Zen 2 Review Summary

[chameleoneel]

Also, I wonder when we will see people showing more memory overclocking on these new ryzens.

Tech powerup has a pretty good article already
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-zen-2-memory-performance-scaling-benchmark/4.html

Basically, looks like 3600mhz with decent timings or 3200mhz with awesome timings, are the targets to aim for.

However, it looks like the memory system is really well optimized. Becuase faster and/or tighter memory has much less benefit than usual. Especially in the productivity tests.

 

[SighTurtle]

Intel stated that only 5% of people who buy K-series processors overclock them.

Exactly. We got people here nitpicking about about how Intel is gonna crush with some manual overclocking when the absolutely majority of people who buy into the K processors don't even overclock them in the first place, wasting so much easy performance and we have AMD being more consumer friendly and ensuring the processor you buy has its potential maxed out and it's being termed a bad thing.

 

[SighTurtle]

I think you are confused. Boost clocks are not all core overclocks. Boost clocks are not advertised for all core.

Even Intel only guarantees one core boost clocks.

 

[XoR_]

Maybe you should try actually reading the reviews.

I did and Intel is still better at single core perf and games while AMD exells at productivity because for the same money you can get more cores, including 12c now and 16c two months from now, and higher performing SMT.
I do not care for CPU rendering and CPU encoding but for single core performance and games so I got Intel and I intend to OC it to at least 5GHz if not 5.2GHz which I should be able to do. I even got 700W PSU for that

I was considering Ryzen 3900X but while it would suffice for my needs as much as 9900K will it is still worse than 9900K where it matters for me and and not even available now unlike Intel setup which I will be running next week. I waited long enough for Ryzen already. Waiting no more.

That said I think most people will get Ryzen now. It is after all pretty awesome product line for what it is.

 

[5150Joker]

For people who tinker and know generally what they are buying, no OC headroom is bad I guess, but for the vast majority of consumers, especially the full system buyers, if they don't ever go near the Bios, having OC headroom is absolutely wasted so if AMD makes it useless to manually overclock, then those people benefit a lot more than the guy who buys a 9900k but then never overclocks it and is running at stock.

Or AMD and Intel both have maxed out their processors with little to no headroom which is terrible for everyone, even noobs. This isn't the 1990s where we're flipping switches and setting IRQs to get stable overclock, companies like Asus, As Rock, Gigabyte etc have made overclocking painless as you literally just select a setting in the bios and you get free performance--even Intel has an OC tuner now. So no, fully stressed cpus out of the box isnt necessarily a good thing because you got a wall with that purchase like a console.

 

[chameleoneel]

I did and Intel is still better at single core perf and games while AMD exells at productivity because for the same money you can get more cores, including 12c now and 16c two months from now, and higher performing SMT.
I do not care for CPU rendering and CPU encoding but for single core performance and games so I got Intel and I intend to OC it to at least 5GHz if not 5.2GHz which I should be able to do. I even got 700W PSU for that

I was considering Ryzen 3900X but while it would suffice for my needs as much as 9900K will it is still worse than 9900K where it matters for me and and not even available now unlike Intel setup which I will be running next week. I waited long enough for Ryzen already. Waiting no more.

That said I think most people will get Ryzen now. It is after all pretty awesome product line for what it is.

Keep in mind that a 9900k is $142 more than a 3700x. You could probably get a better videocard for that difference.

 

[mikeo]

Need more game engines that can use 16+ threads efficiently.

 

[N4CR]

Any mentions on windows patches for all the Intel speed cheat holes?

 

[rtangwai]

No OC headroom is something that should be praised? Wtf are you smoking buddy. I've seen some weird weird mental gymnastics of logic when ones favorite company does well but this one is definitely up there in the WTF stratosphere.

Absolutely it should be praised.

Intel: We have 35% OC overhead, so if you aren't a computer expert you pay extra for that performance by buying a faster CPU even though the CPU you are looking at is quite capable of going as high as you wanted.

AMD: You are buying a Ryzen3? Here is PBO, it will give you as much of the CPU it has to offer as a turnkey solution. No magical tweaking necessary, turn on the computer and hold on to your hat. If you need more power, you need more cores - we'll always give you as much MHz as we can squeeze out of a Ryzen3 CPU.

