Pinnacle Ridge is an updated family of AMD Ryzen processors. Studying overclocking potential and performance using the example of Ryzen 7 2700

A year ago, AMD released processors based on the Zen microarchitecture and, having ceased to be a catch-up, began to “dictate” its terms. The folk “8 cores / 16 threads” presented by it prompted Intel to reconsider its plans and the latter urgently began to bring new solutions to the market. But the competitor was not limited to the mass segment, it encroached on the HEDT platform and even the corporate sector, which has not been the case for many years. Undoubtedly, AMD products were not always faster than we would like, but Intel’s position as an industry leader was nevertheless shaken – the pricing policy was eventually revised, and CPU performance increased not only due to an increase in frequency.

Given the new round of struggle in the processor market, none of the manufacturers will be able to rest on their laurels, as it was in the recent past. Each of the developers will now have to release competitive solutions in order to keep up with their opponent. For Intel in the near future, this is a possible release of mass eight-core products, and for AMD – honing the Zen architecture by switching to a thinner process technology that promises to increase the frequency potential and reduce power consumption. We won’t get to see a more powerful processor from the Core family soon, but the latest Ryzen from the Pinnacle Ridge family is available now.

AMD Zen+

The transition to thinner 12-nm (12LP – leading performance) technological norms did not bring anything radically new for Ryzen processors. Even the name of the Zen + architecture reflects a minimum of changes, such a “refresh”. But, nevertheless, AMD promises a slight increase in performance and lower power consumption.

So, Zen + is primarily distinguished by reduced access latencies to the L1 and L3 cache by 11-16%, to L2 up to 34%, and the memory latency is reduced by 11%. Not only DDR4-2667 modules, but also DDR4-2933 modules can now be officially used as RAM, which should increase the memory overclocking threshold. In addition, single-threaded execution of instructions per cycle was accelerated by 3%. Not much, but at least something.

Reducing the size of the transistors made it possible to reduce the supply voltage of the cores by 50 mV and increase the operating frequency by 300 MHz, thereby declaring to the developer that Ryzen 2000 is 11% more economical than previous generation processors operating at the same frequencies. Of course, the performance level at the same TDP has also been increased and reaches 16%. Compared to competitors, here AMD also notes progress.

The next step to increase the speed of new products was the update of the clock frequency control mechanism. Precision Boost 2 now more accurately controls processor frequency based on the number of threads involved, temperature, and power consumption. Now, as the number of active computational threads increases, the CPU will more smoothly reduce the operating frequency of the cores, which will positively affect the work in some applications.

The XFR (Extended Frequency Range) technology, which received a second revision, began to function more accurately. Now the maximum increase in frequency will be determined by the temperature regime of the processor and will no longer depend on the number of active cores, which, in the presence of an effective cooling system, should further increase the CPU speed up to 7%.

The lineup

The 2nd generation Ryzen processor lineup has been scaled back a bit, at least for now.

The current mid-level flagship Ryzen 7 2700X will replace two old models at once – Ryzen 7 1800X and Ryzen 7 1700X, hybrid CPUs have replaced Ryzen 5 1400 and Ryzen 3 1200. For Ryzen 5 1500X and Ryzen 3 1300X, there was no replacement. It is quite possible that it will not exist, since the APU, in terms of its capabilities, fills an empty niche quite well, while it costs less.

*— supplied without cooling system

Whether models with an index of 2800 will be presented is not yet known. Given the “arms race” between the two processor giants, they must have something more than just a few hundred megahertz increased frequency.

Wraith Prism

With the release of the second generation Ryzen processors, AMD has updated its line of proprietary cooling systems. The Ryzen 7 2700X will now ship with a Wraith Prism cooler, also equipped with RGB lighting, like the previous Wraith Max, but most likely with higher speeds.

The complete set of CPUs of the “X” series with its cooling system, apparently, is dictated by the guaranteed operation of the XFR2 technology, otherwise, with an inefficient cooler, the user would not get the desired effect.

Ryzen Master

By the release of new products, the Ryzen Master utility has also been updated to version 1.3.

Of the features of this version, it is worth noting the complete instability of its work, which ends with the crash of the program every minute or two. At least at our booth.

AM4 platform

As promised by AMD, the AM4 socket is designed for several generations of Zen architecture processors and new items can be easily installed in motherboards with 300 series chipsets.

But the company nevertheless introduced one new chipset – X470, which differs from its predecessor only in the presence of support for StoreMI technology, a free analogue of the FuzeDrive utility. It allows you to combine all the drives and RAM available in the system into one large virtual disk.

Of the possible limitations of the functioning of this technology, SSD drives (regardless of the interface) with a capacity of up to 256 GB and RAM up to 2 GB are indicated.

As you can see, the Zen + architecture did not bring any significant changes. Perhaps the potential of ready-made solutions will be more interesting. But is this so, we will try to find out using the example of the Ryzen 7 2700 processor.