The AMD Ryzen 5 1600X vs Core i5 Review: Twelve Threads vs Four at $250
by Ian Cutress on April 11, 2017 9:00 AM ESTGPU Tests: Civilization 6 (1080p, 4K)
First up in our CPU gaming tests is Civilization 6. Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fifth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.
At both 1920x1080 and 4K resolutions, we run the same settings. Civilization 6 has sliders for MSAA, Performance Impact and Memory Impact. The latter two refer to detail and texture size respectively, and are rated between 0 (lowest) to 5 (extreme). We run our Civ6 benchmark in position four for performance (ultra) and 0 on memory, with MSAA set to 2x.
For reviews where we include 8K and 16K benchmarks (Civ6 allows us to benchmark extreme resolutions on any monitor) on our GTX 1080, we run the 8K tests similar to the 4K tests, but the 16K tests are set to the lowest option for Performance.
MSI GTX 1080 at 1920x1080
MSI GTX 1080 at 4K
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ASUS GTX 1060 at 1920x1080
ASUS GTX 1060 at 4K
Sapphire R9 Fury at 1920x1080
Sapphire R9 Fury at 4K
Sapphire RX 480 at 1920x1080
Sapphire RX 480 at 4K
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Meteor2 - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
I think exact the same thing: R5 1600 + RX580 is going to be unbeatable value for money.deltaFx2 - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link
@Ian Cutress: It would be helpful to know whether any of the workloads above use AVX-256, just to know how prevalent they are in common code. For example, does your 3DPM code use AVX-256? Also, when you run legacy tests, are the binaries legacy too, or do you recompile when applicable?beerandcandy - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
This looks like it might be a good start for AMD to get back in the game. This isn't the normal way you try to do these things. I think mostly you want to show your best CPU "DESTROY" the competitors best CPU. If AMD doesn't do that then it sucks because they wont be able to compete in the halo CPU product areas. This will also cause them to be in a limited market space and they will be forced into less profitable situationspandemonium - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
I am curious why comparable Intel 2011-3 CPUs weren't included? The i7-6800k would be in nearly direct competition to the 1800X based on cores and MSRP.ET - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Thanks for the comprehensive testing. I was missing some Core i7 results for comparison in some tests, such as the compilation test.Lechelou - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Leonard Nimoy voiced Civ IV, not V. Just sayin'.madwolfchin - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Someone at AMD should rethink about the position of R7 1700 vs R5 1600X, The 1600X is faster in Single Tread, and about even with the 1700 in multi-threaded application. Why would anyone buy the 1700 which is much more expensiveOutlander_04 - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Because you can OC it and have the same performance as an 1800XMeteor2 - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
I've only read as far as the test-bed set-up page: I want to say a MASSIVE thank you to MSI for supplying the GTX1080s. Top stuff, and that won't be forgotten.Back to reading...
vladx - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Wow so Anandtech have now turned into AMD shills. Not only you conveniently excluded or ignored the 7700k, but also skipped the 7600k from the gaming benchmarks to paint Ryzen in a better light than reality actually reflects.I understand you had to finish the article ASAP but Anandtech was all about quality articles and you really should've published the article when you had all the facts.