Overclocking came out of Intel's belief that really fast CPU's should cost a boatload of money even though the cheap ones they made were capable of matching the big ones (anyone remember the Celeron 300A?). AMD doesn't have OC headroom because it give *THE ENTIRE CPU* to the user, no holding back to prop up the higher SKUs. AMD broadly speaking is charging more money for more *CORES*, not more MHz (with the notable exception of 3800x vs 3700x, and there are some external factors even with that specific scenario). Intel hasn't done that simply because they artificially limited core counts to 4c/8t for consumer-level CPUs until the AMD train hit them at the crosswalk.

 

[5150Joker]

Absolutely it should be praised.

Intel: We have 35% OC overhead, so if you aren't a computer expert you pay extra for that performance by buying a faster CPU even though the CPU you are looking at is quite capable of going as high as you wanted.

AMD: You are buying a Ryzen3? Here is PBO, it will give you as much of the CPU it has to offer as a turnkey solution. No magical tweaking necessary, turn on the computer and hold on to your hat. If you need more power, you need more cores - we'll always give you as much MHz as we can squeeze out of a Ryzen3 CPU.

Overclocking came out of Intel's belief that really fast CPU's should cost a boatload of money even though the cheap ones they made were capable of matching the big ones (anyone remember the Celeron 300A?). AMD doesn't have OC headroom because it give *THE ENTIRE CPU* to the user, no holding back to prop up the higher SKUs. AMD broadly speaking is charging more money for more *CORES*, not more MHz (with the notable exception of 3800x vs 3700x, and there are some external factors even with that specific scenario). Intel hasn't done that simply because they artificially limited core counts to 4c/8t for consumer-level CPUs until the AMD train hit them at the crosswalk.

Or simply AMD had to max their cpus to match intel, not because they love you. And see my previous post about overclocking. The justification and praising of a tapped out cpu by some of you is hilarious.

PS I know this website is dead now but what do you think HARD OCP meant? It surely wasn't a reference to cpus with no headroom for OC.

 

[5150Joker]

Any mentions on windows patches for all the Intel speed cheat holes?

This would be interesting to see, especially post 1903 update. Ive read most of the mitigations in windows had little effect. In my personal testing, I didn't see any real loss with or without them turned on.

 

[Thatguybil]

No OC headroom is something that should be praised? Wtf are you smoking buddy. I've seen some weird weird mental gymnastics of logic when ones favorite company does well but this one is definitely up there in the WTF stratosphere.

Back in the day if you had 25% OC headroom vs 5% OC headroom that was a good sign because it was a predictor of future higher clocked SKU.
Nowadays their is rarely 5% of OC headroom.

If AMD has more frequency headroom they would have released faster chips.

 

[Thatguybil]

Any mentions on windows patches for all the Intel speed cheat holes?

All reviews that I read were done on Win10 1903 that should have all specter type mitigation patches in place.

Gamers Nexus and Anand Tech

 

[XoR_]

Absolutely it should be praised.

Intel: We have 35% OC overhead, so if you aren't a computer expert you pay extra for that performance by buying a faster CPU even though the CPU you are looking at is quite capable of going as high as you wanted.

AMD: You are buying a Ryzen3? Here is PBO, it will give you as much of the CPU it has to offer as a turnkey solution. No magical tweaking necessary, turn on the computer and hold on to your hat. If you need more power, you need more cores - we'll always give you as much MHz as we can squeeze out of a Ryzen3 CPU.

Overclocking came out of Intel's belief that really fast CPU's should cost a boatload of money even though the cheap ones they made were capable of matching the big ones (anyone remember the Celeron 300A?). AMD doesn't have OC headroom because it give *THE ENTIRE CPU* to the user, no holding back to prop up the higher SKUs. AMD broadly speaking is charging more money for more *CORES*, not more MHz (with the notable exception of 3800x vs 3700x, and there are some external factors even with that specific scenario). Intel hasn't done that simply because they artificially limited core counts to 4c/8t for consumer-level CPUs until the AMD train hit them at the crosswalk.

