AMD Zen 3 Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 5950X, 5900X, 5800X and 5600X Tested
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 5, 2020 9:01 AM ESTGaming Tests: GTA 5
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA to help optimize the title. At this point GTA V is super old, but still super useful as a benchmark – it is a complicated test with many features that modern titles today still struggle with. With rumors of a GTA 6 on the horizon, I hope Rockstar make that benchmark as easy to use as this one is.
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.
We are using the following settings:
- 720p Low, 1440p Low, 4K Low, 1080p Max
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. The benchmark can also be called from the command line, making it very easy to use.
There is one funny caveat with GTA. If the CPU is too slow, or has too few cores, the benchmark loads, but it doesn’t have enough time to put items in the correct position. As a result, for example when running our single core Sandy Bridge system, the jet ends up stuck at the middle of an intersection causing a traffic jam. Unfortunately this means the benchmark never ends, but still amusing.
| AnandTech | Low Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Low Quality |
High Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Max Quality |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
 |
| 95th Percentile |  |
 |
 |
 |
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
339 Comments
View All Comments
Threska - Monday, November 16, 2020 - link
Depends upon advantage.https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/11/16/nvidia-l...
FreckledTrout - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
AMD finally has an Intel beater on its hands at least until Rocket Lake arrives. Having actual competition is going to be great computing. Nice review.duploxxx - Saturday, November 7, 2020 - link
nothing confirmed on Rocket Lake...fishy results with a so-called avg turbo ghz which actually shows it was doing 5ghz.
a total unknown release date, expected at the end of Q1 2021 on a dead platform with some kind of pcie-4 . yeah really looking forward.
Spunjji - Sunday, November 8, 2020 - link
They'd have to get north of 5.3Ghz consistently to beat AMD.I just don't think they can, which would make the product pretty hilarious - big die, lots of heat, no performance crown.
hbsource - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
Very impressive. I think I'm good with my 3950X until the next socket but the single thread uplift is very tempting.FireSnake - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
@Ian:"With AMD taking the performance crown in almost area it’s competing in"
Should this be:
"With AMD taking the performance crown in almost every area it’s competing in" ... missing every?
charlesg - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
Now to just find the 5950 in stock at NewEgg!faizoff - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
Quick question on encoding with Handbrake, the 4k encoding and even the others for that matter, what preset are they run? like fast, medium, slow? and what RF count are the encodes set to? Sorry if I missed those, don't see them at a glance. Amazing review as always. Best tech deep dive for me, I love to read the architectural breakdown.GeoffreyA - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link
I think AT is using Handbrake's presets: (a) Discord Nitro 480p30, (b) Vimeo YouTube 720p30, and (c) HEVC 2160p60. I went through them now and here are the settings:A) Medium, CRF = 21
B) Medium, CRF = 22
C) Slow, CRF = 24
If you were looking for the reference frames, they are 3, 1, and 4. And there's a possibility Anandtech might have altered the presets.
DigitalFreak - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
Does Purch require you to use at least one bad pun in every article?