The AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Deep Dive: The 2700X, 2700, 2600X, and 2600 Tested
by Ian Cutress on April 19, 2018 9:00 AM ESTTranslating to IPC: All This for 3%?
Contrary to popular belief, increasing IPC is difficult. Attempt to ensure that each execution port is fed every cycle requires having wide decoders, large out-of-order queues, fast caches, and the right execution port configuration. It might sound easy to pile it all on, however both physics and economics get in the way: the chip still has to be thermally efficient and it has to make money for the company. Every generational design update will go for what is called the ‘low-hanging fruit’: the identified changes that give the most gain for the smallest effort. Usually reducing cache latency is not always the easiest task, and for non-semiconductor engineers (myself included), it sounds like a lot of work for a small gain.
For our IPC testing, we use the following rules. Each CPU is allocated four cores, without extra threading, and power modes are disabled such that the cores run at a specific frequency only. The DRAM is set to what the processor supports, so in the case of the new CPUs, that is DDR4-2933, and the previous generation at DDR4-2666. I have recently seen threads which dispute if this is fair: this is an IPC test, not an instruction efficiency test. The DRAM official support is part of the hardware specifications, just as much as the size of the caches or the number of execution ports. Running the two CPUs at the same DRAM frequency gives an unfair advantage to one of them: either a bigger overclock/underclock, and deviates from the intended design.
So in our test, we take the new Ryzen 7 2700X, the first generation Ryzen 7 1800X, and the pre-Zen Bristol Ridge based A12-9800, which is based on the AM4 platform and uses DDR4. We set each processors at four cores, no multi-threading, and 3.0 GHz, then ran through some of our tests.
For this graph we have rooted the first generation Ryzen 7 1800X as our 100% marker, with the blue columns as the Ryzen 7 2700X. The problem with trying to identify a 3% IPC increase is that 3% could easily fall within the noise of a benchmark run: if the cache is not fully set before the run, it could encounter different performance. Shown above, a good number of tests fall in that +/- 2% range.
However, for compute heavy tasks, there are 3-4% benefits: Corona, LuxMark, CineBench and GeekBench are the ones here. We haven’t included the GeekBench sub-test results in the graph above, but most of those fall into the 2-5% category for gains.
If we take out Cinebench R15 nT result and the Geekbench memory tests, the average of all of the tests comes out to a +3.1% gain for the new Ryzen 2700X. That sounds bang on the money for what AMD stated it would do.
Cycling back to that Cinebench R15 nT result that showed a 22% gain. We also had some other IPC testing done at 3.0 GHz but with 8C/16T (which we couldn’t compare to Bristol Ridge), and a few other tests also showed 20%+ gains. This is probably a sign that AMD might have also adjusted how it manages its simultaneous multi-threading. This requires further testing.
AMD’s Overall 10% Increase
With some of the benefits of the 12LP manufacturing process, a few editors internally have questioned exactly why AMD hasn’t redesigned certain elements of the microarchitecture to take advantage. Ultimately it would appear that the ‘free’ frequency boost is worth just putting the same design in – as mentioned previously, the 12LP design is based on 14LPP with performance bump improvements. In the past it might not have been mentioned as a separate product line. So pushing through the same design is an easy win, allowing the teams to focus on the next major core redesign.
That all being said, AMD has previously already stated its intentions for the Zen+ core design – rolling back to CES at the beginning of the year, AMD stated that they wanted Zen+ and future products to go above and beyond the ‘industry standard’ of a 7-8% performance gain each year.
Clearly 3% IPC is not enough, so AMD is combining the performance gain with the +250 MHz increase, which is about another 6% peak frequency, with better turbo performance with Precision Boost 2 / XFR 2. This is about 10%, on paper at least. Benchmarks to follow.
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Flying Aardvark - Monday, April 23, 2018 - link
There's usually a lag from 6-12 months on any change that's already in place. Any topic really. Humans aren't very good at seeing what's in front of them. It requires enough people repeating it over and over around them, until they accept reality.Before that reassurance from society around them, they don't have the confidence to see/admit reality. Just something I've noticed. :)
mapesdhs - Monday, May 14, 2018 - link
That's why I like Goodkind's "1st Rule": people will believe a lie either because they want to believe it's true, or they're afraid it's true.Kaihekoa - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
I don't know what reviews you read, but the WCCF review shows slight favor to 8700K in gaming. However, it's an incomplete review of gaming as they only test at 1440p Ultra, where the GPU bears most of the workload, and only show average framerate. Tech Report doesn't even go into any detail whatsoever on gaming and only broaches the topic in a couple paragraphs on the conclusion page. Still, they even show a lead to Intel. Anandtech shows the 2700X leading every game in framerate, which is flat out inaccurate when compared to other reviews.The Spectre BS has marginal, if any, impact on game performance. I don't know how you get the idea that CPU IO is related to loading textures in a game when textures are loaded into VRAM by the GPU. Looking further into the test setup, Anand uses slower RAM on Intel platforms, an ECC mobo for Z170, doesn't disclose GPU driver versions and uses an enterprise OS on consumer hardware. I'm guessing these and/or other factors contributed to the inaccurate numbers, relative to other reviewers, causing me to lose a lot of respect for this once well-regarded hardware reviewer. I'll get my benchmark numbers from PC Perspective and Gamers Nexus instead.
