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 Rendering Tests
Rendering tests are a long-time favorite of reviewers and benchmarkers, as the code used by rendering packages is usually highly optimized to squeeze every little bit of performance out. Sometimes rendering programs end up being heavily memory dependent as well - when you have that many threads flying about with a ton of data, having low latency memory can be key to everything. Here we take a few of the usual rendering packages under Windows 10, as well as a few new interesting benchmarks.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Corona 1.3: link
Corona is a standalone package designed to assist software like 3ds Max and Maya with photorealism via ray tracing. It's simple - shoot rays, get pixels. OK, it's more complicated than that, but the benchmark renders a fixed scene six times and offers results in terms of time and rays per second. The official benchmark tables list user submitted results in terms of time, however I feel rays per second is a better metric (in general, scores where higher is better seem to be easier to explain anyway). Corona likes to pile on the threads, so the results end up being very staggered based on thread count.
Blender 2.78: link
For a render that has been around for what seems like ages, Blender is still a highly popular tool. We managed to wrap up a standard workload into the February 5 nightly build of Blender and measure the time it takes to render the first frame of the scene. Being one of the bigger open source tools out there, it means both AMD and Intel work actively to help improve the codebase, for better or for worse on their own/each other's microarchitecture.
This is one multi-threaded test where the 8-core Skylake-based Intel processor wins against the new AMD Ryzen 7 2700X; the variable threaded nature of Blender means that the mesh architecture and memory bandwidth work well here. On a price/parity comparison, the Ryzen 7 2700X easily takes the win from the top performers. Users with the Core i7-6700K are being easily beaten by the Ryzen 5 2600.
LuxMark v3.1: Link
As a synthetic, LuxMark might come across as somewhat arbitrary as a renderer, given that it's mainly used to test GPUs, but it does offer both an OpenCL and a standard C++ mode. In this instance, aside from seeing the comparison in each coding mode for cores and IPC, we also get to see the difference in performance moving from a C++ based code-stack to an OpenCL one with a CPU as the main host.
POV-Ray 3.7.1b4: link
Another regular benchmark in most suites, POV-Ray is another ray-tracer but has been around for many years. It just so happens that during the run up to AMD's Ryzen launch, the code base started to get active again with developers making changes to the code and pushing out updates. Our version and benchmarking started just before that was happening, but given time we will see where the POV-Ray code ends up and adjust in due course.
Cinebench R15: link
The latest version of CineBench has also become one of those 'used everywhere' benchmarks, particularly as an indicator of single thread performance. High IPC and high frequency gives performance in ST, whereas having good scaling and many cores is where the MT test wins out.
Intel is still the single thread champion in benchmarks like CineBench, but it would appear that the Ryzen 7 2700X is now taking the lead in the multithreaded test.
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spdragoo - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Per Tom's Hardware (https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-7-2..."Our test rigs now include Meltdown And Spectre Variant 1 mitigations. Spectre Variant 2 requires both motherboard firmware/microcode and operating system patches. We have installed the operating system patches for Variant 2.
Today's performance measurements do not include Intel's motherboard firmware mitigations for Spectre Variant 2 though, as we've been waiting for AMD patches to level the playing field. Last week, AMD announced that it’s making the mitigations available to motherboard vendors and OEMs, which the company says should take time to appear in the wild. We checked MSI's website for firmware updates applicable to our X370 platforms when AMD made its announcement, but no new BIOSes were available (and still aren't).
Unfortunately, we were only made aware that Variant 2 mitigations are present in our X470 board's firmware just before launch, precluding us from re-testing the Intel platforms with patches applied. We're working on this now, and plan to post updated results in future reviews.
The lack of Spectre Variant 2 patches in our Intel results likely give the Core CPUs a slight advantage over AMD's patched platforms. But the performance difference should be minimal with modern processors."
For those that are TL:DR in their viewpoint: unlike Anandtech, TH did NOT include all of the Spectre/Meltdown patches, & even said that there might be differences in their test results.
Chris113q - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Other reviewers also had their setups meltdown/spectre patched and it's been already confirmed that these patches don't greatly impact gaming performance at all.It's clear that Anandtech's results are wrong here. I have read 12 other reviews and most of their results differ from the ones you got. You'd have to be delusional to take just 1 review as the absolute truth.
Ninjawithagun - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Incorrect. Those reviews were conducted back in January 2018 (look at the review dates). Microsoft issued new patches for Meltdown and Spectre earier this month (April 2018). I could find no other performance review showing performance gain/loss for Intel CPUs based upon the new patches other than the one posted now by AnandTech.Ninjawithagun - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
The only way to know for sure is for each hardware reviewer to provide the exact version of Windows 10 they used for testing. This will prove whether or not they ran benchmarks with the most current Windows updates/patches.Intel999 - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
It is plausible that many reviewers were lazy and carried over data from earlier reviews on Intel and 1000 series Ryzen CPUs.Thank you Anandtech for doing aa genuinely unbiased review that required a great deal of extra work compared to others.
5080 - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
And don't forget BIOS patches as well. If you have a fully patched system the impact is even bigger than just updating with the Windows KB patches.sor - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Looking at Tom’s results, they have OC intels in first place. Other than that it’s damn close. Is there a chance you’re just browsing graphs to see who is in the top spot and not really comprehending the results?Aside from that, the test setups and even benchmarks used are different. You owe Ian an apology for not realizing you’re comparing OC results to his.
Silma - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Yes. Ian is a top reviewer. At worst he made a mistake in this evaluations. It happens to the best of us.However, I have an issue with non OC test. It seems to me people will purchase overclockable processors and graphic cards to overclock them. At least game results should probably be based on OC benchmarks.
pogostick - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
@Silma No, it makes more sense to do it this way. Everyone who buys these processors are guaranteed to have a part that will run the manufacturer spec. OC is a random lottery.ACE76 - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Wrong... majority of even gamers DON'T overclock...that us relagated to a niche market of enthusiasts.