Intel reigned supreme in being the leading innovator in terms of providing techies with 8-core processing capabilities. AMD has come to challenge that with their own processor, the Ryzen 7 1700, which is also an 8-core processor with a price that significantly competes with Intel's top-of-the-line offerings. But how does the Ryzen 7 do performance-wise?
Due to lack of competition, Intel could dictate the price of their processors, and it was not cheap. As time went on, these prices decreased and Intel came up with their Core i7-7820X — still heavy on the wallet with a $600 asking price. The Ryzen 7 1700 offers the same specs as the Core i7-7820X, with eight cores and 16 threading capabilities, but costs less than half of the Core i7-7820X at $290 and is available for online purchase on Amazon.
Extensive benchmarking has been done to fully stack these processors against each other, and the differences are very minimal across the board. Intel's Core i7-7820X has proven to be the faster processor having a higher base processing speed at 3.6 - 4.3 GHz. With overclocking capabilities, this can be drastically increased. However, this processor is not compatible with all motherboards. The cheapest motherboard that the Core i7-7820X is compatible with is upward of $220 dollars. This puts consumers at a tough spot as far as budget is concerned.
Fortunately, the Ryzen 7 1700 is not only significantly cheaper, but it is compatible with most motherboards, offering potential consumers more options for customization, even those on tight budgets. Compared to the Core i7-7820X, the Ryzen falls short on the performance department when it comes to running various tasks and software — understandable given that it has lower processing speed at 3.0–3.7 GHz. However, the Ryzen 7 1700 plays games comfortably displaying 60 frames per second consistently. The Ryzen 7 is also overclock-able to further improve performance.
Overall, the Ryzen 7 1700 pales in comparison to the Core i7-7820X. However, benchmarking has proven that AMD's creation can compete with Intel's powerful processors when it comes to performance, at half the price.
