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 Rendering Tests
Rendering tests are a long-time favorite of reviewers and benchmarkers, as the code used by rendering packages is usually highly optimized to squeeze every little bit of performance out. Sometimes rendering programs end up being heavily memory dependent as well - when you have that many threads flying about with a ton of data, having low latency memory can be key to everything. Here we take a few of the usual rendering packages under Windows 10, as well as a few new interesting benchmarks.
Corona 1.3
Corona is a standalone package designed to assist software like 3ds Max and Maya with photorealism via ray tracing. It's simple - shoot rays, get pixels. OK, it's more complicated than that, but the benchmark renders a fixed scene six times and offers results in terms of time and rays per second. The official benchmark tables list user submitted results in terms of time, however I feel rays per second is a better metric (in general, scores where higher is better seem to be easier to explain anyway). Corona likes to pile on the threads, so the results end up being very staggered based on thread count.
Blender 2.78
For a render that has been around for what seems like ages, Blender is still a highly popular tool. We managed to wrap up a standard workload into the February 5 nightly build of Blender and measure the time it takes to render the first frame of the scene. Being one of the bigger open source tools out there, it means both AMD and Intel work actively to help improve the codebase, for better or for worse on their own/each other's microarchitecture.
POV-Ray 3.7.1
Another regular benchmark in most suites, POV-Ray is another ray-tracer but has been around for many years. It just so happens that during the run up to AMD's Ryzen launch, the code base started to get active again with developers making changes to the code and pushing out updates. Our version and benchmarking started just before that was happening, but given time we will see where the POV-Ray code ends up and adjust in due course.
Cinebench R15
The latest version of CineBench has also become one of those 'used everywhere' benchmarks, particularly as an indicator of single thread performance. High IPC and high frequency gives performance in ST, whereas having good scaling and many cores is where the MT test wins out.
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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 ?