DECEMBER 2020 PCWorld 115Generation-over-generation upgrades are
rarely ever worth it, whether you’re talking
CPUs or GPUs. To see if that applies here, we
collected CPU performance figures from
chips we’ve tested internally and
supplemented them. This means they’re a
little less precise, but because the test,
Cinebench R15, is mostly a pure compute
test, it’s precise enough for this purpose.
Cinebench is a 3D modelling test, which
doesn’t mean it will map directly to, say,
browsing, Office, or most light work. But it’s
still an easy way to visualize just how much
computing power is in a PC. A higher score in
Cinebench generally tracks with overall
performance increases.
First we’ll look at single-threaded
performance across the four generations of
Ryzen CPUs. Rather than multi-core, which
might give you a better performance in 3D
modelling, video editing, and other CPU-
intensive workstation apps, single-threaded
performance tends to dictate responsiveness
of most Office (but not all) tasks, browsing,
and most (but not all) photoediting tasks,
along with other lighter-duty work.
In the charts that follow, we’ve color-
coded the four different Ryzen series for
easier reading.
(If you’re wondering what happened to
the 4000-series of desktop chips, read this
[go.pcworld.com/yry5].)
First we’ll say AMD has made huge strides
in single-threaded performance, from the
original best-of-generation Ryzen 7 1800X in
2017 to the best-of-generation Ryzen 9
5950X in 2020. That’s nearly a recorded
82-percent performance increase. From the
best of generation Ryzen 7 2700X, you’re
looking at a 56-percent performance
increase. The best of generation Ryzen 9
3900XT cuts that down to 25 percent, which
is still a huge boost in generation-over-
generation single-threaded performance.
Big, long bars are cool to look at, but
single-threaded performance tends to beCinebench R15 1T
Single-threaded performanceLONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCERyzen 9 5950X Vermeer16/32
Ryzen 9 5900X Vermeer12/24
Ryzen 7 5800X Vermeer8/16
Ryzen 5 5600X Vermeer6/12
Ryzen 9 3900XT Matisse12/24
Ryzen 9 3950X Matisse16/32
Ryzen 9 3900X Matisse12/24
Ryzen 7 3800X Matisse8/16
Ryzen 7 3700X Matisse8/16
Ryzen 7 3600X Matisse 6/12
Ryzen 7 2700X Pinnacle Edge8/16
Ryzen 5 2600X Pinnacle Edge6/12
Ryzen 7 1800X Summit Ridge8/16
Ryzen 7 1700X Summit Ridge8/162722802582702182232092162042041761791541584th generation (Ryzen 5000)
2nd generation (Ryzen 2000)3rd generation (Ryzen 3000)
1st generation (Ryzen 1000)