AMD Zen 3 Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 5950X, 5900X, 5800X and 5600X Tested
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 5, 2020 9:01 AM ESTCPU Tests: Legacy and Web
In order to gather data to compare with older benchmarks, we are still keeping a number of tests under our ‘legacy’ section. This includes all the former major versions of CineBench (R15, R11.5, R10) as well as x264 HD 3.0 and the first very naïve version of 3DPM v2.1. We won’t be transferring the data over from the old testing into Bench, otherwise it would be populated with 200 CPUs with only one data point, so it will fill up as we test more CPUs like the others.
The other section here is our web tests.
Web Tests: Kraken, Octane, and Speedometer
Benchmarking using web tools is always a bit difficult. Browsers change almost daily, and the way the web is used changes even quicker. While there is some scope for advanced computational based benchmarks, most users care about responsiveness, which requires a strong back-end to work quickly to provide on the front-end. The benchmarks we chose for our web tests are essentially industry standards – at least once upon a time.
It should be noted that for each test, the browser is closed and re-opened a new with a fresh cache. We use a fixed Chromium version for our tests with the update capabilities removed to ensure consistency.
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
Kraken is a 2010 benchmark from Mozilla and does a series of JavaScript tests. These tests are a little more involved than previous tests, looking at artificial intelligence, audio manipulation, image manipulation, json parsing, and cryptographic functions. The benchmark starts with an initial download of data for the audio and imaging, and then runs through 10 times giving a timed result.
We loop through the 10-run test four times (so that’s a total of 40 runs), and average the four end-results. The result is given as time to complete the test, and we’re reaching a slow asymptotic limit with regards the highest IPC processors.
Google Octane 2.0
Our second test is also JavaScript based, but uses a lot more variation of newer JS techniques, such as object-oriented programming, kernel simulation, object creation/destruction, garbage collection, array manipulations, compiler latency and code execution.
Octane was developed after the discontinuation of other tests, with the goal of being more web-like than previous tests. It has been a popular benchmark, making it an obvious target for optimizations in the JavaScript engines. Ultimately it was retired in early 2017 due to this, although it is still widely used as a tool to determine general CPU performance in a number of web tasks.
Speedometer 2: JavaScript Frameworks
Our newest web test is Speedometer 2, which is a test over a series of JavaScript frameworks to do three simple things: built a list, enable each item in the list, and remove the list. All the frameworks implement the same visual cues, but obviously apply them from different coding angles.
Our test goes through the list of frameworks, and produces a final score indicative of ‘rpm’, one of the benchmarks internal metrics.
We repeat over the benchmark for a dozen loops, taking the average of the last five.
Legacy Tests
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halcyon - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link
1. Ryzen 9 5xxx series dominate most gaming benhmarks in CPU bound games up to 720p2. However at 1440P/4K Intel, esp. 10850K pull ahead.
Can somebody explain this anomaly? As Games become more GPU bound at higher res, why does Intel pull ahead (with worse single/multi-thread CPU perf)? Is it a bandwidth/latency issue? If so, where exactly (RAM? L3? somewhere else)? Can't be PCIe, can it?
feka1ity - Saturday, November 14, 2020 - link
RAM. anandtech uses shitty ram for intel systemsMakste - Monday, November 16, 2020 - link
I think the game optimizations for intel processors become clear at those resolutions. AMD has been a none factor in gaming for so long. These games have been developed on and mostly optimised to work better on intel machinesSilma - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link
At 4K, the 3700X beats the 5600X quite often.Samus - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
Considering Intel just released a new generation of CPU's, it's astonishing at their current IPC generation-over-generation trajectory, it will take them two more generations to surpass Zen 3. That's almost 2 years.Wow.
ssshenoy - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - link
I dont think this article compares the latest generation from Intel - the Willow Cove core in Tiger lake which is launched only for notebooks. The comparison here seems to be with the ancient Skylake generation on 14 nm.abufrejoval - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
Got my Ryzen 7 5800X on a new Aorus X570 mainboard and finally working, too.It turbos to 4850MHz without any overclocking, so I'd hazard 150MHz "bonus" are pretty much the default across the line.
At the wall plug 210 Watts was the biggest load I observed for pure CPU loads. HWinfo never reporting anything in excess of 120 Watts on the CPU from internal sensors.
"finally working": I want ECC with this rig, because I am aiming for 64GB or even 128GB RAM and 24x7 operation. Ordered DDR4-3200 ECC modules from Kingston to go with the board. Those seem a little slow coming so I tried to make do with pilfering some DIMMs from other systems, that could be shut down for a moment. DDR4-2133 ECC and DDR4-2400 ECC modules where candidates, but wouldn't boot...
Both were 2Rx4, dual rank, nibble not byte organized modules, unbuffered and unregistered but not the byte organized DIMMs that the Gigabyte documentation seeemd to prescribe... Asus, MSI and ASrock don't list such constraints, but I had to go with availability...
I like to think of RAM as RAM, it may be slower or faster, but it shouldn't be tied to one specific system, right?
So while I await the DDR4-3200 ECC 32GB modules to arrive, I got myself some DDR4-4000 R1x8 (no ECC, 8GB) DIMMs to fill the gap: But would that X570 mainboard, which might have been laying on shelves for months actually boot a Ryzen 5000?
No, it wouldn't.
But yes, it would update the BIOS via Q-Flash Plus-what-shall-we-call-it and then, yes, it did indeed recognize both the CPU and those R1x8 DIMMs just fine after the update.
I haven't yet tried those R2x4 modules again, because I am still exploring the bandwidth high-end, but I want to report just how much I am impressed by the compatibility of the AM4 platform, fully aware that Zen 3 will be the last generation in this "sprint".
I vividly remember how I had to get Skylake CPUs in order to get various mainboard ready for Kaby Lake...
I have been using AMD x86 CPUs from 80486DX4. I owned every iteration of K6-II and K6-III, omitted all Slot-A variants, got back with socket-A, 754, 939, went single, quad, and hexa (Phenom II x4+x6), omitted Bulldozer, but did almost every APU but between Kaveri and Zen 3, AMD simply wasn't compelling enough.
I would have gotten a Ryzen 9 5950x, if it had been available. But I count myself lucky for the moment to have snatched a Ryzen 7 5800X: It sure doesn't disappoint.
AMD a toast! You have done very well indeed and you can count me impressed!
Of course I'll nag about missing SVE/MKTME support day after tomorrow, but in the mean-time, please accept my gratitude.
feka1ity - Saturday, November 14, 2020 - link
Interesting, my default 9700k with 1080ti does 225fps avg - Borderlands 3, 360p, very low settings and anantech testers poop 175fps avg with 10900k and 2080ti?!? And this favoritize amede products. Fake stuff, sorry.Spunjji - Monday, November 16, 2020 - link
"Fake stuff"Thanks for labelling your post
feka1ity - Monday, November 16, 2020 - link
Fake stuff is not a label, it's a epicrisis. Go render stuff, spunji