AMD Zen 3 Ryzen Best Review: 5950X, 5900X, 5800X And 5600X

11 min readNov 9, 2020

AMD Zen 3 Ryzen: When AMD introduced that its new Zen 3 core was a ground-up redesign and provided full efficiency management, we needed to ask them to substantiate if that’s precisely what they stated.

Despite being lower than 10% the dimensions of Intel, and really near folding as an organization in 2015, the bets that AMD made in that timeframe with its subsequent-era Zen microarchitecture and Ryzen designs are actually coming to fruition.

Zen 3 and the brand new Ryzen 5000 processors, for the desktop market, are the conclusion of these targets: not solely efficiency per watt and efficiency per greenback leaders, however absolute efficiency management in each phase.

We’ve gone into the brand new microarchitecture and examined the brand new processors. AMD is the brand new king, and we’ve got the information to indicate it.

New Core, Same 7nm, Over 5.0 GHz!

The new Ryzen 5000 processors are drop-in replacements for the Ryzen 3000 sequence. Anyone with an AMD X570 or B550 motherboard right this moment, with the newest BIOS (AGESA 1081 or above), should have the ability to purchase and use one of many new processors with no fuss. Anyone with an X470/B450 board should wait till Q1 2021 as these boards are up to date.

As we’ve beforehand coated, AMD is launching 4 processors right this moment for retail, starting from six cores as much as sixteen cores.

*Comes with Bundled CPU Cooler

All the processors have native assist for DDR4–3200 reminiscence as per JEDEC requirements, though AMD recommends one thing barely quicker for optimum efficiency. All the processors even have 20 lanes of PCIe 4.0 for add-in units.

The Ryzen 9 5950X: 16 Cores at $799

The prime processor is the Ryzen 9 5950X, with 16 cores and 32 threads, providing a base frequency of 3400 MHz and a turbo frequency of 4900 MHz — on our retail processor, we truly detected a single core frequency of 5050 MHz, indicating that this processor will turbo above 5.0 GHz with enough thermal headroom and cooling!

This processor is enabled by way of two eight-core chiplets (extra on chiplets beneath), every with 32 MB of L3 cache (complete 64 MB). The Ryzen 9 5950X is rated on the identical TDP because the Ryzen 9 3950X, at 105 W. The peak energy can be ~142 W, as per AMD’s socket design, on motherboards that may assist it.

For people who don’t learn the remainder of the evaluation, the quick conclusion for the Ryzen 9 5950X is that even at $799 steered retail value, it allows a brand new degree of client grade efficiency throughout the board.

The single thread frequency is loopy excessive, and when mixed with the brand new core design with its increased IPC, pushes workloads which might be single-core restricted above and past Intel’s greatest Tiger Lake processors. When it involves multi-threaded workloads, we’ve got new data for a client processor throughout the board.

The Ryzen 9 5900X: 12 Cores at $549

Squaring off in opposition to Intel’s greatest client grade processor is the Ryzen 9 5900X, with 12 cores and 24 threads, providing a base frequency of 3700 MHz and a turbo frequency of 4800 MHz (4950 MHz was noticed).

This processor is enabled by way of two six-core chipsets, however, all of the caches remains to be enabled at 32 MB per chipset (64 MB complete). The 5900X additionally has the identical TDP because the 3900X/3900XT it replaces at 105 W.

At $549, it’s priced $50 increased than the processor it replaces, which implies that for the additional 10% price it should showcase that it may well carry out no less than 10% higher.

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The Ryzen 7 5800X: 8 Cores at $449

After AMD showcased a quad-core processor below $100 within the final era, it takes a lot of chutzpah to supply an eight-core processor for $449 — AMD stands by its claims that this processor affords substantial generational efficiency enhancements.

The new AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, with eight cores and sixteen threads, is ready to go up in opposition to Intel’s Core i7–10700K, additionally an eight-core / sixteen thread processor.

The Ryzen 7 5800X has a base frequency of 3800 MHz and a rated turbo frequency of 4700 MHz (we detected 4825 MHz) and makes use of a single eight-core chiplet with a complete 32 MB of L3 cache.

The single-core chiplet has some small advantages over a twin chipset design the place some cross-CPU communication is required, and that comes throughout in a few of our very CPU-limited gaming benchmarks. This processor additionally has 105 W TDP (~142 W peak).

The Ryzen 5 5600X: 6 Cores for $299

The least expensive processor that AMD is releasing right this moment is the Ryzen 5 5600X, however, it’s also the one which comes with a CPU cooler in the field.

The Ryzen 5 5600X has six cores and twelve threads, operating at a base frequency of 3700 MHz and a peak turbo of 4600 MHz (4650 MHz measured), and is the one CPU to be given a TDP of 65 W (~88 W peak).

