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 ESTBenchmarking Performance: CPU Office Tests
The office programs we use for benchmarking aren't specific programs per-se, but industry standard tests that hold weight with professionals. The goal of these tests is to use an array of software and techniques that a typical office user might encounter, such as video conferencing, document editing, architectural modelling, and so on and so forth. At present we have two such tools to use.
PCMark8
Despite originally coming out in 2008/2009, Futuremark has maintained PCMark8 to remain relevant in 2017. On the scale of complicated tasks, PCMark focuses more on the low-to-mid range of professional workloads, making it a good indicator for what people consider 'office' work. We run the benchmark from the commandline in 'conventional' mode, meaning C++ over OpenCL, to remove the graphics card from the equation and focus purely on the CPU. PCMark8 offers Home, Work and Creative workloads, with some software tests shared and others unique to each benchmark set.
Chromium Compile (v56)
Our new compilation test uses Windows 10 Pro, VS Community 2015.3 with the Win10 SDK to combile a nightly build of Chromium. We've fixed the test for a build in late March 2017, and we run a fresh full compile in our test. Compilation is the typical example given of a variable threaded workload - some of the compile and linking is linear, whereas other parts are multithreaded.
SYSmark 2014 SE
SYSmark is developed by Bapco, a consortium of industry CPU companies. The goal of SYSmark is to take stripped down versions of popular software, such as Photoshop and Onenote, and measure how long it takes to process certain tasks within that software. The end result is a score for each of the three segments (Office, Media, Data) as well as an overall score. Here a reference system (Core i3-6100, 4GB DDR3, 256GB SSD, Integrated HD 530 graphics) is used to provide a baseline score of 1000 in each test.
A note on contect for these numbers. AMD left Bapco in the last two years, due to differences of opinion on how the benchmarking suites were chosen and AMD believed the tests are angled towards Intel processors and had optimizations to show bigger differences than what AMD felt was present. The following benchmarks are provided as data, but the conflict of opinion between the two companies on the validity of the benchmark is provided as context for the following numbers.
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msroadkill612 - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
Its worth noting that amd moboS historically tend to endure many revised cpuS. whereas an intel cpu upgrade for a user is bound to require a new mobo."ryzen 2" will probably simply drop into an am4 mobo.
Its also interesting that many or all the mobos i have seen are ready to go for an apu - video connects onboard e.g.
this indicates that raven ridge exists now, for pre-production mobo testing.
msroadkill612 - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
I dont believe amd would go to all the trouble of doing zen and vega, and then merge zen with prev gen polaris for the APU.it doesnt make sense from several perspectives. amd philosophy, the architecture seen in ryzen - 2 zen core blocks on a ccx simply becomes one core block and one vega gpu on a single ccx.
it will be a hell of a piece of silicon.
Johan Steyn - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
Ryzen 9 is not that far fetched. Looking at the server part coming soon, an Ryzen extreme could be happening, especially for workstations. Maybe it might even fit AM4, although unlikely with quad channels. I do not think the current SOC has enough pins. So maybe we might get a Ryzen 9 with plenty of cores and quad channel memory.drajitshnew - Friday, April 14, 2017 - link
Dear Ian,Please clarify a point. You have mentioned that both AMD & Intel have 16 CPU PCIe lanes, but AMD offers 4 pcie lanes for storage from the CPU. If the chipset is loaded this could have an impact on the following 3 situations,
1. If the motherboard manufacturer routes those lanes from m2 to PCIe. Then those could be used, as storage, adding a GPU for GPGPU or a 10GbE NIC for use for a UHD media server, or AIC format storage.
2. With a heavily loaded chipset, a NVMe drive like a 1 TB samsung 960 pro or comparable, may show improved performance, specially in sequential transfers.
3. For a long lived system a large X-point or Z-nand or 3d SLC may show significant latency advantages.
cvearl - Sunday, April 16, 2017 - link
You have odd 480 results on GTA V. Are you using the final run (with the jet) from the built in test? My 480 scores in the mid 70's using your settings on that run with an i7 2600k.cvearl - Sunday, April 16, 2017 - link
Looking back at my GTX 1060 SC results (before I replaced with my 480) It had similar results to what you show here (Assuming the final run of the built in test). Am I to understand that the 480 gets a better result on i7 than Ryzen?Polacott - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link
my experience with AMD processors is that they have aged perfectly. I mean the AMD processors got more support and performance as apps and SO has been prepared to take advantage of more threads as years passed. I would get the Ryzen 1600X without any doubts over the i5.rmlarsen - Monday, April 17, 2017 - link
Unfortunate typo: In the conclusion it says "Looking at the results, it’s hard to notice the effect that 12 threads has on multithreaded CPU tests. " I believe the author meant to write "it's hard NOT to notice".Kamgusta - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Why in the Earth nobody ever considers the i7-7700?!?! And keep on putting the Ryzen CPUs only against the i5-7600K and/or the i7-7700K?i7-7700 has the same clocks as the i5-7600K, but double the threads and 2MB more L3. It consumes a lot less power than the i7-7700K and no more power than the i5-7600K. You can picture it as a more powerful i5-7600K or as a slight less powerful i7-7700K (but far more efficient).
If anyone is torn between R6-1600 and i5-7600K then the i7-7700 is, quite ironically, the best choice.
Ratman6161 - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
So over the weekend I upgraded my system from an i72600K to a Ryzen 5 1600. First off, I could care less about gaming so I'll put that out there up front. I can buy (in order of real world price)i7 7700K for $300
ryzen 1600x would have been $249
Ryzen 5 1600 was $219
i5 7600K for $210.
I went with the R5 1600. For highly multi threaded tasks (remembering I don't care anything about games about games) the six core R5's compare very favorably with the i7 7700K even though most of the comparisons you see match them up against the i5. And the big difference between the 1600 and the 1600X is clock speed...and they are unlocked. So for me the 1600 ended up being a no-brainer.
So for us non-gamers anyway, i'd disagree with the i7 7700K being the best choice.
Also, when comparing prices, look at the platform price including motherboards. I got an Asrock AB350 Pro 4 for $39 bundled with the CPU so total price $258. Cheapest 7600K bundle at the same place: $315, cheapest 7700K bundle $465.