Interesting AMD Ryzen versus Intel benchmarking wars
Since the original reviews, most of the reviewers have changed so say it is too early to tell which part is really faster.
It is very easy to get only a biased point of view if you pick just one review at random in the web. And that's the reason why I have analyzed a bunch of them.
Let's start from the obvious facts. Ryzen is a very nice CPU, and if we look strictly at the productivity workloads, performance per dollar, Intel has nothing to compete with (closest match is the i7-6900K, but it costs twice as much).
So, why so many disappointing reviews? Well, because of the gaming performance. Is Ryzen really so bad? Of course not.
Let me tell you that the controversies happened mostly because of the testing methodology.
To me the correct approach would have been to test the new CPUs at 1080p, 1440p and 4K to get the full picture.
Gamer sites, in order to focus mainly on the CPU side, tested games at 1080p resolution and below, where the GPU cannot be never a bottleneck for the system (unless it is an entry level card).
Here is where the Ryzen is behind. Early stage of optimization and lower clocks are the main issues there. At 1440p and above though, Ryzen is doing absolutely well.
What does it mean? If you buy a top CPU (>300$ and above) and a top GPU, there is no reason to bother with the 1080p resolution, since people will game at least at quad HD and above.
Should we then discard completely the 1080p results. Of course not. If you are on a tight budget and you cannot afford a decent GPU, then this kind of tests could still make sense. Anyway, if you are on a limited budget, then the R7 family is not really suitable for you. You'd better go with an i3/i5 or wait for the R5/R3 Ryzen family. Because of that, I found many reviews about the gaming performance really misleading (they are not representative of real cases).
Here is my opinion about Ryzen. If you need a powerful CPU to do multitasking, video and audio editing, professional workloads, virtualization, then Ryzen sounds like an easy choice. No, assuming you pair it with a mid-high end GPU, you do not have to give up on games, rest assured. Actually, on 4K, is even doing better than Intel. More cores and threads is the future, since high frequency is already hitting a wall.
Anyway, if you only have to build a gaming machine, I guess that the i7-7700K is still king for the money you spend (although the R7-1700 is in the same price range).
If you are on a lower budget, then you should definitely wait for the R5 and R3 or consider some i5 or i3 Intel cheaper options. It is better to put few dollars more on the GPU in this case, since you get way more FPS than an high end CPU would provide with a modest GPU, since the GPU is going to be the bottleneck.
Below is one of the gaming reviews that I consider a very good overall average, definitely one of the least biased (link to summary and conclusions):
An In-Depth Look at Ryzen's Gaming Performance: 16 Games Played at 1080p & 1440p > Taking Averages, Making Conclusions - TechSpot