The AMD Zen and Ryzen 7 Review: A Deep Dive on 1800X, 1700X and 1700
by Ian Cutress on March 2, 2017 9:00 AM ESTBenchmarking Suite 2017
2017 CPU
For our Ryzen review, we are implementing our new CPU testing benchmark suite, fully scripted as of 2/17. This means that with a fresh OS install, we can configure the OS to be more consistent, install the new benchmarks, maintain version consistency without random updates and start running the tests in under 5 minutes. After that it's a one button press to start an 8-10hr test (with a high-performance core) with nearly 100 relevant data points in the benchmarks given below. The tests cover a wide range of segments, some of which will be familiar but some of the tests are new to benchmarking in general, but still highly relevant for the markets they come from.
Our new CPU tests go through six main areas. We cover the Web (we've got an un-updateable version of Chrome 56), general system tests (opening tricky PDFs, emulation, brain simulation, AI, 2D image to 3D model conversion), rendering (ray tracing, modeling), encoding (compression, AES, h264 and HEVC), office based tests (PCMark and others), and our legacy tests, throwbacks from another generation of bad code but interesting to compare.
A side note on OS preparation. As we're using Windows 10, there's a large opportunity for something to come in and disrupt our testing. So our default strategy is multiple: disable the ability to update as much as possible, disable Windows Defender, uninstall OneDrive, disable Cortana as much as possible, implement the high performance mode in the power options, and disable the internal platform clock which can drift away from being accurate if the base frequency drifts (and thus the timing ends up inaccurate).
Web on Chrome 56
Sunspider
Kraken
Octane
Web13
Web15
PDF Opening
FCAT
3DPM v21
Dolphin
DigiCortex
Civilization 6
Agisoft PS v1.0
Corona
Blender
LuxMark CPU C++
LuxMark CPU OpenCL
POV-Ray
CB15 ST
CB15 MT
7-Zip
WinRAR
TrueCrypt
HandBrake 264-LQ
HandBrake 264-HQ
HandBrake 265-4K
PCMark8
SYSmark 2014 / SE
Legacy
3DPM v1 ST / MT
x264 HD 3 Pass 1, Pass 2
CB 11.5 ST / MT
CB 10 ST / MT
A side note - a couple of benchmarks (Dolphin, Civ 6) weren't fully 100% giving good data during testing. Need to go back and re-work this part of our testing.
2017 GPU
The bad news for our Ryzen review is that our new 2017 GPU testing stack not yet complete. We recieved our Ryzen CPU samples on February 21st, and tested in the hotel at the event for 6hr before flying back to Europe.
Doing CPUs plus helping our mobile team @ MWC means a busy three weeks. I started running @AMDRyzen in the hotel before early AM flight home pic.twitter.com/q5inczTzy2
— Ian Cutress (@IanCutress) February 23, 2017
I spent two days back in London, where ~12 CPUs relevant to the review today were testing on our new CPU benchmarks. This was before I had to fly to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress, and I brought 30kg of kit with me to help with the review. I have had Ryzen set up in our shared flat for the past few days, and had Ryzen benchmarks running while attending meetings. As a result, our CPU data is good, but we lack any substantial GPU comparison data, power numbers (some idiot senior editor forgot his power meter...) or overclocking numbers. Based on a few Twitter polls conducted over at @IanCutress, people seemed more interested in CPU performance anyway, so we'll do a Pt 2 with more GPU data in the next couple of weeks.
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mikeZZZ - Friday, March 3, 2017 - link
Anadtech, can we please run closer to real life scenarios such as a gaming benchmark with a file compression benchmark running at the same time. Even gaming enthusiasts run more than one program at a time. For example, file decompression in the background while playing a game, or baseball game streaming in a small window while playing a game. You already have many individual benchmarks, so why not go the extra but significant benchmark of running two? We know this favors the higher core CPUs (maybe even Ryzen 7 1700 over all other lower core ones CPUs) but that is closer to real life and should be very meaningful to someone wanting to make an informed purchase.ValiumMm - Saturday, March 4, 2017 - link
Would also like to see thisUrQuan3 - Friday, March 3, 2017 - link
Just want to put out a quick comment about benchmarking with Handbrake. In dealing with Broadwell-E, and especially ThunderX, I've found that Handbrake often doesn't scale well past about 10 cores, and really doesn't scale well past 16 or so. What seems to happen is that the single-threaded parts of Handbrake tend to dominate the encode time. In extreme cases, ultra-fast and placebo will take almost the same amount of time as x264 is consuming input faster than the rest of Handbrake can generate it. On ThunderX, I've found I can complete four 1080p placebo encodes in the same amount of time that I can complete one. I would expect a similar result on a 48 core Intel, though I do not have access to one beyond 24 cores. Turbo boost would hide this effect a bit.I am not knocking using Handbrake for benchmarking. The Handbrake and ray-trace results are the two that I care about most. I just thought I'd give a heads up about this limitation. You can check CPU usage statistics to get an indication of when you are running up against this limit.
Oh, and I am very excited to see multiple ray-tracers in your runs. Please continue.
Meteor2 - Saturday, March 4, 2017 - link
Presumably though you can have several x264 jobs running simultaneously on that hardware? So while your time to encode a certain piece doesn't decrease, you have more total-throughput (e.g. encoding several different bitrates for adaptive streaming). Should give good efficiency too on a larger Broadwell-E or a ThunderX.UrQuan3 - Tuesday, March 7, 2017 - link
Exactly. It's the first time I've thought about installing a queue manager for a single computer.jade5419 - Saturday, March 4, 2017 - link
I agree with this. In my experience Handbrake has a core / thread limit.I have a Z600 system with dual Xeon 5570 @ 2.93GHz, 6 core / 12 threads (total 24 threads), 48GB of RAM and a Z620 system with dual Xeon E5-2690 @ 2.9GHz 8 core / 16 threads (total 32 threads), 64GB RAM.
The two systems transcode video at the same speed using Handbrake 1.0.3. Monitoring CPU usage shows all threads of the Z600 at 100% utilization whereas the CPU utilization on the Z620 is approximately 80%.
Notmyusualid - Sunday, March 5, 2017 - link
Ever tried running GTA5 on 28 cores?It doesn't work. You have to adjust the game 'launchers' core affinity to < 26 cores or it won't even load.
Given this discovery, I expect there are many more applications out there, that may crap-out as we see more and more cores come into the mainstream.
Just a thought.
mapesdhs - Sunday, March 5, 2017 - link
I'd love to know why this happens. I'm guessing something dumb within Windows.Outlander_04 - Friday, March 3, 2017 - link
There is more than enough good news to make me want to buy a 6 core Ryzen when they become available .Likely that will be the sweet spot for gamers
0ldman79 - Saturday, March 4, 2017 - link
I'm looking forward to seeing Ryzen updated in the bench.There aren't any apps or benchmarks that cross over between the FX series and the Ryzen series, so we can't do any side by side comparison.
Great review guys. Looking forward to the six core Ryzen. I think just like the FX series the six core will be the sweet spot.