OC headroom (for top-end products) is good indicator that competition is so far away from you that you can get away with being safe with your clocks
That was the case with almost all Core i7 products so far. 9900K is single core boost is much closer to OC limit than previous processors were and this is because AMD actually managed to threaten Intel to get close to clock limit. Sandy Bridge for example we all know could often do 5GHz but default clocks were like what? 3.3GHz all core and 3.7GHz turbo? AMD was non-existent at the time so Intel deliberately nerfed their products just to get to lower power usage thus make sure mobo manufacturers could use cheap VRM's and get more profit.

AMD pushed clock to the limit because they had to to be competitive in high-end. Intel also
Golden years of OC might come back but for now we have what we have...

 

[XoR_]

Keep in mind that a 9900k is $142 more than a 3700x. You could probably get a better videocard for that difference.

What is $142? Nothing. Having additional 142 bucks changes absolutely nothing at all in my life...
Having few more fps in my 720p (CRT) gaming experience is however a tangible difference

I was considering 3900X and even did research what mobo (x470) is best for it to OC it well (strong VRM's).
After reviews it was clear Core i9 9900K is faster. Even non-OC 9900K have more fps than OC'ed Ryzen so there is nothing to talk about here really...

 

[DuronBurgerMan]

Sadly I didn't read the reviews before jumping on board the hype train. I'll be side/downgrading from an 8700K to a 3700X. Newegg won't let me cancel the X570 board I ordered (even though it hasn't even shipped) so I guess I'm in it for the long haul now. Given how long I've been at this game I should have known better.

Sidegrade for gaming. Upgrade for application/productivity. But going from a modern 6 core to a modern 8 core was never going to be a big jump, regardless.

 

[DuronBurgerMan]

What is $142? Nothing. Having additional 142 bucks changes absolutely nothing at all in my life...
Having few more fps in my 720p (CRT) gaming experience is however a tangible difference

I was considering 3900X and even did research what mobo (x470) is best for it to OC it well (strong VRM's).
After reviews it was clear Core i9 9900K is faster. Even non-OC 9900K have more fps than OC'ed Ryzen so there is nothing to talk about here really...

720p and a CRT? Huh? Didn't even know that was still a thing.

Anyway, yes, the 9900k still retains the gaming crown - but I think most of us suspected it would.

For me, a 3900X is in my future. Productivity gains alone are easily worth the cost of admission, especially since it's a drop-in upgrade for my machine. And it games better than my 2700X. Now if I could find one in stock, that'd be nice.

 

[Deleted whining member 223597]

Anyone who thought amd was going to destroy a 9900K or OC’d 8700K in gaming was just a blind fanboy. I’m impressed by how much they improved compared to second gen though. The clocks are a bit disappointing but that’s why you don’t put faith in idiots like adoredtv.

If you only care about gaming and don’t care about costs, intel is the obvious choice. For everyone else Ryzen is a much better value.

 

[DuronBurgerMan]

I did and Intel is still better at single core perf and games...

True on the last point, but not the first. Reading all the reviews, we're seeing bifurcated single core performance. Which, really, we've always seen with Zen. Zen was always better at throughput tasks than it was at latency-sensitive tasks. This primarily because of the CCX concept, and now the multiple die concept too.

In this case, Zen may actually be better at single core throughput than the 9900k, even considering the clockspeed difference. At worst, it's dead even. The 3700X is very close to the 9900k here. The 3800X might actually beat it here. Core-for-core, the 3900X wins this.

In latency-sensitive workloads, AMD made great strides over Zen+, but hasn't equaled the 9900k. It's about 10% off. And games generally fall more under this bucket (but not always - Zen 2 wins a few here and there). This more or less explains the difference.

 

[DuronBurgerMan]

Anyone who thought amd was going to destroy a 9900K or OC’d 8700K in gaming was just a blind fanboy.

OTOH, it's more or less equaled a stock 8700k, and that's not a nothing. But yes, I don't know who expected a clear win over a 9900k in this area.

 

[chameleoneel]

Or simply AMD had to max their cpus to match intel, not because they love you. And see my previous post about overclocking. The justification and praising of a tapped out cpu by some of you is hilarious.

PS I know this website is dead now but what do you think HARD OCP meant? It surely wasn't a reference to cpus with no headroom for OC.

where did everyone go?

