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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bodonnell - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Good luck with that. Since Microsoft is only supporting Kaby Lake and Ryzen on Windows 10 I guess you'll be sticking with 2015 and older technology for a while. I bet you desperately hung onto Windows XP too..._zenith - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
... except for the fact that many games are console ports now, aaaaannd those are often - usually - already written for DX12, and this will only become moreso once Xbox Scorpio is released, with it's special DX12 hardware optimisations.Notmyusualid - Tuesday, April 18, 2017 - link
@zenithGo ahead and release a DX12-only game.
Let me know how you get on with sales...
Arbie - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
When I do upgrade it will be with AMD. Even where (and if) Intel offers a little more performance per dollar, AMD has amazingly reduced the difference to the point where I can accept it in order to help fuel competition. If the market does not reward AMD for their valiant effort in Zen, the company may be forced to give up. It seems impossible for them to come from behind yet again in such a high-stakes arena. Then Intel will really slack off, and several years from now we'll ALL be worse off than if they were still duking it out.Everyone has to make their own decision, and I couldn't buy the Excavator etc fiascos, but the AMD product is now a real contender - and we need to keep them there.
bodonnell - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Agreed. I updated my main rig a couple years ago and Intel was really the only option at the time, but if I was in the market now I would definitely be looking at a Ryzen 5 as keeping AMD around is better for consumers. For the money where Ryzen 5 lags it doesn't lag by much (and honestly legacy software that is single threaded was made to work on much lower performance cores) and where it shines (multi-threaded performance) it often beats price comparable Intel processors by a healthy margin.BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Ryzen 5 is an interesting CPU, worth a careful look given the outcome of the benchmarks in this article. Modern workloads seem to be much more likely to use more than one thread and legacy workloads that are single threaded would perform perfectly well on just about any modern CPU so it really isn't a difficult choice to look into a Ryzen 5 if you fall into its price bracket. AMD's APU offerings in the future might offer a better value for some customers since the price of a Ryzen CPU doesn't currently include graphics. People happy with iGPU performance would either require a dedicated graphics card purchase or reuse one thy already have available to build a complete system around a Zen-based processor so those sorts might be better off waiting until the APU versions are released later this year or they might be compelled to purchase a competing Intel product with an iGPU.bodonnell - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Can't wait to see what AMD does with the Zen core in the mainstream and mobile markets. A well balanced quad core design with a good Polaris based iGPU will be all most consumers need for their day to day use.OddFriendship8989 - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Is there a reason you don't put in the 7700k in these charts? I mean if you're going to put in 1700X and 1800X, you should put in 7700k too. Plus at just $80 more it's honestly a CPU being considered too people consider the 1600X.vladx - Wednesday, April 12, 2017 - link
Reason is obvious, anandTech have an AMD bias.Outlander_04 - Thursday, April 13, 2017 - link
Unlike yourself, and your well respected neutrality ?