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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marecki - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link
PDF OpeningCan you link this PDF file?
Ratman6161 - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link
Hmmm. Food for thought. So I've been sticking with my trusty old i72600K. I use VMWAre workstation to run VM's on my desktop quite a lot. I've always figured a lot of threads were helpful so that VM's and the host OS aren't competing for resources. But the VM's themselves aren't doing anything particularly intense. When not running VM's probably any old i5 level of performance is probably good enough. So...for my particular purposes seems like the Ryzen 5 1600X might be the way to go and save a bunch of money while I'm at it???More than adequate for my desktop needs and more cores/threads than an i7 when running VM's...and way cheaper. First CPU I've seen tht's got me kind of tempted.
cheshirster - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link
That's where 1700 might look better.IanHagen - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link
I too am a heavy virtualization user and I'd say pick the 1700 if you can. More physical and logical cores are going to make a big difference for you.Ratman6161 - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link
I'm actually kind of looking for cheap. The Ryzen 5 1600x is more cores and threads than my trusty old i7-2600K and the 1600x is $140 less than the 1700. I'm actually considering going even cheaper and getting the 1600 instead of the 1600x. The main difference between the 1600 and 1600x seems to be clock speed and...they are unlocked so why not save $30 more and get the 1600?Ratman6161 - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link
PS: I'm thinking on going cheap with the CPU and using some of the savings on more RAM.psychobriggsy - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
1600 comes with a cooler, 1600X doesn't, so bear that in mind during price comparisons.IanHagen - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link
Then I'd say get the 1600 and overclock it (:lakedude - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
Ryzen is not offering much in the way of OC headroom. Sure the chips are unlocked but they are already pushing them pretty hard, unlike the Cel300A from back in the day...Ratman6161 - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
True, the OC headroom doesn't seem that great. But for anyone willing to do a mild overclock (which I am) it seems like a no-brainer to choose the 1600 over the 1600x. The only difference seems to be clock speed other than the cooler (which I probably wouldn't use) and I'm betting that even pushing it a bit, the two would end up at the same maximum speed.