DuronBurgerMan
[H]ard|Gawd
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2017
- Messages
- 1,340
Been reading the reviews and benches this morning, and I think a clear picture is emerging.
Single thread
Single-threaded performance has been hugely improved over Zen/Zen+, and clock-for-clock it's equal or maybe a pubic hair better than Skylake. However, the high boost clocks of the 9700k and 9900k still deliver an overall single-threaded win for Intel. Correspondingly, Intel retains the gaming performance crown, though the lead is much slimmer than it has been, and you have to go down to 720p to really push it outside the margin of error much of the time. Also, I note a few outright wins for Zen 2 here and there (as I suspected). But the 9700k and 9900k win more often. And frankly, the Intel wins are a bit more frequent than I thought they might be. I was hoping for a more 30/70 or 40/60 split, but it appears to be more like a 20/80 split, roughly.
Still, AMD has a lot to be proud of here. It's clear they did a buttload of work on this.
Zen 2 is also winning some single-thread productivity/content creation benchmarks. I noted a mild win in Cinebench 20, and in some of the web browser metrics. But as with gaming, the 9700k and 9900k still win more single threaded benchmarks. Notably, single-threaded Photoshop tests still mildly favor Intel. Overall this paints a picture of single-threaded performance within ~5% of Intel and identical-to-slightly-better IPC. It's also worth noting that single-threaded application performance is more competitive than single-threaded gaming performance.
Worth noting that PCWorld ran Puget System's test suite for Photoshop, which resulted in a win for the 3900X against the 9900k, but that is a mix of single and multithreaded tests. Still, no AMD CPU has beaten the 9900k here until now.
Multithread
In multithreaded workloads, Zen 2 crushes it. Even the 3700X is extremely close to the 9900k at times, and demolishes the non-HT 9700k. The 3900X is in a league of its own - the 9900k can't touch it, overall, and only wins a handful of specific benchmarks. AMD's superior SMT gains really shine here. The power efficiency of the 3700X makes it a more efficient part than the 9900k even when it doesn't outright win, but I saw a number of outright wins for the 3700X over the 9900k anyway (the 9900k still wins overall vs. the 3700X though).
There's not much else to say here. It's an obvious, huge, and clear win for Zen 2, and it lacks many of the caveats that came with saying Zen/Zen+ was 'better at multithreaded tests, except X, and Y, and Z." The win is conclusive, and needs no disclaimer. Zen 2 makes huge gains even in benchmarks that traditionally did not favor Zen/Zen+ (Geekbench being an excellent example).
Overclocking
Overclocking is a bust. I've noted no good all-core overclocking results in any of the reviews. However, it is consistently mentioned that heat is the big problem here, more so than voltage. Techpowerup, for instance, recorded a crappy 4.0 GHz OC (to be fair, this was by far the worst result seen this morning), but at a voltage of only 1.2v, because heat generation was overloading the stock cooler past that - so don't try OCing this on the stock cooler, as clearly that is a bad idea. Other results were more along the lines of 4.3-4.4 GHz for the 3900X, but again, heat came into play. I suspect a ~4.5ghz all core ceiling for Zen 2 even on a good AIO or water cooler.
This does indicate that a good water cooler may achieve better OC results than we've seen this morning, and we should see more on this in the coming days as people experiment with them. Nonetheless, it looks like the PBO +200MHz overboost is probably the best way to go with overclocking anyway, since single-threaded performance is still the weakest link (albeit not bad anymore), this will address that better than an all-core OC. Multi-threaded performance by Zen 2 is so dominating that an all-core OC is probably a waste of time anyway.
Missing 3800X review
I've seen no benchmarks on the 3800X this morning. Since the 3700X loses by a bit (but wins on efficiency) against the 9900k in outright performance, it would be interesting to see if the 3800X correspondingly wins by a hair, or effective ties the 9900k. As it stands, the price/performance/efficiency sweet spot still favors the 3700X, but it would be nice to see if AMD can claim the multithreaded application crown on a per-core basis. The 3700X doesn't quite get there. The 3800X might. I still wouldn't bother with a 9900k even as a pure gamer, though. The 3700X is close enough, cheaper, and comes with a cooler. And the 9700k still shows slightly better performance in gaming in many cases than the 9900k.
Memory Performance
If overclocking results were a bust, the memory OC performance results are excellent. Most reviews have noted that Zen 2 does not share the bizarre memory OC problems of Zen and Zen+. One quote from Techpowerup was "...and can confirm that DDR4-4000 was not any more difficult than on Intel." So perhaps the days of nitpicking your RAM kit with Ryzen are over. Much to my personal relief, really.
Linux Results
There was some kind of bug reported by Phoronix on some Linux distro versions (specifically the very latest releases). They weren't sure if it was a chipset thing or something else. So testing was done one version back.
However, Linux results were otherwise a huge win for Zen 2. The 3900X crushed the 9900k, beat out AMD's TR 2950X, and almost beat out the 7960X. The geometric mean of all tests is on the last page.
