The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X Review: CPUs on Steroids
by Ian Cutress on August 10, 2017 9:00 AM ESTCPU 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.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Corona 1.3: link
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.
Corona loves threads.
Blender 2.78: link
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.
Blender loves threads and memory bandwidth.
LuxMark v3.1: Link
As a synthetic, LuxMark might come across as somewhat arbitrary as a renderer, given that it's mainly used to test GPUs, but it does offer both an OpenCL and a standard C++ mode. In this instance, aside from seeing the comparison in each coding mode for cores and IPC, we also get to see the difference in performance moving from a C++ based code-stack to an OpenCL one with a CPU as the main host.
Like Blender, LuxMark is all about the thread count. Ray tracing is very nearly a textbook case for easy multi-threaded scaling. Though it's interesting just how close the 10-core Core i9-7900X gets in the CPU (C++) test despite a significant core count disadvantage, likely due to a combination of higher IPC and clockspeeds.
POV-Ray 3.7.1b4: link
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.
Similar to LuxMark, POV-Ray also wins on account of threads.
Cinebench R15: link
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.
Intel recently announced that its new 18-core chip scores 3200 on Cinebench R15. That would be an extra 6.7% performance over the Threadripper 1950X for 2x the cost.
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NikosD - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
Well, reading the whole review today - 13/08/2017 - I can see that the reviewer did something more evil than not using DDR4-3200 to give us performance numbers.He used DDR4-2400, as he clearly states in the configuration table, filling up the performance tables BUT in the power consumption page he added DDR4-3200 results (!) just to inform us that DDR4-3200 consumes 13W more, without providing any performance numbers for that memory speed (!!)
The only thing left for the reviewer is to tell us in which department of Intel works exactly, because in the first pages he wanted to test TR against a 2P Intel system as Skylake-X has only 10C/20T but Intel didn't allow him.
Ask for your Intel department to permit it next time.
Zingam - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
Yeah! You make a great point! Too much emphasis on gaming all the time! These processors aren't GPUs after all! Most people who buy PCs don't play games at all. Even I as a game developer would like to see more real world tests, especially compilation and data-crunching tests that are typical for game content creation and development workloads. Even I as a game developer spend 99% of my time in front of the computer not playing any games.pm9819 - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
So Intel made AMD release the underpowered overheating Bulldozer cpu's? Did Intel also make them sell there US and EU based fabs so they'll be wholly dependant on the Chinese to make their chips? Did Intel also make them buy a equally struggling graphics card company? Truth is AMD lost all the mind and market share they had because of bad corporate decision and uncompetitive cpu designs post Thunderbird. It's no one's fault but there own that it took seven years to produce a competitive replacement. Was Intel suppose to wait till they caught up? And Intel was a monopoly long before AMD started producing competitive cpu's.You can keep blaming Intel for AMD's screw ups but those of us with common sense and the ability to read know the fault lays with AMD's management.
ddriver - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
You are not sampled because of your divine objectivity Ian, you are sampled because you review for a site that is still somewhat popular for its former glory. You can deny it all you want, and understandable, as it is part of your job, but AT is heavily biased towards the rich american boys - intel, apple, nvidia... You are definitely subtle enough for the dumdums, but for better or worse, we are not all dumdums yet.But hey, it is not all that bad, after all, nowadays there are scores of websites running reviews, so people have a base for comparison, and extrapolate objective results for themselves.
ddriver - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
And some bits of constructive criticism - it would be nicer if those reviews featured more workloads people actually use in practice. Too much synthetics, too much short running tests, too much tests with software that is like "wtf is it and who in the world is using it".For example rendering - very few people in the industry actually use corona or blender, blender is used for modelling and texturing a lot, but not really for rendering. Neither is luxmark. Neither is povray, neither is CB.
Most people who render stuff nowadays use 3d max and vray, so testing this will actually be indicative of actual, practical perforamnce to more people than all those other tests combined.
Also, people want render times, not scores. That's very poor indication of actual performance that you will get, because many of those tests are short, so the CPU doesn't operate in the same mode it will operate if it sweats under continuous work.
Another rendering test that would benefit prosumers is after effects. A lot of people use after effects, all the time.
You also don't have a DAW test, something like cubase or studio one.
A lot of the target market for HEDT is also interested in multiphysics, for example ansys or comsol.
The compilation test you run, as already mentioned several times by different people, is not the most adequate either.
Basically, this review has very low informational value for people who are actually likely to purchase TR.
mapesdhs - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
AE would definitely be a good test for TR, it's something that can hammer an entire system, unlike games which only stress certain elements. I've seen AE renders grab 40GB RAM in seconds. A guy at Sony told me some of their renders can gobble 500GB of data just for a single frame, imposing astonishing I/O demands on their SAN and render nodes. Someone at a London movie company told me they use a 10GB/sec SAN to handle this sort of thing, and the issues surrounding memory access vs. cache vs. cores are very important, eg. their render management sw can disable cores where some types of render benefit from a larger slice of mem bw per core.There are all sorts of tasks which impose heavy I/O loads while also needing varying degrees of main CPU power. Some gobble enormous amounts of RAM, like ANSYS, though I don't know if that's still used.
I'd be interested to know how threaded Sparks in Flame/Smoke behave with TR, though I guess that won't happen unless Autodesk/HP sort out the platform support.
Ian.
Zingam - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
Good points!Notmyusualid - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
...only he WAS sampled. Read the review.bongey - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
You don't have to be paid by Intel, but this is just a bad review.Gothmoth - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
where is smoke there is fire.there are clear indications that anandtech is a bit biased.