The AMD Threadripper 2 CPU Review: The 24-Core 2970WX and 12-Core 2920X Tested
by Ian Cutress on October 29, 2018 9:00 AM ESTGaming: Civilization 6 (DX12)
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.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Civilization VI | RTS | Oct 2016 |
DX12 | 1080p Ultra |
4K Ultra |
8K Ultra |
16K Low |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| Civilization VI | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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euler007 - Tuesday, October 30, 2018 - link
For gaming a 8600k will beat the 2700x and is priced 16% less than a 2700x (just checked newegg prices).Stuka87 - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Hey guys, just a quick correction, World of Tanks has been using the Encore engine for six months now. So its not an unreleased engine. But it is a great engine, incredible performance for the graphics that it offers.Great article otherwise.
br83taylor - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Can you clarify if your benchmarks are with PBO enabled or disabled?hoohoo - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Civ 6 - the slowest paced strategy game ever, now rendered at high frame rates!hansmuff - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Just my personal wish list:Can you make 1080p the new 720p, drop 720p altogether, but add in1440p? I feel that's a pretty common resolution these days, and affordable high-frequency screens with FreeSync and G-SYNC are available. I think it would mean more to people than the mostly artificial 720p.
nevcairiel - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
720p may not have many real-world usecases anymore, however it does clearly show CPU performance scaling in games while removing most GPU bottlenecks entirely. Its definitely an interesting metric on that alone.mapesdhs - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
People argue this one a lot; some will say 720p is so unrealistic that what's the point? It shows differences at a resolution that virtually nobody uses, so who cares? Anyone buying this class of hw is far more likely to be gaming at least at 1080p and more likely 1440p or higher. Others say by using a low resolution it allows the test to be used as a psuedo CPU test, but it's hard to escape the criticism that such testing is still not real-world in any useful sense. Interesting from a technical perspective perhaps, but not *useful* when it comes to making a purchasing decision.GreenReaper - Wednesday, October 31, 2018 - link
It helps if you plan to keep the CPU around for when you buy your next video card, which might *then* be CPU-limited when running 1440p. You're basically finding what happens when the CPU is the bottleneck, which it might be in the future. For example, people who upgraded i7-3770K systems with modern video cards. AMD chips of that era (e.g. FX-8370) haven't held up so well.At the same time, if you plan to hand down the system to someone else and get a new one in three year's time, or repurpose it as a home server, the future potential may not matter to you at all.
SLVR - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
Why no 9900K power consumption figures?mapesdhs - Monday, October 29, 2018 - link
The IR radiation off the chip melted the power meter. ;)