In 2017, AMD released the 3rd Generation Ryzen processors codenamed "Matisse" with the new 7nm "Zen 2" architecture. With this release, AMD processors almost closed the gap of performance with their Intel counterparts. The new architecture made the CPUs more power-efficient and faster.
Also introduced with Matisse, was the Ryzen 9 lineup consisting of 12 core and 16 core processors, a core count which was reserved for the HEDT segment which was dominated by Intel until recently. AMD was the first to introduce processors with more than 8 cores in the mainstream segment.
Last year, although the world was battling the COVID 19 pandemic, AMD had something new and powerful in-store. On November 5th, 2020, they unveiled the much-hyped and much-anticipated Ryzen 5000 series processors codenamed “Vermeer”. 5th generation of Ryzen brought with it the new 7nm "Zen 3" architecture with more power efficiency and speed.
In April 2020, Intel released the 10th generation of its CPU lineup codenamed "Comet Lake". Based on the 14nm Skylake architecture, It is the last CPU lineup based on this architecture, which has been in use since 2015. The Comet Lake Desktop Lineup includes 4-core, 6-core, 8-core, and 10-core processors. With the 10th generation desktop processor family, Intel offered Hyper-Threading technology across Core i9 to Core i3 processors.
Now that we are done with the formality of recap and formal introduction, without wasting much time, let’s get on with the fun part, shall we?
Test Setup :
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X (6Cores/12Threads) Processor
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X (6Cores/12Threads) Processor
AMD Ryzen 7 3800X (8Cores/16Threads) Processor
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (8Cores/16Threads) Processor
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12Cores/24Threads) Processor
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X (12Cores/24Threads) Processor
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X (16Cores/32Threads) Processor
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (16Cores/32Threads) Processor
Intel Core i5 10600K (6Cores/12Threads) Processor
Intel Core i5 10700K (8Cores/16Threads) Processor
Intel Core i5 10900K (10Cores/20Threads) Processor
Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Impact Motherboard
Asrock Z490 Taichi Motherboard
Teamgroup T-Force Xtreem ARGB 3600MHz CL14 8GBx2 Dual Channel Kit
Custom Water Cooling for CPU
Nvidia Geforce GT710 2GB Graphics Card
Super Flower Leadex Gold 1600W Full Modular PSU
Softwares & Benchmarks :
Windows 10 X64 Pro Build 2004 with latest updates installed. (All other drivers, firmware, BIOS updated to latest public release versions.)
Geekbench 5
Cinebench R20
Cinebench R15
V-Ray (CPU Rendering)
Corona Benchmark (CPU Rendering)
Blender (CPU Rendering)
Hwbot X265 1080p & 4K encoding benchmark
Results :
Cinebench R20 :
Cinebench is a real-world cross-platform test suite that evaluates your computer's hardware capabilities. Improvements to Cinebench Release 20 reflect the overall advancements to CPU and rendering technology in recent years, providing a more accurate measurement of Cinema 4D's ability to take advantage of multiple CPU cores and modern processor features available to the average user.
Cinebench R15 :
Cinebench is a real-world cross-platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. Cinebench is based on MAXON's animation software CINEMA 4D 3D content creation.
Geekbench 5 :
Geekbench 5 is a cross-platform benchmark that measures your system's performance with the press of a button. How will your mobile device or desktop computer perform when push comes to crunch?
CPU Benchmark
Geekbench 5 measures your processor's single-core and multi-core power, for everything from checking your email to taking a picture to playing music, or all of it at once. Geekbench 5's CPU benchmark measures performance in new application areas including Augmented Reality and Machine Learning, so you'll know how close your system is to the cutting-edge.
Compute Benchmark
Test your system's potential for gaming, image processing, or video editing with the Compute Benchmark. Test your GPU's power with support for the OpenCL, CUDA, and Metal APIs. New to Geekbench 5 is support for Vulkan, the next-generation cross-platform graphics and compute API.
