Let's not turn this into a bash thread for poor game performance though, we should be praising them.
Being a first-gen architecture, from a company that has just 8% of Intel's R&D budget, that has been largely noncompetitive and easily forgotten for the past 10 years, their new processor did remarkably well, even as the resolution went up (especially in
VR).
We gotta keep in mind that Intel has been rehashing the same design with minor improvements, perfecting their processors, year after year. Only time will tell if AMD can do the same for Ryzen. A 52% IPC improvement is nothing to shake a stick at.
Also, keep in mind that you're only looking at gaming benchmarks for which the R7, and all 8+ core Intel processors are not optimized for (
source). Yet (
1) (
2)
Even at its worst, Ryzen 7 is going to offer you better multithreading value than a 6900k, though. If you're a gamer, most of the evidence strongly suggests staying with a 7700k, or waiting for Ryzen 5.
In reality, the 1800x was designed to compete with the 6900k and on average it's comparable to the 6900k in single-threaded applications. In multi-threaded applications, the 1800x matches or beats its competition(6900k) handily at just 50% of the price. Ultimately, that's how we should be praising it as
that's the deal of a century.
To me, the best 'all arounder' is the 1700/x at just $329-399. For me that makes the absolute most sense for a price: performance build that will last well into the future and take anything you throw at it. However, if you plan to overclock ( possibly past ~4.6GHz), I think the 7700k may still be the better choice (understanding that the 1700/x is more energy efficient in watts per core) for system builders now.
At present, the 7700k is the better choice for dedicated gamers but over the next few years, as engines like Unity, Frostbite, Lumberyard, and now the new Bethesda engine are being built to take advantage of 8-core+ systems, this lead may change. This might even be accelerated by AMD's partnership with over 300 developers that make games and game engines that are already being optimized for the AMD components that are in today's game consoles. This is compounded by the fact that AMD has already been chosen to supply a Zen-based SOC for the Playstation 5 and XBox Two due out as early as 2018 (
source).
Like the i5 arguments of yesteryear where people routinely spouted, "You don't need an i7 for gaming!", the i5's shined brightly until games started to take advantage of quad cores. Now i5's are widely considered not a good choice for a gaming PC.
Now that 8-cores are finally affordable to the masses for the first time in history, we're on the cusp of watching games evolve to take advantage of that extra horsepower that has been traditionally out of reach to the masses.
This definitely isn't going to happen overnight but it's nice to see AMD doing their part to help make this dream a reality and it's especially nice to have that competition bringing the prices down for everyone looking to build a new PC.