Not hating on AMD, and I even own stock in both AMD and Intel. They offer tremendous value at their price points, but I spend alot of money on my PC and use it for gaming, overclocking/benching, and basic tasks, which all seem better suited to Intel's IPC/clock speed advantage. I need reviews to post accurate numbers so that I can make my upgrade decisions, and this incomplete review with numbers not reflective of actual gaming performance fails to meet that need.
Flying Aardvark - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
Come on man. I almost stop responding to replies like this. WCCF benches the base 2700, of course the 8700K wins, they don't include the 2700X. Again, the results line up with AT's. I wrote TR but meant TechRadar.Eh, I'm not going to keep going on addressing all these "points". IO is a syscall, reading/writing to disk is a syscall and that's where Intel takes up to a 50% perf hit with their Spectre v3 patches in place. This is known, and been known for months on the impact for games that do lots of texture steaming like ROTR. I even provided user provided evidence, that beat Anandtech here to the punch by 3 months.
Anand used Intel/AMD memory spec. That's what you're supposed to do when testing a product advertised to use certain components (for good reason, BTW, stupid gamer kids discounted).
Bottom line is that you and people flipping out just like you are wrong. I already knew about this being under the surface months ago. Now that it's impossible to cover it up with the 2000 series launch, more people are simply aware that AMD has taken over.
GreenMeters - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
But Anandtech has the 2700, and even the 2600X and 2600, beating the 8700K. So how are the WCCF benchmarks lining up with Anandtech's?Maxiking - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
"I just finished running Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmarks, 1080p, very high preset, FXAA.Unpatched:
Mountain Peak: 131.48 FPS (min: 81.19 max: 197.02)
Syria: 101.99 FPS (min: 62.73, max: 122.24)
Geothermal Valley: 98.93 FPS (min:76.48, max: 117.00)
Overall score: 111.31 FPS
Windows patch only:
Mountain Peak: 135.34 FPS (min: 38.21 max: 212.84)
Syria: 102.54 FPS (min: 44.22, max: 144.03)
Geothermal Valley: 96.36 FPS (min:41.35, max: 148.46)
Overall score: 111.93 FPS
Windows patch and BIOS update:
Mountain Peak: 134.01 FPS (min: 59.91 max: 216.16)
Syria: 101.68 FPS (min: 38.95, max: 143.44)
Geothermal Valley: 97.55 FPS (min:46.18, max: 143.97)
Overall score: 111.62 FPS
Average framerates don't seem affected."
From the link you posted, you got rekt by yourself.
Maxiking - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
Actually, I can't bother waiting because, it's futile.The benchmark from that thread shows there has been no noticable performance regression after the updates had been applied.
I know what you gonna do. Look at those min fps. I WAS RIGHT. I WAS RIGHT. You are thinking right now. No, you weren't. If you ever had run TOR benchmarks, you would have experienced it. There are quite severe discrepancies in the inbuilt benchmark when comes to min/max fps. I noticed it myself when I was overclocking 6700k and running game benchmarks, stability tests. Since you are mostly using anecdotal evidence, you do not know how to make proper arguments, don't provide valid sources, we are really limited here, but that's what we have.
To support my statement, here is the video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZEhkcs9hpU
It is not mine, but it is proving my point, there is an issue in the benchmark. It shows wrong/misleading min/max fps pretty often which other benchmarking solutions doesn't record.
The video was published on 7 Jul 2016, so no meltdown/spectre for you. I know you will argue it is no coincidence with those min fps, but look at the max as well.
Maxiking - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
*solutionFlying Aardvark - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Are you retarded? I know you are because I ran those benchmarks myself and it's reproducible on more games than ROTR. Where's your contradicting information to back your claim, you do know that trying to poke holes in info is not an argument.Ranger1065 - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
So sad the review failed to meet your expectations. Enjoy your time at Gamer's Nexus (cough).