 

[Randall Stephens]

where did everyone go?

Am I still here?

 

[sleepybp]

What is $142? Nothing. Having additional 142 bucks changes absolutely nothing at all in my life...
Having few more fps in my 720p (CRT) gaming experience is however a tangible difference

I was considering 3900X and even did research what mobo (x470) is best for it to OC it well (strong VRM's).
After reviews it was clear Core i9 9900K is faster. Even non-OC 9900K have more fps than OC'ed Ryzen so there is nothing to talk about here really...

LMAO, are you really running a 9900K to game at 720P?
Please explain to me why you game at year 1996 resolution on top end hardware.

Also, agree that unless a gamer is running a 2080Ti, they are better off buying a $329 Ryzen 3700X and getting the best damn gpu they can afford (2080TI)
If you are rocking a 9900K with less than a RTX 2080 and gaming is your primary focus, you are not spending your money wisely.

 

[5150Joker]

where did everyone go?

Kyle retired and no longer reviews anything so the forums are just coasting along.

 

[DuronBurgerMan]

Kyle retired and no longer reviews anything so the forums are just coasting along.

This happened ages ago at Sharky Extreme too. The slow death of all the original review sites. Sigh...

 

[XoR_]

720p and a CRT? Huh? Didn't even know that was still a thing.[/img]
With CRT any resolution is native and everything is blurred as hell anyway so... why the hell not?

[quoe]Anyway, yes, the 9900k still retains the gaming crown - but I think most of us suspected it would.

I did too but with perhaps some wins on Ryzen side, especially 3900X after OC which I suspected was exactly 4.7GHz
In reality though we have large spread in maximum OC with anywhere between 4.1GHz and 4.4GHz and in all cases 9900K @ 5GHz (which seems to be always used) absolutely dominates Ryzen rig...\

For me, a 3900X is in my future. Productivity gains alone are easily worth the cost of admission, especially since it's a drop-in upgrade for my machine. And it games better than my 2700X. Now if I could find one in stock, that'd be nice.

makes sense
actually I have no bad word to say about AMD's performance and will not convince anyone who wants to get AMD setup
It is pretty good deal considering everything (Intel advantage is small and 9900k looses in some other areas, price with 8c and multithread applications in case of 12c Ryzens) and obvious upgrade path for existing Ryzen 1/2 gen. owners

Interresting thing to note is that in the past we had similar situation with clocks but not with gaming performance. Athlons 64 had slower clock speeds but were better with gaming worse in applications and here we are with AMD processors also having slower clock speeds but winning applications and Intel with higher clock speeds winning games

 

[5150Joker]

This happened ages ago at Sharky Extreme too. The slow death of all the original review sites. Sigh...

Yup, but it was inevitable due to the changing nature of the business. Most kids these days get their info from Reddit and YT so sites like this were a dinosaur. Just look at how popular Linus is compared to most real tech websites and that should tell you something and to stay on topic, its no wonder people now are praising maxed out CPUs with no headroom, they're the Linus generation of tech "enthusiasts".

 

[Deleted whining member 223597]

Yup, but it was inevitable due to the changing nature of the business. Most kids these days get their info from Reddit and YT so sites like this were a dinosaur. Just look at how popular Linus is compared to most real tech websites and that should tell you something and to stay on topic, its no wonder people now are praising maxed out CPUs with no headroom, they're the Linus generation of tech "enthusiasts".

Meanwhile GN is doing just fine while doing more in depth analysis than even this site used to. The stuff is still there, you just have to look past the entertainment youtubers.

 

[OrangeKhrush]

Per the tech spot reviews this is the worst performance in a game for AMD and even then it is nothing I would lament sacrificing. The rest of the game reviews are pretty solid with it beating the 9600K in total value while delivering close to 8700K and 9700K performance.

 

[XoR_]

Per the tech spot reviews this is the worst performance in a game for AMD and even then it is nothing I would lament sacrificing. The rest of the game reviews are pretty solid with it beating the 9600K in total value while delivering close to 8700K and 9700K performance.

Clear improvement over Zen2 and very close to Intel best. Especially 3700X shining here.

