Benchmarks: Battlefield 1, Mafia III
Time for the games, first up we have Battlefield 1 there are four graphs to discuss here.
Starting with the GTX 1080 Ti's results arranged by the average frame rate, the 1400 comes in second to the 7350K, both out of the box and once overclocked. It was also a good bit slower than the Core i5-7400, at least before overclocking.
However, after rearranging the graph by the all important minimum or 0.1% frame time figures, Ryzen 5 looks much more potent. The 1400 comes in second only to the 1500X though clock for clock at 4GHz it's not a great deal slower, the only difference here of course being the L3 cache capacity.
The stock 1400 matched the 7400 while being a good bit faster than the 7350K, which couldn't catch up even after overclocking. Speaking of which, the overclocked 1400 closes in on the 1500X and we see a very strong 75fps minimum with the GTX 1080 Ti. Great stuff here for the 1400, but we're curious to see how things look with a more realistic GPU, something like the RX 480...
Here we have the same test but this time the GTX 1080 Ti has been swapped out for the much more affordable RX 480, which someone is more likely to pair with one of these processors.
Something to note is that for the fastest CPUs tested, the frame rate only drops by a little over 30%, so the GTX 1080 Ti was clearly being limited by these mid-range CPUs though I'm sure that won't surprise many of you.
Arranging the data by the average frame rate we see a minor difference between the fastest and slowest CPUs tested, just a 4fps delta. This arrangement isn't particularly flattering for the Ryzen 5 processors and while not much slower than the Intel competitors they are still dead last at 84 fps on average.
However, when focusing on the minimum frame rate data, the overclocked 1500X actually matched the overclocked 7350K while the overclocked 1400 easily topped the Core i5-7400 and roughly equaled the much higher-clocked 7350K. So where it counts the most, the minimum frame rate, the 1400 is quite strong. That's one CPU-intensive title down, five more to go.
Testing Mafia III with the mighty GTX 1080 Ti we see that the 1400 is able to match the 7350K when both CPUs are left at their stock operating frequencies. Overclocked the 1400 does fall behind the 7350K by a slim margin and is roughly on par with the Core i5-7400 now.
In fact, when looking at the minimum results we see that the only real change here is between the Core i5-7400 and Ryzen 5 1400, the 1400 now slips behind the Intel processor, albeit by a 1fps margin.
Something odd happens when we test with the RX 480. Here the Ryzen CPUs are able to pull ahead of the Intel parts, well ahead when looking at the minimum results, though we will get to those in a moment.
We noticed a difference with Mafia III recently, either through a game update or a change to the way the Nvidia display driver works in this title, I still haven't had time to work out what's going on. Previously using an Nvidia GPU, Ryzen 7 crushed any and all Kaby Lake processors, now with this recent change the 7700K has pulled back ahead.
We just saw the Ryzen 5 CPUs struggling to compete when equipped with the GTX 1080 Ti whereas now with the RX 480 they look quite dominant.
If we arrange the graph by the minimum result the Ryzen 5 processors take the top four spots. Even stock the 1400 beats out the Core i5-7400, albeit by a single frame, while it comfortably sits ahead of the 7350K.
Once overclocked, the 1400 matched the overclocked 1500X with a minimum result of 40fps and it was almost 30% faster than the Core i5-7400, the fastest Intel CPU we tested in this game today.