Why does Ryzen 7 1800X performs so poorly in games?

All these issues are fixable with bios and smalll modifications in the windows scheduler. I can guarantee with certainty that Microsoft and AMD will work together to correct the issue.
 
All these issues are fixable with bios and smalll modifications in the windows scheduler. I can guarantee with certainty that Microsoft and AMD will work together to correct the issue.

I can guarantee you they won't be able to give 20%+ percent to beat Intel in gaming.
 
I think it looks like a great CPU. It would definitely benefit streamers and content creators. It is pretty much 95% of a 6900k at half the price. Who games at 1080p that buys a $500 CPU anyways?
i would. i got a 1080p monitor that is working great. my days of needing every last FPS are long gone, but this chip looks like it could handle just about anything i want to do for the next 3 or 4 years without breaking a sweat.
 
The BIOS tells the OS about the cores. Windows will schedule tasks on cores 0-7 first that will be physical cores. And first after that from 8 to 15 it will use the SMT cores.

As I said, Windows will schedule to the cores before using SMT. Its no different than when an i3 uses SMT while a i7 would still use "real cores" before going to SMT cores. You dont code for that.

When you disable SMT you release resources in the CPU that's shared. And that's on a pure CPU level.

There is no physical and SMT core to the OS, it's just two logical cores that run on the same physical core. It would largely void the principle of SMT if one thread had priority of some kind.

Yes, you'll free up some shared resources when you disable SMT, but what prevents AMD and Windows from having a low level mismatch where AMD pair SMT cores 0 and 1 as physical core 0, while Windows consider 0 and 8 as physical core 0? When windows then use core 0-7, it will utilize 4 of the physical cores, rather than all 8. Disabling SMT would then force 0-7 to be run on all 8 physical cores.

That, and you do program for SMT cores if you go low level and want to optimize multithreaded performance. You'd save a lot of caching if both SMT cores work on the same data, since they share resources. Especially considering the alternative would be to have the two SMT cores competing over the same resources, and the next pair of SMT cores mirror their workload and data. Again, if you mismatch the affinity to the core pairs, you'll split your similar workloads to two different physical cores, rather than keep it on one. Thus reduce performance.
 
and just think of all the things that can be done with 8 cores as developers really learn to use them.

Quad Core CPUs have been mainstream for a decade now, yet games still tend to have shit multi-core utilization, and single-threaded performance STILL dominates game performance.

What makes AMD think that game developers are going to all of a sudden start optimizing for 8 cores just because of Ryzen?
 
Agreed. It seems a lot of people are blinded by FPS numbers. Ryzen IS a good chip. Does it necessarily outperform Intels offerings? No but, does it keep up to be competitive? Certainly.

But I guess it all comes down to personal needs/expectation. A lot of people would say my 880K is junk and I should throw it in the trash but, it does everything "I" need and does it well. Ryzen would make a nice upgrade for me but, I wouldn't be able to make use of 8 cores so I'll wait for the 4/6 core models to come out.

Can't say I agree here, sorry.

I'd argue gaming performance is most definitely the most important metric, and for me, the only one to consider. Here's my reasoning:

If CPU A get you 60fps, but CPU B only does 45, CPU B is critically unplayable (certainly for me) whereas A is fine. So it's a qualitative difference.

The ability to shave 20 minutes off a 3 hour encode you left running over night is only a quantitative difference. You just have to wait 20 minutes longer, but the result is ultimately the same. It's not the same result with gaming performance, it's a critical difference hence why, imho, it counts the most.
 
All these issues are fixable with bios and smalll modifications in the windows scheduler. I can guarantee with certainty that Microsoft and AMD will work together to correct the issue.

Even if all of that happens and it's sunshine and rainbows, you've still got to be delusional to think that's going to provide some huge performance boost that will suddenly make Ryzen live up to all of the hype. Don't get me wrong, Ryzen seems to be a solid offering from AMD, but it is not nor will it be the Intel-killer it was hyped up to be.
 
Can't say I agree here, sorry.

I'd argue gaming performance is most definitely the most important metric, and for me, the only one to consider. Here's my reasoning:

If CPU A get you 60fps, but CPU B only does 45, CPU B is critically unplayable (certainly for me) whereas A is fine. So it's a qualitative difference.

The ability to shave 20 minutes off a 3 hour encode you left running over night is only a quantitative difference. You just have to wait 20 minutes longer, but the result is ultimately the same. It's not the same result with gaming performance, it's a critical difference hence why, imho, it counts the most.

Ryzen struggle to hold 60fps on few select games while others it runs at 100+. 120fps and 100fps mean exactly the same to me.
 
