PC World - USA (2020-12)

44 PCWorld DECEMBER 2020

REVIEWS AMD RYZEN 5000

Ryzen 9 3900XT.

Our pet theory is that this particular test

runs poorly on CPUs with increased latency.

We say that because we saw Intel’s

performance suffer when it went from the

ringbus design of the original 10-core

Core i7-6950X to mesh-based Skylake-X.

Zen 3’s greatly reduced latency should

therefore help, but the results didn’t

map perfectly to our theory. The 16-core

Ryzen 9 5950X is actually underperforming

the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X by a large

amount despite the additional cores. Both

chips are also constructed with dual-chip

CCDs, so the jury remains out. We should

also note that while WinRAR supports

multi-core, it doesn’t scale to the 24 or 32

threads of the Ryzens—or even the 20

threads of the Core i9.

There’s more to explore here obviously,

but Ryzen still wins, in a test we’ve never, ever

seen it win against Intel.

WinRAR single-threaded performance

helps remove those pesky questions of

latency across cores or CCDs, but the result is

the same. While the Core i9 has a 12-percent

lead over the Ryzen 9 3900XT, the Ryzen 9

5900X comes in an astounding 71 percent

faster than the Intel chip. The higher-clocked

Ryzen 9 5950X is slightly faster as well.

GAMING PERFORMANCE

So you already knew that AMD rules the day

in multi-core performance, and you now

know it gives Intel no quarter in single-core

either. The one area that’s made potential

customers uneasy is gaming performance.

Even though Intel years ago ceded multi-core

WinRAR 5.80

Multi-core Performance

Ryzen 9 5900X Vermeer 16/32

Ryzen 9 5950X Vermeer 12/24

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S10/20

Ryzen 9 3900XT Matisse 12/24

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

55,561

38,643

4 4,15 4

32,729

WinRAR 5.80

Single-core Performance

Ryzen 9 5950X Vermeer 16/32

Ryzen 9 5900X Vermeer 12/24

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S10/20

Ryzen 9 3900XT Matisse 12/24

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

6,735

3,850

6,610

3,427

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

RTX 2080 Ti 19x10 High; frames per second

Ryzen 9 3900XT Matisse 12/24

Ryzen 9 5950X Vermeer 16/32

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S10/20

Ryzen 9 5900X Vermeer 12/24

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

154.8

150

154.3

123.2