Test Bed Setup 

As per our processor testing policy, we take a premium category motherboard suitable for the socket, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the manufacturer's maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Test Setup
Processor AMD Ryzen 5 1600X (6C/12T, 3.6G, 95W)
AMD Ryzen 5 1500X (4C/8T, 3.5G, 65W)
Motherboards ASUS Crosshair VI Hero
Cooling Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4
Power Supply Corsair AX860i
Memory Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3000 C15 2x8GB
Memory Settings DDR4-2400 C15
Video Cards MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X 8GB
ASUS GTX 1060 Strix 6GB
Sapphire Nitro R9 Fury 4GB
Sapphire Nitro RX 480 8GB
Sapphire Nitro RX 460 4GB (CPU Tests)
Hard Drive Crucial MX200 1TB
Optical Drive LG GH22NS50
Case Open Test Bed
Operating System Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

Hardware

We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.

Thank you to Sapphire for providing us with several of their AMD GPUs. We met with Sapphire back at Computex 2016 and discussed a platform for our future testing on AMD GPUs with their hardware for several upcoming projects. As a result, they were able to sample us the latest silicon that AMD has to offer. At the top of the list was a pair of Sapphire Nitro R9 Fury 4GB GPUs, based on the first generation of HBM technology and AMD’s Fiji platform. As the first consumer GPU to use HDM, the R9 Fury is a key moment in graphics history, and this Nitro cards come with 3584 SPs running at 1050 MHz on the GPU with 4GB of 4096-bit HBM memory at 1000 MHz.

Further Reading: AnandTech’s Sapphire Nitro R9 Fury Review

Following the Fury, Sapphire also supplied a pair of their latest Nitro RX 480 8GB cards to represent AMD’s current performance silicon on 14nm (as of March 2017). The move to 14nm yielded significant power consumption improvements for AMD, which combined with the latest version of GCN helped bring the target of a VR-ready graphics card as close to $200 as possible. The Sapphire Nitro RX 480 8GB OC graphics card is designed to be a premium member of the RX 480 family, having a full set of 8GB of GDDR5 memory at 6 Gbps with 2304 SPs at 1208/1342 MHz engine clocks.

Further Reading: AnandTech’s AMD RX 480 Review

With the R9 Fury and RX 480 assigned to our gaming tests, Sapphire also passed on a pair of RX 460s to be used as our CPU testing cards. The amount of GPU power available can have a direct effect on CPU performance, especially if the CPU has to spend all its time dealing with the GPU display. The RX 460 is a nice card to have here, as it is powerful yet low on power consumption and does not require any additional power connectors. The Sapphire Nitro RX 460 2GB still follows on from the Nitro philosophy, and in this case is designed to provide power at a low price point. Its 896 SPs run at 1090/1216 MHz frequencies, and it is paired with 2GB of GDDR5 at an effective 7000 MHz.

We must also say thank you to MSI for providing us with their GTX 1080 Gaming X 8GB GPUs. Despite the size of AnandTech, securing high-end graphics cards for CPU gaming tests is rather difficult. MSI stepped up to the plate in good fashion and high spirits with a pair of their high-end graphics. The MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X 8GB graphics card is their premium air cooled product, sitting below the water cooled Seahawk but above the Aero and Armor versions. The card is large with twin Torx fans, a custom PCB design, Zero-Frozr technology, enhanced PWM and a big backplate to assist with cooling.  The card uses a GP104-400 silicon die from a 16nm TSMC process, contains 2560 CUDA cores, and can run up to 1847 MHz in OC mode (or 1607-1733 MHz in Silent mode). The memory interface is 8GB of GDDR5X, running at 10010 MHz. For a good amount of time, the GTX 1080 was the card at the king of the hill.

Further Reading: AnandTech’s NVIDIA GTX 1080 Founders Edition Review

 

Thank you to ASUS for providing us with their GTX 1060 6GB Strix GPU. To complete the high/low cases for both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, we looked towards the GTX 1060 6GB cards to balance price and performance while giving a hefty crack at >1080p gaming in a single graphics card. ASUS lent a hand here, supplying a Strix variant of the GTX 1060. This card is even longer than our GTX 1080, with three fans and LEDs crammed under the hood. STRIX is now ASUS’ lower cost gaming brand behind ROG, and the Strix 1060 sits at nearly half a 1080, with 1280 CUDA cores but running at 1506 MHz base frequency up to 1746 MHz in OC mode. The 6 GB of GDDR5 runs at a healthy 8008 MHz across a 192-bit memory interface.