Can't say I agree here, sorry.

I'd argue gaming performance is most definitely the most important metric, and for me, the only one to consider. Here's my reasoning:

If CPU A get you 60fps, but CPU B only does 45, CPU B is critically unplayable (certainly for me) whereas A is fine. So it's a qualitative difference.

The ability to shave 20 minutes off a 3 hour encode you left running over night is only a quantitative difference. You just have to wait 20 minutes longer, but the result is ultimately the same. It's not the same result with gaming performance, it's a critical difference hence why, imho, it counts the most.

Even a new Pentium is a solid upgrade for an Athlon 880k user. But there isn't a single benchmark where the low clocked ryzen doesn't match the "adequate" level of gaming performance.
 
Why does Ryzen 7 1800X performs so poorly in games?

I was expecting it to be able to keep up with the Intel Core i7-6900K.

The short answer is that different architectures perform better with certain workloads than others. This has been the way of things as far back as I can remember in the PC industry. In the i386SX days Cyrix actually had an 80387 "FastMath" co-processor that was well regarded as a high performance option. In the i486 days there were situations were AMD CPUs with their write back cache worked pretty well. Intel used write through cache. In the Pentium days, Cyrix's 6x86 PR-200+ ran at 150MHz or something like that and was faster than Intel CPU's at almost everything outside of games that used the FPU heavily such as the Quake engine. The Pentium Pro was weaker at 16 bit code than it's Pentium counterparts which is why it was only suited to certain tasks. In the Pentium IV days the Pentium IV was much faster than the Athlon at encoding and video editing type tasks. On the other hand the Athlon 64 was faster at virtually anything else. Yet, with hyper-threading the Intel CPUs often created a smoother productivity experience than AMD systems did.

In more recent times, Bulldozer was actually still reasonably competitive in multithreaded and certain applications traditionally used in server environments. It was the nature of the design. In gaming and anything single threaded it was beaten like a red headed step child by virtually anything Intel made. Intel's Core i3 2100 2c/4t CPU dominated AMD in gaming. That's how bad it was. Again, each architecture lends itself to handling some workloads better than others. AMD may have made a calculated risk and chose to optimize for productivity applications where it could be a real alternative to Intel's offerings. At the same time, while gaming gets the limelight on the desktop, gamers are primarily GPU limited rather than CPU limited. What AMD failed to account for is the bad press that alleged decision resulted in. It could be that they simply designed the best CPU they could and gaming just happens to be the weakness of that design. A weakness that wasn't expected or deliberately designed as Zen progressed through development. I don't know and we'll probably never know as AMD has actually learned to keep secrets over the last couple of years.
 
You could just point towards survival for AMD was to make a CPU that did very well in productivity and little bit less on the gaming side.
If you could extrapolate the 4ghz Ryzen benchmarks to 5ghz then you have an idea on how much they missing on clock speed alone.
If you go down this path is AMD going to get over 5ghz or close to for Zen+ , if not they have some work cut out for them.
 
Why does Ryzen 7 1800X performs so poorly in games?

I was expecting it to be able to keep up with the Intel Core i7-6900K.

I have to ask, and I only noticed this because it looks like you typed the post in MS Word and then pasted it here([H] preserves formatting):
Why have you posted this exact same question, word for word, to multiple forums that you only just registered to or this is your only post?

For anyone interested:
https://www.google.com/search?q="Why+does+Ryzen+7+1800X+performs+so+poorly+in+games?"&*
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/why-does-ryzen-7-1800x-performs-so-poorly-in-games.2500615/
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?483688-Why-does-Ryzen-7-1800X-performs-so-poorly-in-games
 
Quad Core CPUs have been mainstream for a decade now, yet games still tend to have shit multi-core utilization, and single-threaded performance STILL dominates game performance.

What makes AMD think that game developers are going to all of a sudden start optimizing for 8 cores just because of Ryzen?

MS's new xbox coming out late this year will use an 8 core cpu from AMD, most likely Ryzen architecture, and things will change.

Don't you remember when 4 core cpu's first came out? they were useless for gaming, and today they are a must, playing MP games on dual core cpu's today is a nightmare, so things change over time.

Consoles control programming, PC's have always been ahead of consoles but it always gets the needed software many years down the road due to developers coding for consoles as priority.

We no longer have PC exclusive developers like back in the days.

I just hope Intel makes their 8 core cpu's affordable when that day comes where games will take full advantage of all 8 cores, which in my opinion is 2 years from now.
 
Last edited:
Did anyone post this discussion between GN & Joker? I don't think I saw it.
They kind of discuss more in depth their testing methodology
 
MS's new xbox coming out late this year will use an 8 core cpu from AMD, most likely Ryzen architecture, and things will change.

