What you need to know about the AMD 2nd generation Ryzen processors
19 Apr 2018
Quick links
AMD Store MI boosts HDD Speed to SSD levels
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X benchmarked on the Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 7
MSI X470 Gaming 7 WIFI motherboard
AMD details pricing information of 2nd generation Ryzen processors
Unboxing the AMD Ryzen Reviewers Kit
Pre-ordering the 2nd generation AMD Ryzen processors
Unboxing the MSI X470 motherboard
Today, AMD officially unveils the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, Ryzen 7 2700, Ryzen 5 2600X and Ryzen 5 2600 will officially go on sale. You can read about our preview of it here.
The 2nd generation are improvements over it’s first Ryzen launched last year. According to AMD, the new Ryzen promises an average 20% faster than their competitors in 3D modelling, video rendering and video editing in productivity.
In terms of gaming, it is 5% better than it’s competitor, at 1080p for a simiarly priced processor.
The 2nd generation processors are also the first 12nm process manufactured processors with top clock speeds of up to 4.35 GHz (Ryzon 7 2700X). Now all cores can overclock to around 4.2 GHz on the average (depending on processor).
The processors also reduced the L1 cache latency by 13%, L2 by 34% and L3 by 16%. DRAM latency is redued by approximately 11%. It has also pushed for official support of JEDEC DDR4-2933 up from previous generation of processors supporting up to DDR4-2667. The single CPU IPC is also improved to be 3%.
AMD also has something to shout about, that is there is no need to change the motherboard and heatsink to tap into the power of Ryzen 2nd generation. The new processors can function on existing AM4 socket boards with a BIOS flash.
| MODEL | CORES | THREADS | CLOCK SPEED MAX BOOST/ BASE (GHZ) | Smart Prefetch Cache | TDP | COOLER | SEP (SGD tax inc.) | AVAILABILITY |
| Ryzen™ 7 2700X | 8 | 16 | 4.3/3.7 | 20MB | 105W | Wraith Prism (LED) | $485 | Apr 19 |
| Ryzen™ 7 2700 | 8 | 16 | 4.1/3.2 | 20MB | 65W | Wraith Spire (LED) | $448 | Apr 19 |
| Ryzen™ 5 2600X | 6 | 12 | 4.2/3.6 | 19MB | 95W | Wraith Spire | $335 | Apr 19 |
| Ryzen™ 5 2600 | 6 | 12 | 3.9/3.4 | 19MB | 65W | Wraith Stealth | $292 | Apr 19 |
Previous generation Ryzen do not comes with a heatsink/fan. The new Ryzen comes with a brand new Wraith Prism with switchable fan profiles. (Ryzen 7 2700X only) and RGB light zones that will surely be the envy of non AMD users. You save the costs with a free quality heatsink.
AMD X470 chispet and StoreMI technology
In conjunction with the AMD 2nd generation Ryzen, AMD also introduce a new X470 chipset. The X470 chipset supports AMD StoreMI Technology which comes free. With this storage acceleration technology, you can now boost your HDD access by adding in a SSD. Alternatively, if you are running out of disk space, you can ‘fuse’ another SSD or HDD to make it into a single volume. To the end user, it will be a larger disk space with higher access speed.
You can read about our preliminary test of StoreMI here.
AMD SenseMI Technology
With the new generation processor comes new SenseMI which configure the processor behaviour based on current and expected future operating conditions. AMD SenseMI has give related senses that rely on learning algorithms to manage speculative cache fetches and perform AI based brand prediction.
In a tests by AMD, a Samsung 860 EVO SSD is 4x faster than a normal HDD. To extend the volume, the SSD an HDD are fused into one volume. The same storage test was done on the combined volume and the speed is SSD/HDD combo is as fast as the standalone SSD.
Precision Boost 2
This technology allows greater performance in applications by freeing the processor to run at the highest clock speed for its defined electrical/terhaml/load/frequency capacity regardless of the number of threads. e.g in a modestly threaded tasks, clock speed could move higher by 500MHz compared to a Ryzen 7 1800X.
XFR2
XFR in 1st generation is limited to a few cores, XFR2 now operates across any number of cores and threads. XFR2 can enable up to 7% additional performance when every core and thread is loaded. (without thermal limits).
Running Demos
How will the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X perform against the 1st generation processors and Intel Core i7-8770K ?
Below is a link to our review of the Ryzen 7 2700X and Ryzen 5 2600X on the Gigabyte AORIS X470 Gaming 7 WIFI motherboard.