Simulating AMD Ryzen 5 1600X, 1500X Gaming Performance

[dirtyferret]

Did you even read how they set up these test's? And how this gives us a idea not the whole picture? You wonder if overclocking wise you can take the x1600 higher? Also they are comparing a cpu that needs some software patches on the game side to use the new architecture let alone alleviate the issues with the SMT.

Also comparing CPU's clocked at 4.8ghz vs 3.9-4.0ghz is really disingenuous.

Also add in the fact it's been proven faster DDR4 ram 2933,3200,3500 results in 16%+ increase in performance in Ryzen.

These just like Linus Tech tips did are only giving you an idea, not the whole picture of performance.

I did
Steve stated that in the start of his review
Yes as well as if it can even hit 4ghz, guess we have to wait a few more weeks to find out
Great, redo the tests when or if those patches come
Not really, the intel CPUs and Ryzen family have a history of reaching those levels.
He used the same RAM speed for both test systems and does the same test show intel CPUs show no improvement with those faster speeds?
Repetitive question; see my second statement

 

[Donner]

I really like this review. It confirms a hypothesis I had.

It confirms that most games don't benefit from more than 4/8 core/threads. The AMD benchmarks in most of the cases barely changed from 1500X to 1800X even when the 7700K results showed there was still some headroom for the CPU.

When the R7 benchmarks came out and people were disappointed with the gaming performance, I thought it was curious that no one put together the consistent comment that most games don't use more than 4 cores with the benchmarks to conclude that the R5 benchmarks would be very nearly the same as the R7 clock for clock. Instead of complaining that the $500 1800X doesn't beat the $350 7700K my thought was that the R7 benchmarks were a great sign for the R5 series. The 1600X at $250 is going to be virtually identical at games as an equally clocked R7 and its pricing slots it in right where it should be and you get 2 bonus cores and SMT compared to the i5.

I am in the market for a major (CPU, MB, RAM, GPU) upgrade (from A8-6600K + 7850, I got the A8 for free.) and not in the market for a $500+ GPU. This shows that pretty much every CPU will bottleneck on a $200-300 GPU and that a $300-$400 GPU show a little separation but it takes a $500+ GPU to really separate the CPUs. These benchmarks tell me that Ryzen creates some interesting new CPU+GPU variations at various price points.

 

[theBest11778]

Great article Steve. I'm debating on picking up a Ryzen system in the near future, and 1 metric I need to know is how higher RAM speeds effect Ryzen CPUs. I know MSI seems to have fixed the low RAM speed limitation, and considering the CCX link supposedly runs at 1/2 the DDR frequency, I'm looking at picking up DDR4 4266+ sticks or DDR4 3200 C14. Not sure if Ryzen actually supports 4Ghz+ RAM at this point, but that's the most important metric I cannot find right now.

 

[EEatGDL]

Whoa, I just realized the guy from Hardware Unboxed is Steve Walton -I thought that accent was English and not Australian, but then again, I don't know much about English accents. And just after that I realized Hardware Unboxed and Techspot are related; I've been following that channel for a few months... damn!! Did you made that disclaimer (about the relationship between the two) at some point? I had my suspicions from the latest reviews, but a Hardware Unboxed video didn't always translated in an article here.

 

[Vulcanproject]

Literally nobody buys the 7350K though lol it's the most irrelevant CPU in the universe

As for the 1500X being remarkable value I don't get it. 7600K is like $200 in many places now right? I have seen it. So 1500X is not going to be faster than that even with the extra threads it seems. Nothing much remarkable about a CPU $10 cheaper being there or thereabouts of one that has been around a little while now. Ryzen won't change the quad core scene much.

Nope, it's 1600 that will be the best part in the whole lineup for the price. 6 cores for the price of a mainstream i5 is more like it. Previously a 6 core setup was expensive, the cheapest Intel 6 core and board to support it has always been like $600.

Now you'll be able to get a good 6 core setup for as little as ~$350.

 

[theBest11778]

Literally nobody buys the 7350K though lol it's the most irrelevant CPU in the universe

As for the 1500X being remarkable value I don't get it. 7600K is like $200 in many places now right? I have seen it. So 1500X is not going to be faster than that even with the extra threads it seems. Nothing much remarkable about a CPU $10 cheaper being there or thereabouts of one that has been around a little while now. Ryzen won't change the quad core scene much.

Nope, it's 1600 that will be the best part in the whole lineup for the price. 6 cores for the price of a mainstream i5 is more like it. Previously a 6 core setup was expensive, the cheapest Intel 6 core and board to support it has always been like $600.

Now you'll be able to get a good 6 core setup for as little as ~$350.