Single thread
Single-threaded performance has been hugely improved over Zen/Zen+, and clock-for-clock it's equal or maybe a pubic hair better than Skylake. However, the high boost clocks of the 9700k and 9900k still deliver an overall single-threaded win for Intel. Correspondingly, Intel retains the gaming performance crown, though the lead is much slimmer than it has been, and you have to go down to 720p to really push it outside the margin of error much of the time. Also, I note a few outright wins for Zen 2 here and there (as I suspected). But the 9700k and 9900k win more often. And frankly, the Intel wins are a bit more frequent than I thought they might be. I was hoping for a more 30/70 or 40/60 split, but it appears to be more like a 20/80 split, roughly.
Still, AMD has a lot to be proud of here. It's clear they did a buttload of work on this.
Zen 2 is also winning some single-thread productivity/content creation benchmarks. I noted a mild win in Cinebench 20, and in some of the web browser metrics. But as with gaming, the 9700k and 9900k still win more single threaded benchmarks. Notably, single-threaded Photoshop tests still mildly favor Intel. Overall this paints a picture of single-threaded performance within ~5% of Intel and identical-to-slightly-better IPC. It's also worth noting that single-threaded application performance is more competitive than single-threaded gaming performance.
Worth noting that PCWorld ran Puget System's test suite for Photoshop, which resulted in a win for the 3900X against the 9900k, but that is a mix of single and multithreaded tests. Still, no AMD CPU has beaten the 9900k here until now.
Multithread
In multithreaded workloads, Zen 2 crushes it. Even the 3700X is extremely close to the 9900k at times, and demolishes the non-HT 9700k. The 3900X is in a league of its own - the 9900k can't touch it, overall, and only wins a handful of specific benchmarks. AMD's superior SMT gains really shine here. The power efficiency of the 3700X makes it a more efficient part than the 9900k even when it doesn't outright win, but I saw a number of outright wins for the 3700X over the 9900k anyway (the 9900k still wins overall vs. the 3700X though).
There's not much else to say here. It's an obvious, huge, and clear win for Zen 2, and it lacks many of the caveats that came with saying Zen/Zen+ was 'better at multithreaded tests, except X, and Y, and Z." The win is conclusive, and needs no disclaimer. Zen 2 makes huge gains even in benchmarks that traditionally did not favor Zen/Zen+ (Geekbench being an excellent example).
Overclocking
Overclocking is a bust. I've noted no good all-core overclocking results in any of the reviews. However, it is consistently mentioned that heat is the big problem here, more so than voltage. Techpowerup, for instance, recorded a crappy 4.0 GHz OC (to be fair, this was by far the worst result seen this morning), but at a voltage of only 1.2v, because heat generation was overloading the stock cooler past that - so don't try OCing this on the stock cooler, as clearly that is a bad idea. Other results were more along the lines of 4.3-4.4 GHz for the 3900X, but again, heat came into play. I suspect a ~4.5ghz all core ceiling for Zen 2 even on a good AIO or water cooler.
This does indicate that a good water cooler may achieve better OC results than we've seen this morning, and we should see more on this in the coming days as people experiment with them. Nonetheless, it looks like the PBO +200MHz overboost is probably the best way to go with overclocking anyway, since single-threaded performance is still the weakest link (albeit not bad anymore), this will address that better than an all-core OC. Multi-threaded performance by Zen 2 is so dominating that an all-core OC is probably a waste of time anyway.
Missing 3800X review
I've seen no benchmarks on the 3800X this morning. Since the 3700X loses by a bit (but wins on efficiency) against the 9900k in outright performance, it would be interesting to see if the 3800X correspondingly wins by a hair, or effective ties the 9900k. As it stands, the price/performance/efficiency sweet spot still favors the 3700X, but it would be nice to see if AMD can claim the multithreaded application crown on a per-core basis. The 3700X doesn't quite get there. The 3800X might. I still wouldn't bother with a 9900k even as a pure gamer, though. The 3700X is close enough, cheaper, and comes with a cooler. And the 9700k still shows slightly better performance in gaming in many cases than the 9900k.
Memory Performance
If overclocking results were a bust, the memory OC performance results are excellent. Most reviews have noted that Zen 2 does not share the bizarre memory OC problems of Zen and Zen+. One quote from Techpowerup was "...and can confirm that DDR4-4000 was not any more difficult than on Intel." So perhaps the days of nitpicking your RAM kit with Ryzen are over. Much to my personal relief, really.
Linux Results
There was some kind of bug reported by Phoronix on some Linux distro versions (specifically the very latest releases). They weren't sure if it was a chipset thing or something else. So testing was done one version back.
However, Linux results were otherwise a huge win for Zen 2. The 3900X crushed the 9900k, beat out AMD's TR 2950X, and almost beat out the 7960X. The geometric mean of all tests is on the last page.
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