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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Vorl - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
the answer to both of you is that "this is a High end PC processor, not a workstation CPU, and not a server CPU. That was clearly covered at the start of the article.If you want raw number crunching info, there will be other sites that are going to have those reviews, and really, maybe anandtech will review it in that light since it really is such a powerful CPU in another review for server stuff.
Also, there is a LOT of value in having a standardized set of tests. Even if a few tests here and there are no longer valuable like PDF opening, the same tests being used across the board are important for BENCH. you can't compare products if you aren't using the same tools.
Unfortunately AMD is ahead of the curve currently with massive SMP being given to normal consumers now at a reasonable price. It will take a little time for dev's to catch up and really make use of this amazing CPU.
With the processing power in a CPU like this imagine the game mechanics that can be created and used, For those of us that are more interested in making this a reasonably priced workstation/server build for VMs etc, cool for us, but that isn't where this is being marketed, and it's not really fair to jump all over the reviewer for it.
Zstream - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Utter rubbish. This CPU is designed for a workstation build. Some a product labeled Xeon is a workstation CPU, but this isn't?mapesdhs - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Yeah, TR doesn't really look like something that's massively aimed at gamers, it has too many capabilities and features which gamers wouldn't be interested in.pm9819 - Friday, August 18, 2017 - link
AMD themselves call it a consumer cpu. Is Intel paying them as wellLolimaster - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
It's a HEDT/workstation, a year ago people called Workstation a dual Xeon 8 cores, which a sole 1950X replicates.Intel draws a line not supporting ECC, AMD supports ECC in all their main cpu's server or not all the way back to Athlon 64.
16cores/32threads, ECC, 64 pci-e lanes, upgrade path to 32cores/64threads with zen3. Smells Workstation to me.
Another thing is server cpu's which EPYC is, with features tailored to it, like a massive core count with low clock speeds to maximize efficiency and damn expensive mobos without any gamerish gizmo, just think to put on building without looking at net. TR can do a bit of that too, but optimized to an all around performance and budget friendly.
Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Dan sums it up. Some of these tests are simply check boxes - is it adequate enough.Some people do say that an automated suite isn't the way to do things: unfortunately without spending over two months designing this script I wouldn't have time for nearly as much data or to test nearly as many CPUs. Automation is a key aspect to testing, and I've spent a good while making sure tests like our Chromium Compile can be process consistent across systems.
There's always scope to add more tests (my scripts are modular now), if they can be repeatable and deterministic, but also easy to understand in how they are set up. Feel free to reach out via email if you have suggestions.
Johan Steyn - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Ian, I understand that you see them as checkboxes, but this is not a normal CPU John doe is going to buy. It has a very specific audience and I feel you are missing that audience badly. I guy that buys this to use for rendering or 3Dstudio Max, is not going to worry about games. Yes, it would be a great bonus to also be OK at it. Other sittes even did tests of running rendering as well as play games at the same time. TR shined like a star against Intel. This is actually something that might happen in real life. A guy could begin a render and then while waiting, decide to play a game.I would not buy TR to open pdf's, would I?
Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
No, but you open things like IDEs and Premiere. A PDF test is a gateway test in that regard with an abnormally large input. When a workstation is not crunching hard, it's being used to navigate through programs with perhaps the web and documents in tow where the UX is going to be indicative of something like PDF opening.Lolimaster - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
Including useless benchs not only you waste target audience time, you too having to write and upload images from that useless benchs instead of making the article more interesting.How about a "the destroyer for HEDT/Workstion", a typical productivy load + some gaming, out of a sudden people will get TWICE the cpu resources, they can do things they couldn't before on the same machine.
They could get a dual socket mobo with 2x10c Xeons paying the hefty premium with pathetic clock speeds if they wante to game a bit while doing work, TR fixed that, with mass consumer type of gaming performance while reducing the multicore costs by more than half (cores counts + ECC support without paying intel tax).
Lolimaster - Friday, August 11, 2017 - link
And that audience few months ago was limited to do their productivity thing with 6-8 cores or 10 paying the huge intel tax, probably they couldn't game without hurting other things and had a 2 secondary PC for killing time.With TR and the massive 16 core count they can finally do all of that off a single PC or focus the entire powerhorse when they need (leaving things do work during their sleep).