PC World - USA (2020-12)

46 PCWorld DECEMBER 2020

REVIEWS AMD RYZEN 5000

performance hole Ryzen has fallen into before

in non-GPU-limited tasks.

The results in Deus Ex aren’t just a fluke. We

also saw both Ryzen 9 CPUs edge the Core i9

in Far Cry New Dawn. We’re again talking

maybe 4- to 5-percent advantage, but when

you look at the 14-percent hole the Ryzen 9

3900XT is in, it’s a clear win for AMD.

Not all games favor Intel, either. Our

result in Red Dead Redemption puzzled us so

much, we had to rerun it on the Intel

machine and the Ryzen 3900XT to make sure

we didn’t goof it up. Yes, the mighty Core i9

loses to both the older Zen 2 and the new

Zen 3 chips—all of which we suspect to be

GPU-limited. This, however, is the outlier.

Typically in games where it isn’t limited by

the GPU, Core i9 has been faster, so it’s a

surprise to see Ryzen 3000 jump ahead

here. Ryzen 5000, however, is right where

we expected it to be: in front of Core i9.

You can again see that in the popular but

graphically mellow Counter Strike: Global

Operations, where the Core i9 has a

9-percent advantage over the older Ryzen 9

3900XT. The Zen 3 Ryzen 9’s edge out the

Core i9 by about 2 to 3 percent.

We’ve combined most of our game results

into a single chart at left. It’s not a total win in

every category, but generally, the new Ryzen

5000 chips have a slight advantage over the

Intel Core i9.

A few notes about the results: In Civ VI

Gathering Storm, we used the AI benchmark to

determine which CPU is faster making

decisions, and a lower score is better. In Gears

of War 5, the game refused to run on our Intel

Core i9 even after uninstalling the game and

reinstalling it. You can still see that the new

Ryzen 9s have a very decent performance

improvement over the older Ryzen 9.

And yes, there are many tests here that we

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

Zen 3 vs. Zen 2 vs. Comet

Lake S Gaming Performance

Windows 10 2H20 GeForce RTX 2080 Ti

Ryzen 9 3900XT Matisse (12/24) Ryzen 9 3900XT Vermeer (16/32)

Ryzen 9 5900X Vermeer (12/24) Core i9-10900K Comet Lake (10/20)

CS: GO 19x10 520.9581.4 585

569

Far Cry New Dawn Normal

19x10

150 126

14 4^152

Far Cry New Dawn Ultra 19x10 115.6^125133

130

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided High

19x10

123.2154.3

154.8 150

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Ultra

19x10

114.7123.7

123.9126.5

Sid Meier’s Civ VI Gathering Storm AI

19x10

Quake II RTX 19x10 104.2102.1103.1

103.1

Red Dead Redemption II Ultra Vulkan

19x10

100.5100.5

10 0.189.3

Gears of War 5 Ultra 19x10 133.6143.7149.3

14 4.6

Gears of War 5 Ultra 19x10 120.8133.6131.5

N /A

26.631.6

30.82 7. 5