Given price and/or general performance these processors will have great success.
Only sour thing is OC capabilities which end pretty quickly and large spread either suggest chip lottery or heavy dependence on rest of the system or just some reviewers freaked out when setting voltages...

 

[XoR_]

LMAO, are you really running a 9900K to game at 720P?
Please explain to me why you game at year 1996 resolution on top end hardware.

Also, agree that unless a gamer is running a 2080Ti, they are better off buying a $329 Ryzen 3700X and getting the best damn gpu they can afford (2080TI)
If you are rocking a 9900K with less thank a RTX 2080 and gaming is your primary focus, you are not spending your money wisely.

At 1996 many games ran resolutions like 320x200, some 640x400/480. With Voodoo 3d acceleration games ran 640x480.
1280x720 is much more modern resolution. Basically when CRT monitors were phased out by inferior (for gaming) LCD monitors most folks ran their games at something ranging from 800x600 to 1600x1200 and most LCDs ran 1280x1024. It was in the middle of 00's. Before that 720p resolution was not common at all

 

[polonyc2]

there's almost no difference in the gaming benchmarks...AMD has officially caught up to Intel!...plus no spectre/meltdown vulnerabilities to deal with

 

[chameleoneel]

Kyle retired and no longer reviews anything so the forums are just coasting along.

I didn't ask "why" I asked "where"?

 

[chameleoneel]

techreport has a lot more productivity tests than most sites. Including stuff for code compiling. They also did a streaming test with OBS and Far Cry 5 using the "Fast" and "Medium" X.264 presets.
https://techreport.com/review/34672/amd-ryzen-7-3700x-and-ryzen-9-3900x-cpus-reviewed/

 

[5150Joker]

I didn't ask "why" I asked "where"?

Well I'd think most of us were still here but I don't have the #s. I do see a lot less active threads these days though. I'll probably switch over to Brent's new forums pretty soon though (www.thefpsreview.com)

 

[wizzi01]

What is $142? Nothing. Having additional 142 bucks changes absolutely nothing at all in my life...
Having few more fps in my 720p (CRT) gaming experience is however a tangible difference

I was considering 3900X and even did research what mobo (x470) is best for it to OC it well (strong VRM's).
After reviews it was clear Core i9 9900K is faster. Even non-OC 9900K have more fps than OC'ed Ryzen so there is nothing to talk about here really...

Please go back in time with you 720p argument. Or, just go to the intel subforum.

 

[Brackle]

what I would LOVE to see if a review of memory timings. I want to know if say 3600 CL15 speeds would be beneficial in anyway. I mean most of the reviews I see are 3200 CL14 or 3600 CL16/17 speeds. I know it sounds stupid to ask, but infinity fabric is very touchy when it comes to memory.....Really want to see how it behaves with Ryzen 2 CPU's.

 

[Absalom]

However, it looks like the memory system is really well optimized. Becuase faster and/or tighter memory has much less benefit than usual. Especially in the productivity tests.

That or AMD has figured out how to hide all that memory access latency behind larger and faster caches.

 

[chameleoneel]

what I would LOVE to see if a review of memory timings. I want to know if say 3600 CL15 speeds would be beneficial in anyway. I mean most of the reviews I see are 3200 CL14 or 3600 CL16/17 speeds. I know it sounds stupid to ask, but infinity fabric is very touchy when it comes to memory.....Really want to see how it behaves with Ryzen 2 CPU's.

3600mhz with CL 15 is 8.3 nano seconds of total latency

3200mhz with CL 14 is 8.76 nano seconds


3600mhz with CL 16 and 19 for the rest, is already trading with 3200mhz with CL 14 and 14 for for the rest.

So, I would posit 3600mhz with 15's wins all the time.

However, 3600mhz with straight 15's on the 3 main latencies would be some nice (likely expensive) RAM.

Also, these don't seem to be that "touchy" with memory. The performance differences are very small. Smaller than usual.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-zen-2-memory-performance-scaling-benchmark/4.html

 

[Nightfire]

3rd gen 12 cores getting twice the productivity of 1st gen 8 cores is pretty impressive!

A 50% efficiency boost over last gen should not be overlooked as well:
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-7-3700x/18.html