PC World - USA (2020-12)

40 PCWorld DECEMBER 2020

REVIEWS AMD RYZEN 5000

i9-10980XE gets crushed by the 16-core Ryzen

9 5950X, by 19 percent. Perhaps even more

embarrassing, it’s really only about 1 percent

faster than the $550 Ryzen 9 5900X. And yes,

the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X is within 5 percent of

the performance of a 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X.

One thing to keep in mind is Cinebench

R20 uses AVX as well as AVX512. On Intel’s

older 14nm chips, using AVX or AVX512

increases the thermal load, so Intel intentionally

lowers the clock speed to manage the heat. Not

all rendering engines use these advanced

instructions. The Chaos Group’s Corona

renderer (at least not in the current benchmark

version), for example, doesn’t use AVX or

AVX512, so you can see the performance of the

Intel chips when they don’t have to shift down.

The 18-core Core i9-10980XE opens up a

V-Ray Next

4.10.7 Renderer

CPU performance

Ryzen 9 5950X Vermeer 16/32

Core i9-10980XE Cascade Lake-X18/36

Ryzen 9 3950X Matisse 16/32

Ryzen 9 5900X Vermeer 12/24

Ryzen 9 3900XT Matisse 12/24

Ryzen 9 3900X Matisse 12/24

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S10/20

Core i9-9900K Comet Lake R8/16

Core i9-9900KS Comet Lake R8/16

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

31,379

20,776

26,351

1 7, 5 0 7

28,225

19,978

24,954

14,767

14,7 17

POV Ray 3.7 Multi-core

Performance

Pixels per second

Ryzen 9 5950X Vermeer 16/32

Ryzen 9 5900X Vermeer 12/24

Ryzen 9 3900XT Matisse 12/24

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S10/20

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

8,990

6,407

7,547

5,520

POV Ray 3.7 Single-core

Performance

Pixels per second

Ryzen 9 5950X Vermeer16/32

Ryzen 9 5900X Vermeer 12/24

Core i9-10900K Comet Lake S10/20

Ryzen 9 3900XT Matisse 12/24

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

636

548

628

514

lead over the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X and the

12-core Ryzen 9 5900X by about 10 percent.

That doesn’t matter much though, because

the 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X is here to remind

Intel who is in charge by outpacing the $900

Core i9 by 14 percent despite having two

fewer CPU cores. And yes, the 10-core Core

i9-10900K easily gets crushed by the 12-core

Ryzen 9 5900X, by 36 percent.

Our next multi-core test uses V-Ray Next

to measure CPU performance using an

Academy Award-winning rendering engine.

The results again should surprise no one: The