooling, while just barely staying below the 80C mark while under heavy load. Under water cooling you can expect to see anywhere between 4.1 Ghz on all cores to 4.4 Ghz, depending on the ability of the cooler and if you won the silicon lottery or not.
While at stock speeds under decent air cooling, the 1800X does stay pretty cool though- it sits between 40 and 65 Celsius while at idle and under load, respectively.Conclusion & Thoughts
Performance of the 1800X: For $500 this is one of the best performing CPU’s on the market at any price, let alone only for $500. and the performance is definitely there.
Value: $500 and it handily outclasses the $1000+ Intel CPU’s, so it’s a definitely well-priced CPU.
Platform: Up to date, usually good for overclocking providing you have the cooling to really push things, and all the shiny features one expects.
Overall: For the money there is currently no better option to get the maximum performance you can. You may have slightly better FPS in games with a 7700K, but in most every other aspect the 1800X is going to serve you well when compared to any of the Intel offerings all the way up to the 6950X, which the 1800X can equal in multi core performance, and is much better at in single thread applications. I would say this is one of the most impressive AMD CPU’s in quite some time. It is definitely worth getting for productivity and rendering tasks, and is better in gaming than the incredibly expensive i7’s like the 5960x, 6900K, and 6950X will be in gaming.You can let me know your thoughts either in the comments down below, or over on twitter at @Nik_Caven if you like! Stay tuned for more guides. overclocking reviews, and other articles!
I was provided this hardware to review from AMD, but all opinions expressed above are entirely my own.