We Test a $1,000 CPU From 2010 vs. Ryzen 3

It's nice to compare after so many years but the gaming tests caught my attention most. Ryzen 1600 isn't exactly battering an OC 980X here. Certainly if your use is gaming the case for holding onto a powerful platform for a long period while just upgrading the GPU a couple times is as good as ever.

GTX1080ti performance is an order of magnitude more than what was available from 2010, but the Gulftown still delivers the goods in a CPU bound 1080p, quite incredibly. I wonder what it might look like in 1440p or above.....would you even notice much!?

I had an i7 920 from 2008 that served first as a primary machine then relegated to other roles, After 8 years of hard use the motherboard failed. It still felt capable the day it died.

After a handful of GPU upgrades and passing to a young family member it went from beating up PS3 and X360 on games to beating up on an entirely new console gen, PS4 and Xbox One. So much for constantly blowing a fortune on upgrades every couple years to game on PC......
 
I guess it is nice to know that 'used' and 'new' prices reflect capabilities. Since I like warranties, I would always expect to pay significantly less for 'used'. Often this has proven possible with careful shopping - read carefully!!
 
AVX instruction set is nice for CPU rendering, but why bother with CPU when theres a newer technology for rendering - GPU.

I have an older 6-core memory unlocked W3690 Xeon OC'ed to 3.7Ghz, 2x 1080ti GPUs on a x58 motherboard and 48GB of DDR3 to boot. Works like a charm!

Good comparison though!
 
This was the Threadripper of 2010. Heck, those Xeons were bargain a couple of years ago. No doubt if Ryzen turned out to be bad these CPUs can withstand aging much, much better.
 
Great test accept I think you guys has forgotten one crucial thing for when you overclock X58. I think you guys has forgotten to set ULCK higher manuel, that is a great way for more FPS in games and higher scores in like cinebench R15. Try get ULCK up to around 3600 MHz at around 1.35 volts, that seems to work for most people at that volts and you will not only feel a more responsive pc, but also better performance in games and some benchmark.

Take a lock at the CPU I have oc to 4.42 GHz and ULCK at 3700 MHz.
Cinebench R15 I get single 135 and multi 1027.
https://I.imgur.com/rw8OpM6.jpg

As a little joker are here a score with the CPU at 4.75 GHz.
https://I.imgur.com/UXZjtKF.jpg

The same settings af cinebench R15 run but in Far Cry 5. I get 5 FPS more in average fps thanks to a higher ULCK clock and my memory are even only running at 1400 MHz while 1600 MHz in these test.
https://I.imgur.com/N4fYMQs.jpg

As a bonus I share my bios settings as well, if you guys want to try them out for your self.
https://imgur.com/a/dSjVsFw
 
I'm on a i7 970 setup @ 4Ghz.

She has held her own all these years but its about time for an upgrade.

I can retire this box to be used for VM's.
 
I'm on a i7 970 setup @ 4Ghz.

She has held her own all these years but its about time for an upgrade.

I can retire this box to be used for VM's.

Im not ready to retire my box yet. I will keep it goin as long cpu/motherboard want to play a long and not die on me.
 
I'm on a i7 970 setup @ 4Ghz.

She has held her own all these years but its about time for an upgrade.

I can retire this box to be used for VM's.

I'm on a Xeon E3-1270, little bit better than my FX8320E, not gonna buy until DDR4 prices comes back to earth.
 
This article is lacking the most important thing for gaming benchmarks...equal clockspeeds.
Downclock everything else to 4.4GHz to alleviate this advantage, those are the results worth seeing.
4.4GHz is damn quick, and I will admit these tests give a good comparative result, but for gaming 500-700MHZ is a huge advantage in many cases.
 
Last edited:
Im not ready to retire my box yet. I will keep it goin as long cpu/motherboard want to play a long and not die on me.

I've held out for along time but I want access to nmve storage I already picked up a Intel 750 1.2GB drive on a very deep discount. Plus I want access to more cores and UEFI,AVX numerous reason why now is a good time. To have 7 years use out of this current setup has been great so still much love for X58.
 
I find it interesting that the 980x has a ~33% lower IPC than Ryzen but was able to produce similar fps in D11 games, which uses less than 4 threads.

