The AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Deep Dive: The 2700X, 2700, 2600X, and 2600 Tested
by Ian Cutress on April 19, 2018 9:00 AM ESTCPU System Tests
Our first set of tests is our general system tests. These set of tests are meant to emulate more about what people usually do on a system, like opening large files or processing small stacks of data. This is a bit different to our office testing, which uses more industry standard benchmarks, and a few of the benchmarks here are relatively new and different.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
FCAT Processing: link
One of the more interesting workloads that has crossed our desks in recent quarters is FCAT - the tool we use to measure stuttering in gaming due to dropped or runt frames. The FCAT process requires enabling a color-based overlay onto a game, recording the gameplay, and then parsing the video file through the analysis software. The software is mostly single-threaded, however because the video is basically in a raw format, the file size is large and requires moving a lot of data around. For our test, we take a 90-second clip of the Rise of the Tomb Raider benchmark running on a GTX 980 Ti at 1440p, which comes in around 21 GB, and measure the time it takes to process through the visual analysis tool.
FCAT is a purely single threaded task, and it takes benefits from the top frequency parts and high IPC from Intel. On the AMD front, the Ryzen 5 parts are scoring better than the Ryzen 7 parts, but are within an error margin.
Dolphin Benchmark: link
Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that ray traces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53 minutes (1052 seconds).
Dolphin is also a single threaded test, and has historically had benefits on Intel CPUs. The new Ryzen-2000 series, with extra IPC and frequency, are pushing ahead of Intel's Skylake parts.
3D Movement Algorithm Test v2.1: link
This is the latest version of the self-penned 3DPM benchmark. The goal of 3DPM is to simulate semi-optimized scientific algorithms taken directly from my doctorate thesis. Version 2.1 improves over 2.0 by passing the main particle structs by reference rather than by value, and decreasing the amount of double->float->double recasts the compiler was adding in. It affords a ~25% speed-up over v2.0, which means new data.
For this multi-threaded test, the new 8-core Ryzen 7 2700X pulls further head of Intel's 8-core Skylake-X compared to the 1800X. At six cores however, the Coffee Lake i7-8700K is sandwiched between the Ryzen 5 2600X and Ryzen 5 2600.
Agisoft Photoscan 1.3: link
Photoscan stays in our benchmark suite from the previous version, however now we are running on Windows 10 so features such as Speed Shift on the latest processors come into play. The concept of Photoscan is translating many 2D images into a 3D model - so the more detailed the images, and the more you have, the better the model. The algorithm has four stages, some single threaded and some multi-threaded, along with some cache/memory dependency in there as well. For some of the more variable threaded workload, features such as Speed Shift and XFR will be able to take advantage of CPU stalls or downtime, giving sizeable speedups on newer microarchitectures.
Photoscan is a variable threaded test, and time improvement from the 1800X to the 2700X shows the extra TDP and Precision Boost 2 can literally shave minutes from a test. Intel's slower mesh architecture of Skylake-X on the 8-core 7820X compared to the ring architecture of the Coffee Lake 8700K means that the two fewer cores on the 8700K allows them to draw level, but they are still four minutes or so behind the Ryzen 7 2700X. The big 18-core Intel CPU, the i9-7980XE, is needed to win here.
Civilization6 AI Test
Our Civilization AI test uses the steam version of Civilization 6 and runs the in-game AI test to process 25 rounds of an example end-game. We run the benchmark on our GTX 1080 at 1080p Medium to ensure that rendering is not a limiting factor, and the results are given as the geometric mean of the 25 rounds in the test, to give the average time to process one round of AI.
Parts of the AI test can use multiple threads, however the extra single core performance on Intel does push those parts into the lead.
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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.
Ranger1065 - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Nicely done Mr Aardvark. That made me smile.mikael.skytter - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
Thanks for a great review. Any chance it would be possible to look into how SpeedShift 2 compares to AMD:s solution for short burst loads and clock ramp-up?Thanks!
koekkoe - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
My favorite part in the article: fsfasd.Meow.au - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
I’ve visited the comments section a few times since the publication. As a psychologist in training, I’ve found it interesting as the initial complaints about this review were reasonable (it doesn’t match other sites), but by page 45 are now bordering on paranoia and conspiracy theories. The conspiracy theories are all the more puzzling when the simplest and most reasonable explanation is that the spectre patch has punished Intel processors rather severely. I’ve found trying to argue against conspiracy theories, be it the moon landing or anti-vaxers, to be singularly ineffective.The more you provide scientific evidence and rationality, the harder conspiracy theorists dig in their heels and defend their original position. Our natural confirmatory bias to only seek evidence which confirms pre-existing beliefs seems to be a flaw built into the wiring of the human brain. Psychologically protective? Yes... it’s nice to always be right. Useful for doing science? No.
I’d be delighted (and shocked) in a week’s time to learn of massive incompetence or a cover up. I expect there to be some interesting and unexpected details. But I’m guessing no evidence will be found for the commonly repeated conspiracy theories (spectre effect is minimal, heatsink throttling, bias against intel, etc.). But I guess that will just be further evidence there really is a conspiracy... whatever.
Keep up the good work guys. A long time reader.
RafaelHerschel - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
I think you need more training, psychologist in training, because it seems that you can't detect your own personal bias. As you stated yourself, the original complaints are quite reasonable. The problem is that AnandTech is not addressing these complaints in a timely manner and is mostly interested in damage control.The fact that some complaints are unreasonable doesn't change the fact.
Many other reviewers have applied all relevant patches, it is poor form to assume that they haven't. But I understand why you question their competence or integrity. It's cognitive dissonance. You trust AnandTech. In this case AnandTech is an outlier and has not clarified the unique results of their gaming test. Your trust in AnandTech is therefore not logical, and yet you consider yourself a logical person.
Therefore, you have decided that the 'logical' explanation is that all other reviewers haven't applied the patches... whatever.
divertedpanda - Wednesday, April 25, 2018 - link
Other reviewers admitted having not patched down to the bios since some used mobos where patches were not yet released.TrackSmart - Thursday, April 26, 2018 - link
This comment by RafaelHerschel doesn't make sense. The person being maligned said exactly this: "I expect there to be some interesting and unexpected details. But I’m guessing no evidence will be found for the commonly repeated conspiracy theories..."And he/she was EXACTLY CORRECT in that prediction.
Your complaint, on the other hand, seems disingenuous. Anandtech's staff immediately flagged their gaming results as anomalous (on just about every page of the article). Then they dug deep to figure out what happened, which takes time to test, confirm, and then publish about). Then about 5 days later they posted updated results (2700x and i7-8700k, so far) and a VERY DETAILED explanation of what happened.
So.... What's the problem again? That sometimes unforeseen test parameters can lead to different results? That can happen. The only question is how was the situation handled. In this case, I think reasonably well under the circumstances.
mapesdhs - Monday, May 14, 2018 - link
Grud knows now what "timely manner" is supposed to mean these days. Perhaps RafaelHerschel would only be happy if AT can go back in time and change the article before it's published.Meow.au, re what you said, Stefan Molyneux has some great pieces on these issues on YT.
schlock - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
Why aren't we running DDR4-3200 across all systems? It may go a small ways to explaining the small discrepancy in intel performance ...