Great unbiased str8 down the middle review

Unfortunately, it's not a great or "unbiased" review, at least for gaming. This is due to two key factors: the use of higher resolution (2k) for all benchmarks, and the omission of 4c/8t Intel chips.

While 2k may be more representative of real world use for a high end PC, it unfortunately tells little about processor performance, because the bottleneck has shifted from the CPU to the GPU.

A lower resolution, not a higher resolution, gives a better idea of the Ryzen vs. Intel performance in gaming. Obviously at 4k it's your GPU that matters most, but bear in mind that people will likely replace their GPU before their CPU. Ryzen may be on par w/ Intel at high resolution with today's GPUs, but in one or two years (much shorter than the CPU lifespan) that may not be true. Ergo, you want to test at lower resolution, in order to show performance difference.

The second problem w/ this review is the omission of Intel's much cheaper lineup of chips in the "cost comparison." Of course the R7 is going to look great when compared to Intel's $1k chips, but most gaming builds are using i5s--which, by the way, are getting very close performance numbers to the R7 chips.

Just for the sake of argument, looking at GN's Metro: Last Light benchmarks (which are comparable to the performance hierarchy in most of the other benchmarks), the value for each chip would be as follows:

i5-7600k = $1.98/fps

i7-7700k = $2.41/fps

R7 Series = $2.60/fps (assuming that a $330 1700 performs as well as an 1800x)

i7-6900k = $7.48/fps

Yeah, the R7 blows the 6900k out of the water on value, but you know what blows the R7 out of the water on value? A $250 i5 (which was on sale for just $200 last week).

As it stands, there is only one reason for anyone to buy an R7 if their primary use is gaming: if they don't want to give money to Intel. We all want to see AMD succeed, and we all want more competition in the market. It's fine if people prefer to buy AMD. But it's disingenuous to call a review like this "unbiased" when the test conditions do not accurately show CPU performance differences, and also fail to include cost-comparable chips that consumers would compare the R7 to.

/r/hardware Thread Link - youtu.be