Could it suggest that Intel's current lead in game performance is mostly a matter of games in general are more optimized for Intel architecture than AMD?
 
My current rig started life as a i7-920. I upgraded to the i7-990X several years ago and upgraded the video card a couple of times. I'm currently running 4.16 Ghz, a GTX780 Ti, and 12 gig DDR3-1600. I only have a 1920 x 1200 (27") monitor and this rig runs great. I'm currently playing Call of Duty WWII at max settings and have no problems. This is the longest I've ever stayed with the same mother board / CPU platform.
 
It's nice to compare after so many years but the gaming tests caught my attention most.

GTX1080ti performance is an order of magnitude more than what was available from 2010, but the Gulftown still delivers the goods in a CPU bound 1080p, quite incredibly. I wonder what it might look like in 1440p or above.....would you even notice much!?

I had an i7 920 from 2008 that served first as a primary machine then relegated to other roles, After 8 years of hard use the motherboard failed. It still felt capable the day it died.

Yep, I came away from the comparison (Thanks, Steve!) seeing the same thing--the case for holding onto overclocked first gen chips for gaming if you already own them. Steve is right that buying into these older CPUs, and the required X58 boards, doesn't make sense at this point. However, the love affair for these chips if you already own them is justified... just maybe not healthy ;-)

Sorry to hear your 920 died. My X3470 (Lynnfield) on P55 is still going strong at 4.2GHz in a secondary rig with a GTX 1060 and the machine is absolutely GPU bound in games. The CPU isn't holding it back at all. (That said, I think anything more powerful than a 1060 might get CPU bound in some instances at 1080p, so this is probably the last GPU it'll see before retirement.)
 
I've held out for along time but I want access to nmve storage I already picked up a Intel 750 1.2GB drive on a very deep discount. Plus I want access to more cores and UEFI,AVX numerous reason why now is a good time. To have 7 years use out of this current setup has been great so still much love for X58.

thats a fair argument. For me I just game besides doing random stuff, so X58 is all I need for now.
 
I have a Xeon W3680 (essentially a I7-980X with ECC support) I overclocked it to 4.54Ghz, put 24GB 1866Mhz DDR3 in triple channel and a GTX 1070 and it actually is faster than stock Ryzen 5 1600
 
Thank you for the review. But you forget about one very important thing like SATA III. X58 doesn't support it natively. So it's supposed to have a longer time in loading games or applicationes and frame rate drops. Also SATA II can impact performance terribly on heavy loaded Windows systems. No advantages of SSD.

In the competion a matter was if some 10 years old
12-threades CPU
can be on a par with
4-threades Ryzen 3 2200
and the answer is yes it still can beat it... in some benchmarks. Sorry, but I see no reason to buy that old piece even if it's slighty faster and cheaper, especially for one time usage. Another confirmation that AMD did a great job.
 
I guess it is nice to know that 'used' and 'new' prices reflect capabilities. Since I like warranties, I would always expect to pay significantly less for 'used'. Often this has proven possible with careful shopping - read carefully!!

You can buy used and get a warranty. There are some manufacturers that offer warranties to 2nd buyers like EVGA. For those that don't, just ask the seller for the original receipt. Win-win I say.
 
Great, fun article! I enjoy seeing these comparisons to yesteryear. It gives a handle on how CPU's are progressing.
 
My system has been running great 5+ years. I have a Core i7 4770k that's been running @ 4.5Ghz on aio water cooling with my Gigabyte Z87MX board, 16GB of DDR3-1600 and a 256GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD. I've run 2x 1TB Barracuda 7200 hdds in RAID 0 since day one without issue. I started the build using just the (overclocked) Intel HD4600 iGPU and it played most Xbox 360 era games perfectly. I have run several GPUs on it since, including a Radeon R9 290, GTX 970, and GTX 750 Ti. For a time I even had 2x Radeon R9 290s. Currently I have a GTX 1060 6GB. I moved the system to a new case a couple months ago and when the time comes to do a new build I'll reuse it, my 750w PSU, and the drives that all work flawless. I was going to hop on Ryzen but my quad core hyperthreaded CPU is hanging in there just fine for now and I can play many games 1440p on high/ultra. Oh and it has been through Windows 7, 8, 8.1, and Windows 10.

Build your system to last and you'll get your money's worth out of it!
 
Back