AMD Ryzen Retest 1500x 1600x 1800x Review

AMD Ryzen Retest Review

Introduction

One of the small issues with the way that the review business works is the fact that we’re always testing launch products on launch BIOS. At the time that is fine because it is the very latest hardware and software available. It would be lovely if we had enough time to ever revisit products as BIOS, drivers and the like gradually improve the performance, but with the OC3D bunker constantly full of things awaiting review it’s just unworkable/impossible to go back to things and see how they have matured.

With the AMD Zen architecture we’re going to make an exception though, largely by popular demand. Our inbox and forums have been flooded with people saying how much difference the newer generations of BIOS have made to the Ryzen CPUs to the point that we’re doing them a disservice by not going back and re-testing them.

That’s a bold claim indeed, but if there is a benefit to our independent nature it’s that we’re a very flexible website. You ask. We answered. Let’s just hope that this week long test-fest has justified the time we’ve spent on it, otherwise we could be quite grumpy with the most vocal of you.

Test Setup

The primary thing that has changed in the time since the launch of the Ryzen CPUs is a massive improvement in the BIOS which has a trickle down effect of greatly improving the DDR4 speeds as well as hopefully stabilising the overclock to give a more consistent performance regardless of circumstance.

It is worth noting that since we originally reviewed the Ryzen CPUs we’ve added three benchmarks to our test suite so there will be three results that haven’t got comparisons. However, every other test we’re focussing solely upon how the recent BIOS updates compare to the launch ones, and so we’re only looking at the main three Ryzen offerings – the Ryzen 7 1800X, Ryzen 5 1600X and Ryzen 5 1500X.

Originally we tested on the 0504 BIOS on our ASUS Prime X370 Pro. Now we have the 0805 BIOS installed, and also what we did was get our hands on some actual retail CPU’s, a lot of you said when we did our first review was that most of you were struggling to even get 4GHZ screenshots. So let’s get down to business and see if these claims are matched by real world results.

ASUS Prime X370 Pro – BIOS 0805
AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
AMD Ryzen 5 1500X
Corsair LPX 2666MHz
Corsair LPX 3000MHz
Corsair MP500 M.2
nVidia GTX 980
Corsair HX1000i
Corsair H110i GT
Corsair ML Fans