SYSmark, WebXPRT, 7-zip
Testing Configuration
For this review, every single benchmark and test scenario we use has been updated or removed, including a couple of new entries. We are using the most up to date versions of each software as of last week, to make sure we account for any changes or architectural changes that have occurred. Here is the new suite, in alphabetical order.
- 3DMark Fire Strike
- 7-zip Compression
- Audacity MP3 Encode
- Blender
- Cinebench R15
- Civilization VI
- Euler 3D
- Geekbench
- Handbrake
- Hitman
- MS VC++ Compiler
- POV-Ray
- Rise of the Tomb Raider
- SiSoft Sandra
- SYSmark 2014 SE
- WebXPRT
- X264 Encode
The full testbed configuration is listed below.
| Test System Setup | |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 1800X Intel Core i7-7700K Intel Core i5-7600K Intel Core i7-6700K Intel Core i7-6950X Intel Core i7-6900K Intel Core i7-6800K |
| Motherboard | ASUS Crosshair VI Hero (Ryzen) ASUS Prime Z270-A (Kaby Lake, Skylake) ASUS X99-Deluxe II (Broadwell-E) |
| Memory | 16GB DDR4-2400 |
| Storage | Corsair Force GS 240 SSD |
| Sound Card | On-board |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB |
| Graphics Drivers | NVIDIA 378.49 |
| Power Supply | Corsair HX1000 |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro x64 |
(There have been questions about the motherboard and UEFI version utilized in our testing. I ran all tests on version 5704, the latest and recommended from ASUS and AMD.)
For our first round of Ryzen testing I was using the new ASUS Crosshair VI Hero motherboard provided by AMD. For around $240, it offers a flagship board look and feel as well as all the features and capabilities you would expect as an enthusiast. We’ll have reviews of Ryzen motherboards in the near future from Josh, Morry and others!
SYSmark 2014 SE
SYSmark® 2014 SE (Second Edition) is an application-based benchmark that reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of Office Productivity, Data/Financial Analysis and Media Creation. Joining these in SYSmark 2014 SE is a new Responsiveness scenario which models ‘pain points’ in the user experience when performing common activities. SYSmark 2014 SE features the most popular applications from each of their respective fields.
The results from SYSmark 2014 SE show the Ryzen 7 1800X in two different lights. Both the productivity and the responsiveness tests show the advantages that Intel when it comes to ramping up clock speeds quickly. Intel Speed Shift hands all control on speed states to the CPU (away from the OS) at all power presets. AMD does not have an answer for that technology today, and it shows here. In the media creation test, the 1800X falls in the middle of the pack, in range with the 6800K but well behind the 7700K. In the data and financial analysis category the Ryzen CPU does very well, coming in second behind only the 10-core processor at more than 3x the price.
One interesting new test with this revision of SYSmark gives us the ability to measure how much power is consumed during the SYSmark test run by attaching a Watts Up! power meter. In this case, because of a lot of the time is spent idle (and Ryzen’s idle power draw is exceptional), it has the lowest total power cost of any of the configurations tested.
WebXPRT
WebXPRT 2015 uses scenarios created to mirror the tasks you do every day to compare the performance of almost any Web-enabled device. It contains six HTML5- and JavaScript-based workloads: Photo Enhancement, Organize Album, Stock Option Pricing, Local Notes, Sales Graphs, and Explore DNA Sequencing.
It runs these four tests seven times each:
- Photo Enhancement: Measures the time to apply three effects (Sharpen, Emboss, and Glow) to two photos each, a set of six photos total.
- Organize Album: Measures the time it takes to check for human faces in a set of five photos.
- Stocks Option Pricing: Measures the time to calculate financial indicators of a stock based on historical data and display the result in a dashboard.
- Local Notes: Measures the time to store notes securely in the browser's local storage and display recent entries.
- Sales Graphs: Measures the time to calculate and display multiple views of sales data.
- Explore DNA Sequencing: Measures the time it takes to filter eight DNA sequences for specific characteristics.
Each test uses different combinations of HTML5 Canvas 2D and Javascript, common elements in many Web pages, to gauge how well your device and browser work together in everyday Web browsing situations.
Our testing was done with the latest version of the Mic
Our testing in the web-based WebXPRT benchmark put the Ryzen 7 1800X directly between the performance of the Kaby Lake/Skylake processors and the Broadwell-E parts.
7-Zip Compression
In our 7zip compression testing, the Ryzen 7 1800X has the lowest single threaded result of the group, coming in nearly 15% slower than the 7700K and 10% slower than the 6900K. When we jump up to four threads, the 1800X is faster than any of the BDW-E parts and only 2.7% behind the Core i7-7700K.
So, did it ever occur to the
So, did it ever occur to the reviewer that the a bit slower performance in some software (games included) is actually due to poor optimizations?
The industry used the last decade or so to specifically optimize for Intel.
Ryzen is fairly new by comparison, but it demonstrated that it got up to 30% increase in performance through simple patches in games.
Audacity and many other software like it are not optimized for Ryzen architecture.
They are taking advantage of every possible trick in Intel’s hand, and yet barely anything or none of it actually benefits Ryzen performance-wise.
Plus, the Infinity fabric in Ryzen is sensitive to RAM speeds.
2400 MhZ speed on RAM is simply inadequate for Ryzen… 3000 MhZ would be better as that would raise it’s performance by about 10%.
Other than RAM speeds, software optimizations are required to take advantage of Ryzen’s capabilities.
Otherwise, you might as well be comparing apples and oranges right now.
It actually shows that Ryzen via ‘brute force’ is highly competitive for all Intel’s products… just imagine what might happen if we get developers to actively support for Ryzen – of course, this will probably require time as devs usually optimize for hardware they are paid to optimize for – and as we know, both Intel and Nvidia have deep pockets to sway devs to support their own hardware specifically and make AMD look bad (when in reality, its anything but).