PC World - USA 2020-07)

JULY 2020 PCWorld 57

dissipate because ray tracing is so intensive.
Quake II RTX kind of proves our case, as it’s
a fully path-traced version of the original
classic. We assumed the RTX 2080 Ti results
would basically render this test nil, and for the
most part it is pretty close. The Core i9’s
2.7-percent lead is likely within the margin of
error, but even this small edge says something.
Here’s a result that’s not so close, in Gears
of War 5. On its medium setting, the Core i9
leads by almost 49 percent over the Ryzen 9.
On the Ultra preset, the Core i9 clears by a
heavy 17.2 percent. As we move up to higher
resolutions, the GPU is again the bottleneck,
and we see about a 6.2-percent lead for the
Core i9 over Ryzen 9. We also include the
game’s CPU Frame Rate report, which
projects how many frames the CPU could
push out if not bound by the graphics card. It
shows a hefty 35-percent advantage for the
Core i9.
This last result, while not as common
among the games we ran, is a reminder that

CS:Go gives the win to the Ryzen 9 3900X.

Ryzen 9 3900X Matisse

(12/24)

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S

(10/20)

Counter Strike: Global

Offense FPS Workshop

Frames per second

456

417

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

We wish more cores would result in more perfor-

mance in modern games, but it’s often not true.

Ryzen 9 3900X Matisse

(12/24)

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S

(10/20)

3DMark Time Spy

Extreme CPU

Graphics score

6,645

6,396

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

there are many games that simply don’t run as

well on Ryzen’s microarchitecture, though it’s

certainly improved over the original Ryzen

launch (which was almost always at a

20-percent deficit). Intel retains an advantage

in the vast majority of games—how much will

depend on your graphics card and the

resolution you choose to play at.

Let’s highlight a couple of wins for AMD—

the first one is a bit of a surprise. It’s Counter

Strike: Global Offensive, using the FPS

Workshop test. We suspect the Ryzen 9

3900X’s large cache helps it here, but we

plan to retest to make sure. And yes, both are

in excess of 400 fps.

We’ll close this out with UL’s 3DMark Time

Spy Extreme CPU test. It tests physics, and

generally the more cores you have, the better

the performance. While the win goes to

AMD, don’t get too excited. While we

support using more cores for gaming, few

developers are even pushing 8 cores.

Consider this an aspirational win.