The single chiplet design means 32 MB of L3 cache complete (technically it’s nonetheless the identical {that a} single core can entry because the Ryzen 9 components, extra on that later), and can be put up in opposition to Intel’s six-core Core i5–10600K, which additionally retails in an analogous ballpark.

Despite being the most affordable and technically the slowest processor of the bunch, I used to be mightily shocked by the efficiency of the Ryzen 5 5600X: just like the Ryzen 9 5950X, in single-threaded benchmarks, it utterly knocks the socks off of something Intel has to supply — even Tiger Lake.

Why Ryzen 5000 Works: Chiplets

At an excessive degree, the brand new Ryzen 5000 ‘Vermeer’ sequence appears oddly acquainted with the final era Ryzen 3000 ‘Matisse’ sequence. This is definitely by design, as AMD is absolutely leveraging their chipset design methodology within the new processors.

To introduce some terminology, AMD creates two kinds of chiplets. One of them has the principle processing cores, and known as a core complicated die or CCD. This is the one that’s constructed on TSMC’s 7nm course of.

The different chiplet is an interconnect die with I/O, often called an IO to die or IOD — this one has the PCIe lanes, the reminiscence controllers, the SATA ports, the connection to the chipset, and helps manage energy supply in addition to safety. In each of the earlier era and the brand new era, AMD pairs certainly one of its IO dies with up to two 8-core chiplets.

Ryzen 3000 processor without heat spreader, exhibiting two core chiplets and one IO die.

This is feasible as a result of the brand new core chiplets include the identical protocols for interconnect, bodily design, and energy constraints.

AMD is ready to leverage the execution of the earlier platform and era such that when the core connections are equivalent, regardless of the completely different inner constructions (Zen 3 vs Zen 2), they will nonetheless be put collectively and executed in an identified and profitable trend.

As with the earlier era, the brand new Zen 3 chiplet is designed with eight cores

Zen 3 is a New Core Design

By protecting the brand new 8-core Zen 3 chiplet the identical dimension and identical energy, this clearly implies that AMD needed to construct a core that matches inside these constraints but in addition, affords an efficiency and efficiency effectivity uplift to be able to make an extra compelling design.

Typically when designing a CPU core, the best factor to do is to take the earlier design and improve sure components of it — or what engineers name tackling ‘the low hanging fruit’ which allows probably the most speed-up for the least effort.

Because CPU core designs are constructed to a deadline, there are all the time concepts that by no means make it into the ultimate design, however, these turn out to be the best targets for the following era. This is what we noticed with Zen 1/Zen+ transferring on to Zen 2. So naturally, the best factor for AMD to do could be identical once more, however with Zen 3.

However, AMD didn’t do that. In our interviews with AMD’s senior employees, we’ve got identified that AMD has two impartial CPU core design groups that intention to leapfrog one another as they construct newer, excessive-efficiency cores.

Zen 1 and Zen 2 have been merchandise from the primary core design workforce, and now Zen 3 is the product from the second design workforce. Naturally, we then anticipate Zen 4 to be the following era of Zen 3, with ‘the low hanging fruit’ taken care of.

In our current interview with AMD’s Chief Technology Officer, Mark Papermaster, we have been advised that in case you have been to take a look at the core from a 100,000-foot degree, you would possibly simply mistake that the Zen 3 core design to be just like that of Zen 2.

However, we have been advised that as a result of this can be a new workforce, each phase of the core has been redesigned, or on the very least, up to date. Users who comply with this area carefully will keep in mind that the department predictor utilized in Zen 2 wasn’t meant to come back till Zen 3, exhibiting that even the core designs have a component of portability to them.

The incontrovertible fact that each Zen 2 and Zen 3 are constructed on the identical TSMC N7 course of the node (the identical PDK, though Zen 3 has the newest yield/consistency manufacturing updates from TMSC) additionally helps in that design portability.

AMD has already introduced the foremost change that can be apparent to a lot of the techies which might be in this area: the bottom core chiplet, quiet than having two four-core complexes, has a single eight-core complicated.

This allows every core to enter the entire 32 MB of the L3 cache of a die, quite than 16 MB, which reduces latency of reminiscence accesses in that 16-to-32 MB window. It additionally simplifies core-to-core communication inside a chiplet. There are a few trade-offs to do that, however general it’s a good win.

