Synthetics and Scientific
SiSoft Sandra 2016
The single thread and multi-thread CPU arithmetic tests show results that we should expect at this point in our experience with the Ryzen processor. It does well, but not better than what Intel has available in terms of single threaded capability, falling behind the 7700K by 14% and nearly even with the 6900K. The multi-threaded results are much more impressive, as it performs better than every Intel processor but the 6950X. Multimedia test results are similarly impressive.
The DDR4 memory controller on the Ryzen 7 1800X seems to be in line with the Intel dual channel configuration on the Kaby Lake and Skylake parts. Broadwell-E has the advantage with a quad-channel integration though the number of workloads that are susceptible to those differences are rare. Finally, on internal cache bandwidth, AMD does quite well by SiSoft’s measurement. L3 and L2 bandwidth are the most impressive, easily besting both BDW-E and KBL.
Geekbench 4.0.4
The Geekbench 4.0.4 results are interesting as well, painting the Ryzen processor in two very distinctive lights. In the single threaded results, the 1800X is slightly ahead of the 6900K but falls more than 21% behind the Core i7-7700K, more or less matching what we saw with Audacity. In the multi-threaded results, it does beat out the 7700K but actually falls behind the 6900K that has a matching core/thread count.
Euler 3D
This scientific compute based test allows us to evaluate at different thread counts. With a single thread the Ryzen 7 1800X is 39% behind the 7700K (!!) and 25% behind the Core i6-6900K. Those are starting high numbers and it continues for two and four thread testing; the Ryzen only catches up to the 7700K once we get into 8-thread testing.
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).