The AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review: 16 Cores on 7nm with PCIe 4.0
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 14, 2019 9:00 AM ESTCPU Performance: Rendering Tests
Rendering is often a key target for processor workloads, lending itself to a professional environment. It comes in different formats as well, from 3D rendering through rasterization, such as games, or by ray tracing, and invokes the ability of the software to manage meshes, textures, collisions, aliasing, physics (in animations), and discarding unnecessary work. Most renderers offer CPU code paths, while a few use GPUs and select environments use FPGAs or dedicated ASICs. For big studios however, CPUs are still the hardware of choice.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Corona 1.3: Performance Render
An advanced performance based renderer for software such as 3ds Max and Cinema 4D, the Corona benchmark renders a generated scene as a standard under its 1.3 software version. Normally the GUI implementation of the benchmark shows the scene being built, and allows the user to upload the result as a ‘time to complete’.
We got in contact with the developer who gave us a command line version of the benchmark that does a direct output of results. Rather than reporting time, we report the average number of rays per second across six runs, as the performance scaling of a result per unit time is typically visually easier to understand.
The Corona benchmark website can be found at https://corona-renderer.com/benchmark
Intel's HEDT chips are quite good at Corona, but if we compare the 3900X to the 3950X, we still see some good scaling.
Blender 2.79b: 3D Creation Suite
A high profile rendering tool, Blender is open-source allowing for massive amounts of configurability, and is used by a number of high-profile animation studios worldwide. The organization recently released a Blender benchmark package, a couple of weeks after we had narrowed our Blender test for our new suite, however their test can take over an hour. For our results, we run one of the sub-tests in that suite through the command line - a standard ‘bmw27’ scene in CPU only mode, and measure the time to complete the render.
Blender can be downloaded at https://www.blender.org/download/
AMD is taking the lead in our blender test, with the 16-core chips easily going through Intel's latest 18-core hardware.
LuxMark v3.1: LuxRender via Different Code Paths
As stated at the top, there are many different ways to process rendering data: CPU, GPU, Accelerator, and others. On top of that, there are many frameworks and APIs in which to program, depending on how the software will be used. LuxMark, a benchmark developed using the LuxRender engine, offers several different scenes and APIs.
In our test, we run the simple ‘Ball’ scene on both the C++ code path, in CPU mode. This scene starts with a rough render and slowly improves the quality over two minutes, giving a final result in what is essentially an average ‘kilorays per second’.
Despite using Intel's Embree engine, again AMD's 16-cores easily win out against Intel's 18-core chips, at under half the cost.
POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing
The Persistence of Vision ray tracing engine is another well-known benchmarking tool, which was in a state of relative hibernation until AMD released its Zen processors, to which suddenly both Intel and AMD were submitting code to the main branch of the open source project. For our test, we use the built-in benchmark for all-cores, called from the command line.
POV-Ray can be downloaded from http://www.povray.org/
POV-Ray ends up with AMD 16-core splitting the two Intel 18-core parts, which means we're likely to see the Intel Core i9-10980XE at the top here. It would have been interesting to see where an Intel 16-core Core-X on Cascade would end up for a direct comparison, but Intel has no new 16-core chip planned.
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Ian Cutress - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Different software was saying different values depending on which sensor. I'm going to go back at some point and see if I can figure out why some were +30C over others.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Thanks Ian! I agree that, right now, the 3950X is King of the Hill in the HEDT space. Two minor flies in the otherwise good Zen 2 ointment:1. To fit the 3950X into the target thermal envelope, AMD reserves the best 7 nm dies for the 3950X, at least for now (pending Threadripper). While that makes sense business wise, it means a much lower chance for the rest of us to score a great die in the binning lottery. The fun with earlier Zen chips was that one could, with some luck, get a great die in a mainstream chip. Apparently, no more. The mainstream Ryzens are still very good, but the idea of getting a little something extra added appeal.
2. AMD has advertised the 3950X as targeted for liquid cooling. I know a lot of those who buy it will do so anyway, but there are some "air heads" left, including this one. I look forward to a comparison of liquid vs high-end and mainstream air coolers.
Overall, a great chip, that will keep Intel running to catch up, and that's good for all of us!
hansmuff - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Isn't (1) pure speculation? As far as (2) goes, even with the 3900X AMD was saying that the top frequencies need enhanced cooling, and that's not particularly true. Even on a good AIO, we're not seeing the 3900X performing better than on good air. The 3950X has similar thermal envelopes, so I think a good air cooler will be just dandy.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
The binning part (1) was mentioned in an article in golem.de . That site is usually pretty reliable, despite their name.abufrejoval - Friday, November 15, 2019 - link
While it's one of my favorites, too, I doubt that in this specific case they have any insights AT lacks. I believe they editorialized that part.But of course sophisticated binning is a core part of the CPU business these days.
And another good one with exclusive news gems every now and then is this one: https://elchapuzasinformatico.com/
Irata - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Does AMD consider the 3950X to be HEDT ? Thought it was part of their mainstream platform.Ratman6161 - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
No. the 3950x is not HEDT. Its performance blurs the lines a bit but HEDT is more than just the CPU. Its also about PCIe lanes and RAM capacity etc.Ratman6161 - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
"the 3950X is King of the Hill in the HEDT space"The 3950x is not in the HEDT space. That's one of the most important conclusions I take away from this review. 3950x runs on a regular desktop motherboard (albeit an x570 to get full advantage of it). So besides just the price of the CPU itself, it makes everything about the system less expensive as well. My conclusion is that the 3950X is the best overall performance you can get from something that is not HEDT. This makes it much more accessible to us mere mortals...though personally I'm still looking at the 3700X.
eastcoast_pete - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
I guess one person's high-end desktop is another one's mainstream. I call a CPU that, yes, costs more than twice than a standard 8 core, yet is also faster than many other "HEDT" CPUs HEDT. In my view, HEDT is still below workstation levels, which have all the goodies you mention such as many more PCIe lanes, quad or more memory channels, support error correcting memory and lots of it, and are often multi-socketed. But then, the prices for these is eye-watering. But, regardless, this is a fast CPU.phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Time for another category, then. :)This is definitely a high-end desktop CPU. Runs in a mainstream desktop motherboard, and performs better than pretty much every other mainstream desktop processor.
Maybe it's time to call the Intel -X and AMD Threafripper lines "workstation-class" or "high-end workstation" or something along those line.
So you get desktop, workstation, and server. With low-end/high-end sub-groups for them.
So Athlon 3000G and Ryzen 3 would be low-end desktop. Ryzen 5 and 7, and the APUs, would be normal desktop. Ryzen 9 would be high-end desktop.