In truth, there are a major variety of variations all through the core. AMD has improved:

department prediction bandwidth
quicker switching from the decode pipes to the micro-op cache,
quicker recoveries from mispredicts,
enhanced decode skip detection for some NOPs/zeroing idioms
bigger buffers and execution home windows up and down the core,
devoted department pipes,
higher balancing of logic and handle era,
wider INT/FP dispatch,
increased load bandwidth,
increased retailer bandwidth,
higher flexibility in load/retailer ops
quicker FMACs
All kinds of quicker operations (together with x87?)
extra TLB desk walkers
higher prediction of store-to-load ahead dependencies
quicker copy of quick strings
extra AVX2 assist (VAES, VPCLMULQD)
considerably quicker DIV/IDIV assist
{hardware} acceleration of PDEP/PEXT

Many of those can be defined and expanded upon over the following few pages and noticed within the benchmark outcomes. Simply put, that is one thing greater than only a core replaces — these are genuinely new cores and new designs that required new sheets of paper to be constructed upon.

A lot of these options, corresponding to wider buffers and elevated bandwidth, naturally include the query about how AMD has saved the ability the identical for Zen 3 in comparison with Zen 2.

Normally when a core will get wider, meaning extra silicon needs to be turned on on a regular basis, and this influences static energy, or if all of it will get used concurrently, then there’s increased energetic energy.

When talking with Mark Papermaster, he pointed to AMD’s prowess in bodily implementation as a key issue on this.

By leveraging their information of TSMC’s 7nm (N7) course of, in addition to updates to their very own instruments to get the most effective out of those designs, AMD was in a position to stay energy impartial, regardless of all these updates and upgrades.

Part of this additionally comes from AMD’s lengthy-standing premium associate relationship with TMSC, with the ability to allow higher design know-how co-optimization (DTCO) between floorplan, manufacturing, and product.

AMD’s Claims

The CPU advertising groups from AMD, for the reason that launch of first era Zen, have been very correct of their efficiency claims, even to the purpose of understating efficiency infrequently. Aside from selling efficiency management in a single thread, multi-thread, and gaming, AMD promoted a number of metrics for generation-on-generation improvement.

+19% IPC

The key metric provided by AMD was a +19% IPC uplift from Zen 2 to Zen 3, or quite a +19% uplift from Ryzen 5 3800XT to Ryzen 5 5800X when each CPUs are at 4.0 GHz and utilizing DDR4–3600 reminiscence.

In truth, utilizing our trade benchmarks, for single-threaded efficiency, we noticed a +19% improvement in CPU efficiency per clock. We have to supply kudos to AMD right here, that is the second or third time they’ve quoted IPC figures which we have matched.

In multithreaded SPECrate, absolutely the acquire was solely round 10% or so, provided that quicker cores additionally require extra bandwidth to important reminiscence, which hasn’t been supplied on this era. This implies that there are some bottlenecks to which a better IPC received assistance if extra cores require identical sources.

For real-world assessments, throughout our entire suite, we noticed a mean +24% uplift. For explicitly multithreaded assessments, we noticed ranges from even efficiency as much as +35%, whereas, for explicitly single-threaded assessments, this ranged from even efficiency as much as +57%.

This comes all the way down to execution/compute sure assessments getting greater speedups over reminiscence sure workloads.

Best Gaming

For gaming, the quantity was given as a +5 to +50% uplift in 1920×1080 gaming on the excessive preset, evaluating a Ryzen 9 5900X in opposition to the Ryzen 9 3900XT, relying on the benchmark.

In our assessments at CPU restricted settings, corresponding to 720p or 480p minimal, we noticed a mean +44% frames-per-second efficiency uplift evaluating the Ryzen 9 5950X to the Ryzen 9 3950X. Depending on the take a look at, this ranged from +10% to +80% efficiency uplift, with key features in Chernobylite, Borderlands 3, Gears Tactics, and F1 2019.

For our extra mainstream gaming assessments, run at 1920×1080 with all the standard settings on most, the efficiency acquires averaged around +10%. This spanned the gamut from an equal rating (World of Tanks, Strange Brigade, Red Dead Redemption), as much as +36% (Civilization 6, Far Cry 5).

Perhaps crucial comparability is the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in opposition to the Intel Core i9–10900K. In our CPU restricted assessments, we get a +21% common FPS to win for the AMD at CPU-limited situations, starting from +2% to +52%.

But in our 1080p Maximum settings assessments, the outcomes have been on common neck-and-neck, swaying from -4% to +6%. (That outcome doesn’t embrace the one anomaly in our assessments, as Civilization 6 reveals a +43% win for AMD.)

Head-to-Head Performance Matchups

Based on core counts and pricing, the brand new Ryzen 5000 sequence processors carefully align with a few of Intel’s hottest Comet Lake processors, in addition to the earlier era AMD {hardware}.

*Technically a high-end desktop platform processor, nearly unavailable at MSRP.

Throughout this evaluate we can be referencing these comparisons, and can finally break-out every processor into its personal evaluation breakdown.