I agree with you like the 1700 the 1600 will be the best value. As for the 1500 vs the 7600k even at lower fps the 1500 will deliver much smoother frametimes. Much like a video I did showing a 2600k killing a 6600k. The extra threads are useful for helping manage background tasks while gaming. Newer titles actually utilize more than 4 threads will benefit greatly. Honestly there's little reason not to get the 6 core 1600, but buying a 4 thread cpu in 2017 for modern gaming is just not a good idea.

 

[Puiu]

I am glad I bought the $199 i5 7500 instead of waiting for Ryzen Quad / Hexa cores. Paired with GTX 1080 an i5 totally crushes Ryzen's midrange cpu's.

Based on its clocks the i5 7500 should lose or be equal to the R5 1500x in almost all games. Even the R5 1400 will beat it if you OC it.
You can't OC the i5 7500 like in these benchmarks, you are stuck at those stock clocks.

 

[Puiu]

Literally nobody buys the 7350K though lol it's the most irrelevant CPU in the universe

As for the 1500X being remarkable value I don't get it. 7600K is like $200 in many places now right? I have seen it. So 1500X is not going to be faster than that even with the extra threads it seems. Nothing much remarkable about a CPU $10 cheaper being there or thereabouts of one that has been around a little while now. Ryzen won't change the quad core scene much.

Nope, it's 1600 that will be the best part in the whole lineup for the price. 6 cores for the price of a mainstream i5 is more like it. Previously a 6 core setup was expensive, the cheapest Intel 6 core and board to support it has always been like $600.

Now you'll be able to get a good 6 core setup for as little as ~$350.

the 1500x is considered a remarkable value because you can OC it on a cheap B350 chipset and you also get the big Wraith Spire cooler ---> but this is if only you are thinking about gaming on a tight budget. the 1600 is definitely the sweet spot and worth the extra 30$.

 

[Vulcanproject]

Literally nobody buys the 7350K though lol it's the most irrelevant CPU in the universe

As for the 1500X being remarkable value I don't get it. 7600K is like $200 in many places now right? I have seen it. So 1500X is not going to be faster than that even with the extra threads it seems. Nothing much remarkable about a CPU $10 cheaper being there or thereabouts of one that has been around a little while now. Ryzen won't change the quad core scene much.

Nope, it's 1600 that will be the best part in the whole lineup for the price. 6 cores for the price of a mainstream i5 is more like it. Previously a 6 core setup was expensive, the cheapest Intel 6 core and board to support it has always been like $600.

Now you'll be able to get a good 6 core setup for as little as ~$350.

I agree with you like the 1700 the 1600 will be the best value. As for the 1500 vs the 7600k even at lower fps the 1500 will deliver much smoother frametimes. Much like a video I did showing a 2600k killing a 6600k. The extra threads are useful for helping manage background tasks while gaming. Newer titles actually utilize more than 4 threads will benefit greatly. Honestly there's little reason not to get the 6 core 1600, but buying a 4 thread cpu in 2017 for modern gaming is just not a good idea.

7600K is plenty fast for modern games. It's only a small minority and quite specific scenarios that you might actually see a major advantage on with a 8 thread Ryzen I suspect, especially if we assume we're talking about the overclocked performance of these parts.

Even in the Battlefield 1 benchmark shown here where I expected the biggest uplift with twice the threads the simulated 4GHz 1500X doesn't exactly beat down the highly clocked 7600K. Battlefield 1 is very well set up to utilise 8 threads. The 7700K included shows just how well set up it is for that configuration.

In fact the simulated 1500X only wins in 1080p with the GTX1070, and notably loses with the 1080ti! So considerably increased GPU performance (the future of mainstream....)

A 4.8ghz 7600K is a very fast gaming CPU. You really don't need loads more threads in the near future if you are using it as a mainstream gaming CPU @ 1080p, or maybe 1440p.

We'll have to see how well the 1500X really overclocks and how fast it really is against a 7600K. But I don't think anyone with a 7600K has much to fret over.

 

[abgbest]

I am glad I bought the $199 i5 7500 instead of waiting for Ryzen Quad / Hexa cores. Paired with GTX 1080 an i5 totally crushes Ryzen's midrange cpu's.

totally crushes?

in this article, the i5 only beats the r5 by a few frames and you are saying that it TOTALLY CRUSHES? talk about hyperbole... and it's not even your CPU.

please, when you are only referring to gaming, just say the i5 is better than the r5 in gaming. people use computers for more than just gaming.

Besides, your CPU has no hyper threading. a better comparison for your CPU would be an r3... which comes at a much lower price point than $199 and has four cores without SMT.

 

[Vulcanproject]

Literally nobody buys the 7350K though lol it's the most irrelevant CPU in the universe

As for the 1500X being remarkable value I don't get it. 7600K is like $200 in many places now right? I have seen it. So 1500X is not going to be faster than that even with the extra threads it seems. Nothing much remarkable about a CPU $10 cheaper being there or thereabouts of one that has been around a little while now. Ryzen won't change the quad core scene much.