Don't you remember when 4 core cpu's first came out? they were useless for gaming, and today they are a must, playing MP games on dual core cpu's today is a nightmare, so things change over time.

Consoles control programming, PC's have always been ahead of consoles but it always gets the needed software many years down the road due to developers coding for consoles as priority.

We no longer have PC exclusive developers like back in the days.

I just hope Intel makes their 8 core cpu's affordable when that day comes where games will take full advantage of all 8 cores, which in my opinion is 2 years from now.

I seem to recall that there are two 8 core consoles already on the market; for about two or three years now. You'd think that if it was going to take off it already would have.
 
I seem to recall that there are two 8 core consoles already on the market; for about two or three years now. You'd think that if it was going to take off it already would have.

I though ps4 and xbox 1 really don't have 8 real physical core cpu's, everyone I thought knew that, they are really 4 cores broken in two branches, aka fake 8 cores as what people been calling it for so long.
 
Tomshardware's review had SMT turned off and it performed something like 15% better.

Tomshardware words, emphasis added by me: "Indeed, we observed higher performance with SMT turned off in some titles." In some games disabling SMT reduced performance and in others it did nothing. The problem is not SMT.
 
Last edited:
I can guarantee you they won't be able to give 20%+ percent to beat Intel in gaming.


AMD was never going to beat a 7700k in games that did not scale as well or at all with core count, slightly lower ipc, and a large clock speed deficit (real world ryzen overclocks are in the low 4GHz range while the 7700k is often clocked at 5GHz). If you thought it would, that was an error on your part. Ryzen just needed to get close enough while also offering more performance in other areas. If you primarily buy higher end cpus to play pc games (I suspect that is the bulk of the rationale for the consumer market) and you want the fastest available chip, then the 7700k is your best bet. But if AMD can get these games and game engines to properly support SMT for performance boosts for the more multi core scaling games, I think they can offer performance that is good enough for people to jump to them, with the potential to outstrip the 7700k if the game is optimized for expanded cores and their implementation of SMT.

There are other side perks. Each year there will be a new iteration of Ryzen, on the AM4 platform. New intel cpu? New MB too. Total system cost for AMD, and the lower barrier for future upgrades that will almost certainly scale to higher clocks with better ipc gains is vastly superior on the AMD side.
 
I have to wonder with all these talk that game optimizations, game updates, windows update, etc. if any of those are going to make big differences or is this the result of something fundamental in the microarchitecture.
 
MS's new xbox coming out late this year will use an 8 core cpu from AMD, most likely Ryzen architecture, and things will change.

Don't you remember when 4 core cpu's first came out? they were useless for gaming, and today they are a must, playing MP games on dual core cpu's today is a nightmare, so things change over time.

Consoles control programming, PC's have always been ahead of consoles but it always gets the needed software many years down the road due to developers coding for consoles as priority.

lol?

The current XBox One already has 8 CPU cores... Even the XBox 360 before that had 3 cores. In neither case did it spur any significant multi-core game development on the PC. Why do you think that things are magically going to change with the upcoming XBox?

The biggest reason why dual core CPUs suck today is because they no longer make high-end dual-core CPUs. It's not just about the core count, but with a modern dual-core you're almost always also dealing with slower clocks, less cache, no HT, etc. I'm all about more cores, don't get me wrong, but we are still very far from the point where most games can even make decent use of 4 cores, nevermind 8 cores.
 
Give AMD and game developers some time to release updates. We know the processor can be a workhorse as indicated by many of the benchmarks. Think about how many times Nvidia has to release drivers to fix performance and issues in games?
 
i guess itll depend on how game code are written, whether it take advantage of more core and thread. likely in the future game developer will take advantage of 8 core to boost performance of CPU. so i7 may doing well in 2017, but may not doing well in 2018 as newer game take advantage of more core, and other bugs fixed by amd
 
Kinda bummed they dropped the ball then on memory bandwidth. I mean they hyped this thing for games not cinebench epeen scores
 
First, sorry for my english.

I think that Ryzen 1800X is a excelent product, revolutionary would I say by allowing us access to so much power for such a low price, I am not interested in games, not in Windows and not in overclocking. The cause of this kind of disillusionment that there is now is that AMD itself has insisted heavily on games in its conferences and also, to a lesser extent, on overclocking. And now, the reality is that the R7 1800X is slower that i7-6900k in all games in low resolution (1080p and below) and the overclocking capacity is also limited.
 