Cross-Platform
Compare apples and oranges. Or Apples and Samsungs. Designed from the ground-up for cross-platform comparisons, Geekbench 5 allows you to compare system performance across devices, operating systems, and processor architectures. Geekbench 5 supports Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, and Linux.
Geekbench 5 – Multi-Core :
V-Ray CPU Rendering :
V-Ray Benchmark is a free standalone application to help you test how fast your hardware renders. The benchmark includes two test scenes: one for V-Ray and another for V-Ray GPU, depending on the rendering engine you’re looking to measure. With V-Ray Next Benchmark, you can quickly and easily evaluate your machine's performance capabilities running V-Ray Next. Discover how your computer ranks alongside others and learn how different hardware can influence your rendering speed. With V-Ray Next Benchmark, you can test the power and performance of your system and push components to their limits.
Blender :
Blender is the free and open-source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing, and 2D animation pipeline.
Corona Benchmark :
Corona Renderer is a modern high-performance (un)biased photorealistic renderer, available for Autodesk 3ds Max, MAXON Cinema 4D, and as a standalone application. The benchmark runs using Corona Renderer 1.3, which is an older version of Corona Renderer – updating the benchmark to a newer version of Corona Renderer would have no impact on the relative performance of 2 different CPUs and would only invalidate all the results gathered so far, so staying with the older version is actually useful from the point of view of a benchmark application.
HWBOT X265 Benchmark :
Developed by Czech developer and HWBOT member Havli, HWBOT x265 Benchmark is based on the open-source x265 encoder. It can take advantage of modern CPUs instructions and scales well with multi-core processors. With two presets available, 1080p and 4k, the main workload involves converting H264 source video to H265/HEVC and measure average fps.
HWBOT X265 Benchmark – 1080p :
HWBOT X265 Benchmark – 4K :
Observations & Conclusions :
We have included 4 models from AMD Ryzen 3XXX Series, 4 models from Ryzen 5XXX Series, and 3 models from Intel 10XXX for comparison.
6/8/10/12/16 Core models were included.
Memory was set at 3600MHz @ 14-15-15-35 1T @ 1.45V (XMP) for all tests.
Intel offers much higher core clocks on all cores as compared to AMD and hence we have included benchmarks that were run at up to 5.2GHz to give Intel a fair fighting chance to showcase its true potential.
Apart from the CPU waterblock, the exact same loop was used for all the tests. This was done to ensure consistency in cooling and to have a level playing field for all participants.
Maximum achievable CPU overclock on all cores varies from CPU to CPU even though they might be the same models. The majority of the AMD 5000 series CPUs will do 4.2~4.3GHz with good cooling, anything beyond that is purely dependent on silicon quality and cooling. Similarly for Intel, 5.0~5.1GHz is achievable the majority of the times with very good cooling. Beyond that is pure silicon lottery and most probably require more exotic cooling.
AMD Matisse offered a solid performance boost but what AMD 5000 Series aka Vermeer did is something maybe nobody had anticipated. It grabbed the performance crown from Intel and in style.
Intel hasn't truly brought anything new to the table ever since 6th Gen. Past few iterations have been more cores, higher clocks but apart from that there isn't much to talk about.
The performance gap between Vermeer and Comet Lake is somewhat embarrassing, to say the least. It is high time Intel woke up and digest what has just happened.
Problems don't end here. Vermeer is still just mainstream, Threadrippers on the same design are already waiting in the wings. Intel honestly didn't have a competing product against the 3xxx series Threadrippers. What happens with the 5xxx series TR is going to be very interesting.
Summing it all up, be it gaming, video editing, audio production, simulation, or any possible workload you can think of, AMD has the perfect offering for every workload. Vermeer has come out a winner on all fronts. It is the king of the hill right now!
Taking all the factors into consideration, we give the AMD Ryzen 5000 series a well-deserved Gold Award!
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