AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Thrashes $1,000 Intel Core i7-5960X In Latest Benchmark Leak
Whether or not Ryzen ends up returning AMD to its former glory in the enthusiast market remains to be seen, but the good news for folks hoping for some competition in the high-end sector is that leak after leak suggest Ryzen is the real deal. We've seen a spattering of encouraging benchmarks, the newest of which has AMD's Ryzen 7 1700X processor sprinting past Intel's Core i7-5960X chip in Cinebench.
Before we get to the performance numbers, let's compare the specs of both processors. For performance junkies, the Ryzen 7 1700X is poised to be one of the most popular Ryzen chips among the anticipated 17 SKUs AMD is rumored to be releasing. It has 8 physical cores, 16 threads, 16MB of L3 cache, and a 95W TDP according to early leaks. The chip runs at 3.4GHz to 3.8GHz, or even higher using a new technology AMD calls XFR (Extended Range Frequency). It's expected to cost $389, making it the bang-for-buck choice among power users.
Intel's Core i7-5960X is a mighty Haswell-E processor with 8 cores, 16 threads, and 20MB of cache. It runs at 3GHz to 3.5GHz and retails for around $1,000, or 157 percent more than the anticipated price of AMD's Ryzen 7 1700X.
*Graph plots scores from our internal Intel benchmark runs with unverified numbers from XFastest
A $1,000 processor should stomp all over a chip that (allegedly) costs less than half as much, but it looks like Ryzen is ready to flip the script. The folks over at XFastest benchmarked a retail Ryzen 7 1700X processor in Cinebench R15 where it scored 154 in single-thread performance and 1,537 when allowed to tap all 8 cores and 16 threads.
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We plotted those numbers in a graph we previously compiled when reviewing Intel's Core i7-6950X to see where the Ryzen 7 1700X would land among the competition. As you can see in our performance chart above, it lands ahead of the Core i7-5960X and trounces all over both AMD's previous generation FX parts and the Intel Core i7-6700K.
The Ryzen 7 1700X score was supposedly taken from a finalized slice of silicon rather than an engineering sample (ES) or qualification sample (QS). As we saw in a photo yesterday purportedly depicting trays full of production Ryzen processors, the final heat spreader designs sports an emblazoned "RYZEN" logo in big lettering.
Along with previous benchmarks, including a SiSoftware SANDRA Ryzen benchmark leak, what all this suggests is that AMD's Ryzen will at least be competitive with the best that Intel has to offer. Best case scenario (for AMD) is that Ryzen dominates the board from top to bottom, based on AMD's hopefully aggressive pricing.
Of course, Intel will have a chance to respond and it's rumored the Santa Clara chipmaker is readying new Kaby Lake processors. It also has Coffee Lake on the horizon, along with Cannonlake towards the end of the year or early next year.
Bottom line? Things are about to get interesting again in the CPU market.
Along with previous benchmarks, including a SiSoftware SANDRA Ryzen benchmark leak, what all this suggests is that AMD's Ryzen will at least be competitive with the best that Intel has to offer. Best case scenario (for AMD) is that Ryzen dominates the board from top to bottom, based on AMD's hopefully aggressive pricing.
Of course, Intel will have a chance to respond and it's rumored the Santa Clara chipmaker is readying new Kaby Lake processors. It also has Coffee Lake on the horizon, along with Cannonlake towards the end of the year or early next year.
Bottom line? Things are about to get interesting again in the CPU market.
