Introduction
Today we are going to directly compare and review performance between the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X CPU and AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU. Tested on the same motherboard, with the same memory, and the same configuration with the only difference being the CPU, we will see how the Ryzen Processors compare in 2020. With the next-generation Zen 3 processors on the horizon, this is a good time to see what kind of upgrade the 3700X has over the 2700X on an X570 chipset since prices are at extremely competitive numbers right now on new CPUs.
It has been a year since the Ryzen 7 3700X has been launched, and it’s been over two years since the Ryzen 7 2700X was launched. It’s important to not only look at performance when new hardware is launched but also after the hardware has been out for a while. This allows for firmware and software updates, BIOS updates, new AGESA software improvements, driver improvements, application version, and game patch improvements and of course, OS updates and patches. These things change performance over time and could mean comparison results are different after a given amount of time compared to when products launched. Therefore, we are going to perform a 2020 CPU comparison between the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 7 3700X.
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
First let’s do a little history lesson and look at the differences between both CPUs. The AMD Ryzen 7 2700X was launched on April 19, 2018. The Ryzen 7 2700X was a refresh of the Zen architecture that the previous Ryzen 7 1700X was based on. AMD dubbed this refresh Zen+, but that did not mean an architecture change, only a more refined manufactured process change. The manufacturing process improvement allowed higher clock speeds, higher all-core clock speeds and overclocks, and a slight ~50mV Vcore voltage reduction.
The Ryzen 7 2700X is manufactured on the GlobalFoundries 12nm (12LP) process. The Ryzen 7 2700X has 8 cores and 16 threads and runs at a base clock of 3.7GHz and a Turbo clock of 4.3GHz. It has 4MB of L2 cache, and 16MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 105W and was launched at $329. At the time, the latest motherboard chipset for this CPU was AMD’s X470 and it supports DDR4 2933.
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
The Ryzen 7 3700X is the direct successor to the Ryzen 7 2700X, but instead of just a refresh this time AMD managed a generational microarchitecture improvement called Zen 2 as well as a better node/manufacturer process at 7nm. In addition, AMD moved to a chiplet design, instead of one monolithic chip design. These upgrades gave the Ryzen 7 3700X a more substantial upgrade over the Ryzen 7 2700X than the 2700X did compare to the 1700X.
The Ryzen 7 3700X is manufactured on TSMC’s 7nm process. The Ryzen 7 3700X has 8 cores and 16 threads and runs at a base clock of 3.6GHz and a boost clock of 4.4GHz. Therefore, technically the base clock is slightly lower than the 2700X but the boost clock is slightly higher. You also have to account for the 10% IPC gain of the Zen 2 architecture over the Zen+ architecture.
It has 4MB of L2 cache and 32MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 65W and launched at $329, same as the 2700X. You can see that it has more L3 cache than the 2700X, a lower TDP but the same pricing. One other feature the 3700X has is support for PCI-Express 4.0. The new motherboard chipset that released alongside this CPU was AMD’s X570 with PCIe 4.0 support and DDR4 3200.
Comparisons based on X570 Chipset
What is going to make our performance comparison unique today is that we are comparing both CPUs on the Socket AM4 X570 chipset platform. When the Ryzen 7 2700X was released, the latest chipset released alongside was the X470 and it supported DDR4 2933 and only PCIe 2.0 to peripherals.
With the X570 chipset, however, which was released alongside the Ryzen 7 3700X we have a bit more platform performance to help the Ryzen 7 2700X. The X570 officially supports DDR4 3200 and has PCIe 4.0 support to peripherals. This means by putting the Ryzen 7 2700X in an X570 motherboard, we should have some kind of advantage with the higher RAM clock speeds than we would on X470.
We will put the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 7 3700X on the same X570 motherboard so the platform is as fast as possible, and exactly the same to isolate CPU performance. Ryzen 7 2700X is now getting a chance to run as fast as it possibly can. In addition, we are going to run our RAM at 3600MHz on both CPUs. This is something that was not always stable on Ryzen 7 2700X and previous CPUs. Now we can run very fast memory, at a high speed, with low timings, and remove any memory bottlenecks from the benchmarks. This will truly be a competitive CPU comparison using the latest motherboard chipset and features.
The motherboard we are testing on is the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi X570. This motherboard will ensure the absolute best performance on both CPUs. We are using the default “optimized defaults” BIOS settings on both CPUs. The only manual thing we changed was to enable DOCP on the RAM so that it runs at DDR4 3600MHz 16-19-19-1T. We also have the latest BIOS on this motherboard installed which is version 2103 dated 6/29/2020 and based on AMD AM4 AGESA V2 PI 1.0.0.2. That is another advantage of testing right now, in 2020, the Ryzen 7 2700X is also benefiting from the latest AGESA code.