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
>
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
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
254 Comments
View All Comments
Kamgusta - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
Are you replying to me? I talked about i7-7700 (NOT K), not i7-7700K.Which cope very well with some budget DDR4-2400MHz and a budget H270 board with no penalties whatsoever.
msroadkill612 - Wednesday, May 3, 2017 - link
Interesting. ta for sharing. pretty awesome price for the 1600/mobo bundle.How did the intel mobo compare for functionality do u think?
loguerto - Friday, April 21, 2017 - link
9 is not prime :)LawJikal - Friday, April 21, 2017 - link
What I'm surprised to see missing... in virtually all reviews across the web... is any discussion (by a publication or its readers) on the AM4 platform's longevity and upgradability (in addition to its cost, which is readily discussed).Any Intel Platform - is almost guaranteed to not accommodate a new or significantly revised microarchitecture... beyond the mere "tick". In order to enjoy a "tock", one MUST purchase a new motherboard (if historical precedent is maintained).
AMD AM4 Platform - is almost guaranteed to, AT LEAST, accommodate Ryzen "II" and quite possibly Ryzen "III" processors. And, in such cases, only a new processor and BIOS update will be necessary to do so.
This is not an insignificant point of differentiation.
systemBuilder - Friday, April 28, 2017 - link
I believe the Ryzen core is 20% slower than the Intel core, in instructions per clock. A hyperthread is only about 30% as fast as a full core. With both of these factors thrown in, 6 Ryzen Cores = 5 Intel cores. So the advantage of Ryzen is actually miniscule. It's why I sold all of my AMD stocks in February.willis936 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link
"sold all of my AMD stocks in February"I'm cringing.
systemBuilder - Friday, April 28, 2017 - link
Ryzen's cores are 20% slower than Intel's. A hyperthread is only worth (at best) 30% as much as a full core. Therefore, Intel offers 4 cores, AMD offers 6 * 0.8 * 1.3 = 6.24 cores, a decent bump but obviously not significant because few if any games are set up to use more than 8 cores, which in the best case for AMD would be (6 + 0.3 + 0.3)*0.8 = 5.28 cores, a small bump.Cooe - Monday, March 1, 2021 - link
Except Zen 1 was only about ≈5% slower in IPC vs Kaby Lake, not 20%...msroadkill612 - Monday, May 1, 2017 - link
Some thoughts from a ~newb, are that if 8 cores are the new black, then maybe 16GB (or 2GB per core) of ram, isnt as generous as it seems?Also, its a new paradigm. Tasks which taxed the cpu and thus historically avoided (software raid e.g.), can now be embraced with ~impunity.
"Normal" CPUs can handle 16 jobs before a queue forms, commonly, an increase by a factor of 8 for a prospective upgrader.
Gothmoth - Tuesday, May 2, 2017 - link
"...affords a comfortable IPC uplift over Broadwell....."yeah does it?
what is comfortable??.... 10%.... who are you trying to kid here?