This is my long overdue review on the Ryzen 7 1700, as an early adopter of Ryzen in July of last summer, I will go over the benefits of this processor and how far AMD has come in terms of competing with Intel and how AMD is a more viable option moving forward.I have been a long time Intel user, not because I was a ‘fanboy’ but simply because for a consumer grade processor Intel was by far the best option. My main system has been more of a workstation than a gaming computer. I primarily use my system for heavy multi-core workloads with 3D design and content creation, I also use my system for web and systems development, along with working in mass Excel documents. My previous i7-6700k was no slouch but in these tasks, there has been a noticeable performance gain with my 8 core 1700 overclocked at 3.9GHz. The value AMD brought to the market with Ryzen is phenomenal.To think that 1.5 years ago I was considering spending a lot more money to get a 6 core i7-6850k makes me really appreciate my willingness to see what the AMD hype was all about. But Ryzen was not all smooth sailing at first, early Bios updates were often unstable and the RAM incompatibility issues I experienced were frustrating, to say the least. My issues were more of an Asus problem and had nothing to do with my AMD processor, but I can now confidentially recommend Ryzen publicly and to friends. Recent Bios updates have helped overall stability in leaps and bounds. You no longer must read your motherboards RAM QVL listing like a religious text, as long as you get DDR4 RAM from a reputable manufacturer you are going to be okay. And as someone who relies on their computer for income stability is very important to me.Gaming on the 1700 is pretty good paired with my GTX 1080 Ti but I recently uninstalled games from this PC as it is my work computer. The Ryzen 5 2600x is the best gaming CPU in terms of value right now and I game on my i7-6700k system anyways so I won’t comment any further other than the i7 is my better gaming CPU. Until multi-core gaming optimization improves Intel CPU’s will remain at the top of gaming performance due to their better single core performance and the higher frequencies the i7 CPU’s can clock to.Moving forward the AM4 lineup is worth investing in, I’m sure many of you have seen the leaked information on the upcoming 7nm Zen CPU’s. I would take the leaked information with a grain of salt, but it looks promising and as AMD has promised AM4 support through to 2020 it means we can likely run the new Ryzen 7 3000 series CPU on our current motherboards. Their lies my main reason for buying a Ryzen CPU right now. I think buying the best R7 CPU currently available is not worth it, if you need a workload heavy CPU look at the cheapest option from the R7 lineup, right now that is the 1700x at $292cad. Then in a year’s time look to upgrade to the new R7 3000 CPU’s. It is a fantastic value for the money and the performance gains are why I am excited for what AMD has to offer moving forward. When the new Ryzen CPU’s launch, I will be buying the newest CPU from AMD and moving this 1700 into an ITX system. Moving forward the Intel lineup seems like a poor option simply because of the limited upgrade path and AMD has come such a long way in the past year. Anyone on the fence about a Ryzen CPU can confidently make their AMD purchase knowing they got a lot better value for their money and have a solid upgrade path moving forward. Not to mention these CPU's are incredibly powerful!If you have any questions, feel free to ask!