The AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Deep Dive: The 2700X, 2700, 2600X, and 2600 Tested
by Ian Cutress on April 19, 2018 9:00 AM ESTRocket League
Hilariously simple pick-up-and-play games are great fun. I'm a massive fan of the Katamari franchise for that reason — passing start on a controller and rolling around, picking up things to get bigger, is extremely simple. Until we get a PC version of Katamari that I can benchmark, we'll focus on Rocket League.
Rocket League combines the elements of pick-up-and-play, allowing users to jump into a game with other people (or bots) to play football with cars with zero rules. The title is built on Unreal Engine 3, which is somewhat old at this point, but it allows users to run the game on super-low-end systems while still taxing the big ones. Since the release in 2015, it has sold over 5 million copies and seems to be a fixture at LANs and game shows. Users who train get very serious, playing in teams and leagues with very few settings to configure, and everyone is on the same level. Rocket League is quickly becoming one of the favored titles for e-sports tournaments, especially when e-sports contests can be viewed directly from the game interface.
Based on these factors, plus the fact that it is an extremely fun title to load and play, we set out to find the best way to benchmark it. Unfortunately for the most part automatic benchmark modes for games are few and far between. Partly because of this, but also on the basis that it is built on the Unreal 3 engine, Rocket League does not have a benchmark mode. In this case, we have to develop a consistent run and record the frame rate.
Read our initial analysis on our Rocket League benchmark on low-end graphics here.
With Rocket League, there is no benchmark mode, so we have to perform a series of automated actions, similar to a racing game having a fixed number of laps. We take the following approach: Using Fraps to record the time taken to show each frame (and the overall frame rates), we use an automation tool to set up a consistent no-bot match on easy, with the system applying a series of inputs throughout the run, such as switching camera angles and driving around.
It turns out that this method is nicely indicative of a real match, driving up walls, boosting and even putting in the odd assist, save and/or goal, as weird as that sounds for an automated set of commands. To maintain consistency, the commands we apply are not random but time-fixed, and we also keep the map the same (Aquadome, known to be a tough map for GPUs due to water/transparency) and the car customization constant. We start recording just after a match starts, and record for 4 minutes of game time (think 5 laps of a DIRT: Rally benchmark), with average frame rates, 99th percentile and frame times all provided.
The graphics settings for Rocket League come in four broad, generic settings: Low, Medium, High and High FXAA. There are advanced settings in place for shadows and details; however, for these tests, we keep to the generic settings. For both 1920x1080 and 4K resolutions, we test at the High preset with an unlimited frame cap.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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MDD1963 - Friday, April 20, 2018 - link
The Gskill 32 GB kit (2 x 16 GB/3200 MHz) I bought 13 months ago for $205 is now $400-ish...andychow - Friday, April 20, 2018 - link
Ridiculous comment. 7 years ago I bought 4x8 GB of RAM for $110. That same kit, from the same company, seven years later, now sells for $300. 4x16GB kits are around $800. Memory prices aren't at all the way they've always been. There is clear collusion going on. Micron and SK Hynix have both seen their stock price increase 400% in the last two years. 400%!!!!!The price of RAM just keeps increasing and increasing, and the 3 manufacturers are in no hurry to increase supply. They are even responsible for the lack of GPUs, because they are the bottleneck.
spdragoo - Friday, April 20, 2018 - link
You mean a price history like this?https://camelcamelcamel.com/Corsair-Vengeance-4x8G...
Or perhaps, as mentioned here (https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/what-ha... how the previous-generation RAM tends to go up in price once the manufacturers switch to the next-gen?
Since I KNOW you're not going to claim that you bought DDR4 RAM 7 YEARS AGO (when it barely came out 4 years ago)...
Alexvrb - Friday, April 20, 2018 - link
I love how you ignored everyone that already smushed your talking points to focus on a post which was likely just poorly worded.RAM prices have traditionally gone DOWN over time for the same capacity, as density improves. But recently the limited supply has completely blown up the normal price-per-capacity-over-time curve. Profit margins are massive. Saying this is "the same as always" is beyond comprehension. If it wasn't for your reply I would have sworn you were simply trolling.
Anyway this is what a lack of genuine competition looks like. NAND market isn't nearly as bad but there's supply problems there too.
vext - Friday, April 20, 2018 - link
True. When prices double with no explanation, there must be collusion.The same thing has happened with videocards. I have great doubts about bitcoin mining as a driver for those price increases. If mining was so profitable, you would think there would be a mad scramble to design cards specifically for mining. Instead the load falls on the DYI consumer.
Something very odd is happening.
Alexvrb - Friday, April 20, 2018 - link
They DO design things specifically for mining. It's called an ASIC miner. Unfortunately for us, some currencies are ASIC-resistant, and in some cases they can potentially change the algorithm, which makes such (expensive!) development challenging.Samus - Friday, April 20, 2018 - link
Yep. I went with 16GB in 2013-2014 just because I was like meh what difference does $50-$60 make when building a $1000+ PC. These days I do a double take when choosing between 8GB and 16GB for PC's I build. Even hardcore gaming PC's don't *NEED* more than 8GB, so it's worth saving $100+Memory prices have nearly doubled in the last 5 years. Sure there is cheap ram, there always has been. But a kit of quality Gskill costs twice as much as a comparable kit of quality Gskill cost in 2012.
FireSnake - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Awesome, as always. Happy reading! :)Chris113q - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Your gaming benchmarks results are garbage and every other reviewer got different results than you did. I hope no one takes this review seriously as the data is simply incorrect and misleading.Ian Cutress - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Always glad to see you offer links to show the differences.We ran our tests on a fresh version of RS3 + April Security Updates + Meltdown/Spectre patches using our standard testing implementation.