Further Reading: AnandTech’s ASUS GTX 1060 6GB STRIX Review

Thank you to Corsair for providing us with AX860i PSUs.
Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200 SSDs.
Thank you to ASRock for providing us with Gaming G10 Routers.
Thank you to Silverstone for providing us with Intel CPU Coolers, Fans and HDMI Cables.

Ryzen 5, Core Allocation, and Power Benchmarking Suite 2017: CPU and GPU
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  • Bp_968 - Sunday, April 16, 2017 - link

    This is the point I try to make all the time to console players saying PCs cost too much, require too much upgrading. My i7 970 or 980 (I forget!) Is still playing modern games wonderfully @2560x1440 with a gtx 970. We reciently built a pc for my neighbor out of spare parts and he ended up with a core2 quad (q6600 maybe?) With 6gb ram and a gtx460. He quickly upgraded to a gtx 1050 and now it easily stomps his PS4 (and probably the PS4pro).

    I'm with one of the previous posters about chipset accessories. It won't be CPU speed that causes me to up upgrade, it will be me wanting access to new features (pcie4, usb-c, usb3.1/3.2, NVMe, Intels ddr/ssd hybrid memory interface, etc etc).

    I also expect Intel to respond, at least in the ryzen7 market. I really hope it means Intel will finnally start offering 6-8 core CPUs in non-silly price points.
  • mmegibb - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link

    The choice of software hardly matters when what you are looking for is a collection of software that exercises the entire CPU subsystem: the cores, caches, memory, etc. As th3ron mentions, what matters is finding the deltas between CPUs.

    And yes, in spite of your snobbery, probably 50% of people reading this want to size their system for gaming. Gaming is the limiting case for my home builds.
  • psychobriggsy - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link

    Indeed gaming is important for many people.

    What the reviews show is that for a mixed-use system, the gaming aspect is not significantly behind Intel alternatives (obviously a couple of outliers, but that applies in both directions). However for the other uses, Ryzen is a complete win. It's good enough, rather than the pile of fail that Bulldozer core CPUs were. And indications are that games are getting more multithreaded over time, so buying a 4C product is limiting future gaming.

    It's clear that Intel will have to enable SMT in their i5 refreshes this year now, as that should let them claw something back in the 'partial multithreaded' use cases (apps that can't scale indefinitely with extra cores but top out at 4-8 threads).
  • IanHagen - Tuesday, April 11, 2017 - link

    I completely agree on that. I'd love to see more compiling benchmarks too. It's coming to the point where people who are buying a CPU for productivity are taking decisions drawn upon conclusions heavily influenced by gaming performance.
  • RafaelHerschel - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link

    50% of people use a fast CPU for gaming is a very conservative estimate. For regular office work or for media consumption an inexpensive CPU is fast enough. The current Intel Celeron and Pentium CPUs (or the AMD equivalent) offer much better value for most people. Because of marketing i3 and i5 CPUs sell well.

    And there are more gamers than professionals who use software that benefits from fast CPUs.
  • ddriver - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link

    Dunno about that, of all the people I know who have powerful machines, all do professional work, even those who game. Then again, the selection of my acquaintances has to do with their skills, and I do have to admit I have zero interest in interacting with someone who only plays games.

    I also know that is 99% of the games on the market cannot utilize 66.66% of that chip.

    So you end up putting 50% of the review emphasis on tests that can only utilize 1/3 of the chip.

    It is like... testing a sports car and putting 50% of the emphasis on its use as a hearse that will never be used at nowhere near its potential.
  • mmegibb - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link

    Man, ddriver, you are an elitist jerk. "I have zero interest in interacting with someone who only plays games". Also, "People who use winrar most likely do not make logical considerations, because if they did, they wouldn't be using garbage like winrar".

    Why are you like that?
  • vladx - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link

    Don't mind ddriver, he's just a pathetic troll who tries too hard.
  • Meteor2 - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link

    I imagine the proportion of PCs containing higher than i5-7400s bought by consumers used for gaming is much higher than 50%.

    *Not* talking about business buys here, I'm talking about people spending their own money.
  • Meteor2 - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link

    D'oh, I just replied to ddriver. What was I thinking.

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