Nope, it's 1600 that will be the best part in the whole lineup for the price. 6 cores for the price of a mainstream i5 is more like it. Previously a 6 core setup was expensive, the cheapest Intel 6 core and board to support it has always been like $600.

Now you'll be able to get a good 6 core setup for as little as ~$350.

the 1500x is considered a remarkable value because you can OC it on a cheap B350 chipset and you also get the big Wraith Spire cooler ---> but this is if only you are thinking about gaming on a tight budget. the 1600 is definitely the sweet spot and worth the extra 30$.

Are the lower end Z170/Z270 boards that expensive though? I mean you can get them for like $100 these days. It's like $10 here or there for a B350 which is really an inferior chipset anyway isn't it? Nothing much to shout about.

So I can't really say remarkable at all. Good potentially. Remarkable? Not like a 1600 would be for the price differential I pointed out between previous Intel 6 core setups.

 

[Amet Monegro]

Very good preview but I gona clear someting...

8MB lv3 cache on a model means "just a CCX active to Quad Core config", 16MB lv3 cache means "2 CCX enabled", then, the lesser model with "just" 8MB cache will not have "Infinity Fabric" latency penalties, then... Could get sigly better performance per clock

 

[Amet Monegro]

Great article Steve. I'm debating on picking up a Ryzen system in the near future, and 1 metric I need to know is how higher RAM speeds effect Ryzen CPUs. I know MSI seems to have fixed the low RAM speed limitation, and considering the CCX link supposedly runs at 1/2 the DDR frequency, I'm looking at picking up DDR4 4266+ sticks or DDR4 3200 C14. Not sure if Ryzen actually supports 4Ghz+ RAM at this point, but that's the most important metric I cannot find right now.

I though exact the same 3200MHz CL14 since all boards I saw are limited to 3200MHz OC, even if you put 4266MHz (see memory vql on motherboard's webs), I saw diference between DRAM speeds on youtube Oztalks channel if not wrong, he compares 2133 vs 2933MHz

 

[theBest11778]

I though exact the same 3200MHz CL14 since all boards I saw are limited to 3200MHz OC, even if you put 4266MHz (see memory vql on motherboard's webs), I saw diference between DRAM speeds on youtube Oztalks channel if not wrong, he compares 2133 vs 2933MHz

Yeah I saw Oz's video. Obviously Ryzen scales well to 3Ghz RAM, but eventually the scaling will stop. Considering 4266 DDR4 16GB kits run nearly $300 I'd need to see the real world benchmarks before pulling the trigger. I'm hoping Steve has access to a motherboard that has the Memory fix, and could test it.

 

[theBest11778]

7600K is plenty fast for modern games. It's only a small minority and quite specific scenarios that you might actually see a major advantage on with a 8 thread Ryzen I suspect, especially if we assume we're talking about the overclocked performance of these parts.

Even in the Battlefield 1 benchmark shown here where I expected the biggest uplift with twice the threads the simulated 4GHz 1500X doesn't exactly beat down the highly clocked 7600K. Battlefield 1 is very well set up to utilise 8 threads. The 7700K included shows just how well set up it is for that configuration.

In fact the simulated 1500X only wins in 1080p with the GTX1070, and notably loses with the 1080ti! So considerably increased GPU performance (the future of mainstream....)

A 4.8ghz 7600K is a very fast gaming CPU. You really don't need loads more threads in the near future if you are using it as a mainstream gaming CPU @ 1080p, or maybe 1440p.

We'll have to see how well the 1500X really overclocks and how fast it really is against a 7600K. But I don't think anyone with a 7600K has much to fret over.

You need to look at frametimes... framerate average or minimum don't matter if games are a juttery mess. Granted the i5s aren't terrible, but are noticeable compared to the smoother gameplay of an 8 thread CPU even at a lower framerate. 60FPS with perfect frame pacing is better than 200FPS with even mediocre frame pacing.

 

[Outlander04]

Using 3000 MHz RAM was a bad idea .
https://community.amd.com/community...4/tips-for-building-a-better-amd-ryzen-system
Ryzen has no divider to support 3000 Mhz RAM so you may have just crippled the cpu's infinity fabric which is lockedd at 2x RAM speed

try again with 3200 MHz

 

[gamoniac]

Thanks for the review. For me personally, Ryzen is a very tempting option since it provides more cores that would benefit running multiple applications (Visual Studio, web server, VMs, databases, etc) on my workstation. I can steal a break from work to indulge in a brief gaming session without having to shut any program down.