True, I have always built AMD computers going back to the 486 days and it was fine -- 6 months ago i was still happy with a fx8320e build -- then i picked up VR, maintaining 45+fps no longer cuts it for me, i need minimums of 90 now. This weekend i am going to microcenter do i A.) pick up a $259 i7-6700k or B.) spend $329 for less gaming performance? I might just buy both because i am having a hell of a time deciding between what the heart wants and the brain tells me to do.

The irony here. I remember being disgusted with people buying pentium 4's when AMDs were clearly cheaper and faster -- now here i am about to buy an AMD that is slower for my workload and more expensive... *sigh*

Not directed at you but you made me think.

What is it going to take for people to listen....

I literally have been playing on my Rift for hours on end and the 1700x at STOCK air cooled speeds is absolutely liquid. Im on a gtx 980ti which is not the best but far far far from the min required for VR. Im just waiting on my Raystorm Am4 update bracket and it will be underwater and OCd

The 1700x is an absolutely badass chip for gaming. So what if the f'ing 7700k gets 5 fps more ... oh whooptie Fing do.

Over it. Dont buy it people if you think 5 fps matters sigh.
 
The 1700 CPU loads seem much lower across the board, whereas the 7700 seems to hit 99%. Incorrect reporting, or is it just due to the extra cores?
Being 8c/16t I doubt any game fully utilizes it the same way as the 7700k, ie: 100% across all cores.
 
likely in the future game developer will take advantage of 8 core to boost performance of CPU.

Your projection of the future is reasonable, but the question is how soon will that future come?

While 6 cores, 8 cores, and 10 cores Intel i7 have been around for a while, they seem to only perform equal to a 4 core 7700K, which seems to indicate a lack of interest from the game developer community to invest in taking advantage of the additional cores. From a commercial aspect this is probably a fair call given that the gaming community is made up mostly of 4 core CPU owners. Up to now it probably has been a tough call for game developers to invest resource into optimising their product for high-end CPUs.

All it will depend on the sale of affordable 6 and 8 core CPUs, not only from AMD but also from Intel (*hint* ;) "affordable"), to bring those CPUs, previously considered high-end, into the mainstream to entice game developer community to start coding for higher cores.

And since sales are dependent on us voting with our wallet we're also responsible for deciding when that future arrives.
 
Your projection of the future is reasonable, but the question is how soon will that future come?

While 6 cores, 8 cores, and 10 cores Intel i7 have been around for a while, they seem to only perform equal to a 4 core 7700K, which seems to indicate a lack of interest from the game developer community to invest in taking advantage of the additional cores. From a commercial aspect this is probably a fair call given that the gaming community is made up mostly of 4 core CPU owners. Up to now it probably has been a tough call for game developers to invest resource into optimising their product for high-end CPUs.

All it will depend on the sale of affordable 6 and 8 core CPUs, not only from AMD but also from Intel (*hint* ;) "affordable"), to bring those CPUs, previously considered high-end, into the mainstream to entice game developer community to start coding for higher cores.

And since sales are dependent on us voting with our wallet we're also responsible for deciding when that future arrives.

i think the reason game developer didn't take notice of 8 core+ is because intel 8 core is $1000+, not that many ppl will buy it. as more ppl buying $300 8 core, game developer will take notice and try to optimize the code. they already done so on PS4/Xbox, which is 8 core. also many app do well with 8 core/more thread, so by next year game could take advantage of more cores. remember when dual core came out, ppl still use 1 core, then dual core become min requirment for gaming, so maybe soon 4 core will become min requirement for some games, while 8core is recommended.
 
Your projection of the future is reasonable, but the question is how soon will that future come?

While 6 cores, 8 cores, and 10 cores Intel i7 have been around for a while, they seem to only perform equal to a 4 core 7700K, which seems to indicate a lack of interest from the game developer community to invest in taking advantage of the additional cores. From a commercial aspect this is probably a fair call given that the gaming community is made up mostly of 4 core CPU owners. Up to now it probably has been a tough call for game developers to invest resource into optimising their product for high-end CPUs.

All it will depend on the sale of affordable 6 and 8 core CPUs, not only from AMD but also from Intel (*hint* ;) "affordable"), to bring those CPUs, previously considered high-end, into the mainstream to entice game developer community to start coding for higher cores.

And since sales are dependent on us voting with our wallet we're also responsible for deciding when that future arrives.

I believe that game developer will adopt >4 core faster than you might think. The processor of the newest generation consoles like XB1 S or PS4 Pro are 8 core processor much like Ryzen 7. These processors are even slower than Ryzen. So I would predict that in the future, the once the problems with Windows scheduler and EFI are solved, Ryzen will do as goog job as Kaby Lake or even better as devs are more experienced with 8-cores processors.
 
Back
Top