The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X Review: CPUs on Steroids
by Ian Cutress on August 10, 2017 9:00 AM ESTCivilization 6
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 fourth 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.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Performance
1080p
4K
8K
16K
ASUS GTX 1060 Strix 6G Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire Nitro R9 Fury 4G Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire Nitro RX 480 8G Performance
1080p
4K
On the whole, the Threadripper CPUs perform as well as Ryzen does on most of the tests, although the Time Under analysis always seems to look worse for Threadripper.
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Notmyusualid - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
Yep, I'll get the door for him.Jeff007245 - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
I don't comment much (if ever), but I have to say one thing... I miss Anand's reviews. What happened to AnandTech?What ever happened to IPC testing when IPC used to be compared on a clock for clock basis? I remember the days when IPC used to be Instructions Per Clock, and this website and others would even use a downclock/overclock processors at a nominal clock rate to compare the performance of each processor's IPC. Hell, even Bulldozer with a high clock architecture was downclocked to compare is "relative IPC" in regards using a nominal clockrate.
And to add to what other's are saying about the bias in the review... Honestly, I have been feeling the same way for some time now. Must be because AnandTech is at the "MERCY" of their mother company Purch Media... When you are at the mercy of your advertisers, you have no choice but to bend the knee, or even worse, bend over and do as they say "or else"...
Thanks for taking the time in creating this review, but AnandTech to me is no longer AnandTech... What other's say is true, this place is only good for the Forums and the very technical community that is still sticking around.
fanofanand - Tuesday, August 15, 2017 - link
Downclocking and overclocking processors to replicate a different processor within the same family can lead to inaccurate results, as IPC can and does rely (at least to a degree) on cache size and structure. I get what you are saying, but I think Ian's work is pretty damn good.SloppyFloppy - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Why did you leave out the i9s from the gaming tests?Why didn't you include the 7700k when you include 1800x for gaming tests?
People want to know that if they buy a $1k 7900X or 1950X if it's not only great for media creation/compiling but also gaming.
silverblue - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Stated why at the bottom of page 1. Also, he used the 7740X, so there is little to no point in putting the 7700K.Lolimaster - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
The 1950X is as good at gaming as the 1800X, OCed 1700, with many more cpu resource to toy with.Swp1996 - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Thats The Best Title I have ever seen ...😂😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Steroids 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣corinthos - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
in other words.. AMD Ryzen is still the best bet for most people, and the best value. 1700 OC'd all day!BillBear - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
>Move on 10-15 years and we are now at the heart of the Core Wars: how many CPU cores with high IPC can you fit into a consumer processor? Up to today, the answer was 10, but now AMD is pushing the barrier to 16I don't personally think of Threadripper or parts like Broadwell-E as being consumer level parts.
For me, the parts most consumers use have been using for the last decade have been Intel parts with two cores or four cores at the high end.
It's been a long period of stagnation, with cutting power use on mobile parts being the area that saw the most attention and improvement.
James S - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Agree the HEDT platforms are not for the average consumer they are for enthusiasts, professional workstation usage, and some other niche uses.When the frequency war stopped and the IPC war started. We should have had the core competition 5-8 years back since IPC stagnated to a couple percent gains year on year.