 

[Steve]

Using 3000 MHz RAM was a bad idea .
https://community.amd.com/community...4/tips-for-building-a-better-amd-ryzen-system
Ryzen has no divider to support 3000 Mhz RAM so you may have just crippled the cpu's infinity fabric which is lockedd at 2x RAM speed

try again with 3200 MHz

The actual speed is 2933 and it's officially supported.

 

[manigma]

totally crushes?

in this article, the i5 only beats the r5 by a few frames and you are saying that it TOTALLY CRUSHES? talk about hyperbole... and it's not even your CPU.

please, when you are only referring to gaming, just say the i5 is better than the r5 in gaming. people use computers for more than just gaming.

Besides, your CPU has no hyper threading. a better comparison for your CPU would be an r3... which comes at a much lower price point than $199 and has four cores without SMT.

An overclocked R5 quad/hexa will probably match a non-k i5 7500 kaby lake with GTX 1080. R3 will match dual core intels like G4560.

I have been using AMD from a decade and yes, for games mostly. I also used to overclock, my last CPU FX 4300 was oc'ed to 4.8Ghz. Ryzen is good but at the current pricing it does not matter. Moreover, overclocking does not benefit a lot in the long run, it will at most hold you back a couple months before you wish to upgrade to a better CPU.

Now I prefer to burn bit more cash instead of burning more power to oc. And Ryzen consumes +50 to 75% more power for a reasonable OC. Go green.

 

[manigma]

Based on its clocks the i5 7500 should lose or be equal to the R5 1500x in almost all games. Even the R5 1400 will beat it if you OC it.
You can't OC the i5 7500 like in these benchmarks, you are stuck at those stock clocks.

An overclocked R5 quad/hexa will probably match a non-k i5 7500 kaby lake with GTX 1080. R3 will match dual core intels like G4560.

No, not with the GTX 1080. The hexa even after oc will at the most match i5 7500 paired with 1080.

 

[manigma]

uh no, no it doesnt, all the intel CPUs here are running at 4.8 Ghz, not 3.4 w/3.8 boost ghz, yours would actually be running roughly 75-85% as fast at best as the 7600k here.

Hmmm.. that I thought too. i5 7500 will roughly be 90-95% of 7600k here. But still it will beat R5 with a GTX 1080.

 

[Puiu]

Are the lower end Z170/Z270 boards that expensive though? I mean you can get them for like $100 these days. It's like $10 here or there for a B350 which is really an inferior chipset anyway isn't it? Nothing much to shout about.

So I can't really say remarkable at all. Good potentially. Remarkable? Not like a 1600 would be for the price differential I pointed out between previous Intel 6 core setups.

I've only checked newegg since I'm lazy, but the cheapest Z270 I've seen is at around 109$ and a B350 was 80$. the difference is big enough for you to be able buy a better CPU if you are on a tight budget (like moving from the 1500x to the 1600).

Prices will ofc vary from country to country and store to store.
FYI the B350 is not that inferior as you are trying to imply. Outside of SLI support you get the usual stuff.

 

[dirtyferret]

You need to look at frametimes... framerate average or minimum don't matter if games are a juttery mess. Granted the i5s aren't terrible, but are noticeable compared to the smoother gameplay of an 8 thread CPU even at a lower framerate. 60FPS with perfect frame pacing is better than 200FPS with even mediocre frame pacing.

Funny since looking at tomshardware review it shows the i5 holding its own to the multi core 1700 or beating it in practically every game but whatever "alternative facts" float your AMD fan boy boat

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-vs-intel-kaby-lake-gaming,4977-5.html

 

[Vrmithrax]

These benchmark articles always make me wonder what a Ryzen would do with another AMD product like the RX 480 for a GPU. AMD processor, AMD chipset, AMD GPU - would be interesting to see if there is any optimization compared to always running nvidia GPUs in these tests. Past AMD APUs and GPUs had some interesting dynamics at times with hybrid Crossfire and such, it makes me curious.

And, let's be real here - the price point vs performance is potentially one of the appeals of Ryzen chips, so why are the affordable AMD graphics options always apparently locked out of benchmarking, when they would fall right in with the budget-conscious crowds?

 

[Puiu]

These benchmark articles always make me wonder what a Ryzen would do with another AMD product like the RX 480 for a GPU. AMD processor, AMD chipset, AMD GPU - would be interesting to see if there is any optimization compared to always running nvidia GPUs in these tests. Past AMD APUs and GPUs had some interesting dynamics at times with hybrid Crossfire and such, it makes me curious.

And, let's be real here - the price point vs performance is potentially one of the appeals of Ryzen chips, so why are the affordable AMD graphics options always apparently locked out of benchmarking, when they would fall right in with the budget-conscious crowds?

they are doing it to stress test the CPU. the RX 480 can't do that, wait for Vega if you want an AMD GPU in these benchmarks