PC World - USA 2020-07)

JULY 2020 PCWorld 53

Nvidia H.265 and Daniel 2. It runs entirely in

RAM to remove storage as a bottleneck.

(Note: The version of Cinescore we use is

older and no longer works without setting an

older date on the PC—the version has timed

out the codec license.)

While the Core i9 doesn’t win, it gets

awfully close to the Ryzen 9. This could mean

Cinescore and its CODECs don’t care that

much about thread count, or the higher clock

speeds of the Core i9 may be of more value.

Sorry, Ryzen 9 fans.

Our next test is a video test, but not in a

traditional sense. While standard encoding or

transcoding isn’t all that smart in how it

downsamples or upsamples video, Topaz

Lab’s Video Enhance AI (go.pcworld.com/

tpzl) claims to look at every frame and use

machine learning inferencing to decide what

will make each frame look better on the

upscale, based on studying other videos. For

the test, we take a two-minute family video

ENCODING PERFORMANCE
Video encoding needs fast CPUs, too. That’s
why we use the latest version of HandBrake to
convert a 4K video short to 1080p using
H.265. Using the CPU to finish the task, the
12-core Ryzen 9 finished with a 16-percent
advantage over the 10-core Core i9. So far,
that’s pretty much everything we’ve expected.
Our next test uses Cinegy’s Cinescore to
assess CPU and GPU performance across
several dozen broadcast industry profiles from
SD to 8K, using codecs from H.264, to
MPEG2, XDCAM and AVC Ultra as well as

POV Ray puts the Ryzen 9 ahead of the Core i9 by
almost 17 percent.

Ryzen 9 3900X Matisse

(12/24)

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S

(10/20)

POV Ray 3.7

Multi-core Performance

6,266

5,366

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

We use HandBrake to transcode a 4K video using

the HEVC/H.265 codec.

Ryzen 9 3900X Matisse

(12/24)

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S

(10/20)

HandBrake 1.3.1 4K Video

to HEVC 1080p/30

Multi-core Performance

74 0

861

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

Single-threaded performance of the Ryzen 9 is just
under 3 percent faster than the Core i9.

Ryzen 9 3900X Matisse

(12/24)

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S

(10/20)

POV Ray 3.7

Single-core Performance

528.4

514.3

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE