The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X and 3970X Review: 24 and 32 Cores on 7nm
by Dr. Ian Cutress, Andrei Frumusanu & Gavin Bonshor on November 25, 2019 9:05 AM ESTGaming: Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data.
There are no presets for the graphics options on GTA, allowing the user to adjust options such as population density and distance scaling on sliders, but others such as texture/shadow/shader/water quality from Low to Very High. Other options include MSAA, soft shadows, post effects, shadow resolution and extended draw distance options. There is a handy option at the top which shows how much video memory the options are expected to consume, with obvious repercussions if a user requests more video memory than is present on the card (although there’s no obvious indication if you have a low end GPU with lots of GPU memory, like an R7 240 4GB).
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
 |
| 95th Percentile |  |
 |
 |
 |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
245 Comments
View All Comments
niva - Wednesday, November 27, 2019 - link
If that's how you feel just go to another website, why even bother posting here?stux - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
I must admit I’m saddened by the lack of compiler benchmarks. Who cares about gaming benchmarks on a workstation processor.Meanwhile actually benchmarks which may affect serious purchasers are missing
ABR - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Another vote for compilation. Ability to take advantage of more cores is a complex equation depending on caching, i/o, and memory access, so it would be informative to see some comparisons done.Lux88 - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Another vote for compilation. Should be relatively easily scriptlable too. Linux kernel compiles under half a minute, but Chromium or Firefox should still be big enough. Additionally there's .NET, could be an interesting data point.GreenReaper - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
PostgreSQL database work? It can parallelize quite nicely now, especially with PG12.PeachNCream - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Yup, one more +1 for compiler benchmarks and for the lack of relevance of gaming benchmarks.peevee - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Agree. Compiler, CADs etc must be here, games and self-made tests and useless PI calculators should not.Supercell99 - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Would like to see how it runs some VMware ESXi loads as well.cosecant - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Another vote for compilation, go or c++, as well as database tests, CAD of some kind, and virtualization (bonus points for docker or Kubernetes as well)... however... please don’t remove all the gaming benchmarks... I might be in the minority, but I like to be able to game or work on the same machine...Supercell99 - Tuesday, November 26, 2019 - link
Yea more HEDT testing applicable. Gaming on this chip is not the intent.