My take on what I’ve read regarding Ryzen 1800X performance.

Abstract:

So far, its about what I expected.

Full Text:

I’ll not bore with details. Better writers than I have expounded at the various review sites. I’m just summarizing my opinion (I have not run any tests, yet).

Ryzen 1800X wins a few and loses the rest, as expected, by me. At this point in the process, winning a few is important; but, losing the rest is less important. Why? Because the code in the various tests/games is optimized for Intel; but, not optimized for Ryzen.

The fact that Ryzen wins a few indicates to me that Ryzen hardware is on a par with Intel – not better, not equal, but very similar. Hardware on a par means core-for-core, clock-for-clock, thread-for-thread (to me). Ryzen actual application/game performance depends on optimized application/game code – of which, there is probably virtually none, yet.

As pointed out in some of the reviews, Ryzen is new hardware. Software must be updated to account for Ryzen features. Then, Ryzen should look better in benchmarks. Older software/games will not likely be changed – so Ryzen performance will not improve significantly on those. Still, as pointed out in some of the reviews, AMD is working with some developers to update code – as we “speak”.

Meantime, Ryzen seems fast enough to play everything at good FPS (not the fastest, and beauty is in the eye of the beholder). In a few situations, Ryzen 1800X virtually ties with I7 7700K because the test/game is apparently GPU limited. In some cases, Ryzen falls so far behind that I suspect non-optimized code.

However, at $500, Ryzen 1800X is not a cost effective “games only” CPU. Its strength shows in heavily threaded applications – there it is very cost effective. According to some of the articles, the high-end DX12 games seem to be moving towards multiple threads – and Ryzen did better in a couple of those.

Conclusion:

Thus, long term, Ryzen is on the right track, I think. We’ll see how it performs in a few months in tests with Ryzen optimized code. However, for games, quad-core is plenty today; thus, I do not expect Intel fans to “change sides” just yet

All this is “first day” opinion. We’ll see how I see it after I finish my build