IPC stands for "instructions per cycle" and information technology tin can be a expert indicator of a processor's compages efficiency. Traditionally Intel Coffee Lake CPUs accept offered high IPC coupled with a loftier operating frequency and that's the best combination for maximum performance. Although AMD is still trailing when it comes to frequency, they announced to have closed in and possibly exceeded Intel's IPC functioning with the 3rd generation Ryzen update.

To see how much headway AMD's fabricated here, nosotros're going to neutralize every bit many variables as we tin, while too keeping things every bit realistic as possible.

The first and most obvious step is to remove core frequency from the equation and to do this we've locked all CPU cores at 4 GHz. Any blazon of boost technology has been disabled, meaning the cores cannot go past 4 GHz and all cores are clocked at 4 GHz. And then for the Ryzen 9 3900X nosotros've disabled two cores in each chiplet, taking it from an 12-core role down to an 8-cadre part. All CPUs tested will have 8 cores agile, but where the 3700X has them all in a single die, the 3900X spreads the cores across 2 dies (two 4-cadre chiplets).

The tertiary-gen Ryzen CPUs accept been tested on the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme using the AGESA i.0.0.3AB BIOS revision, 1st and second-gen Ryzen accept been tested on the Asus ROG Crosshair 7 Hero, and the Coffee Lake CPUs on the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Ultra. All configurations used the aforementioned G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200 memory using the xtreme retentivity contour and the aforementioned MSI GTX 2080 Ti graphics carte du jour.

A small disclaimer we like to add together for this kind of article: we're testing purely for the science of it and this is not ownership advice.

The Coffee Lake CPUs certainly accept a clock speed advantage out of the box, but that doesn't necessarily make them the best pick. For real-earth functioning please refer to our Ryzen 9 3900X, 3700X and R5 3600 reviews.

Meta Tip: Exercise you lot see something familiar? We are reusing the masthead image from our 4GHz CPU Battle from April 2022 when we tested 2nd-Gen Ryzen against Intel's 8th-gen Core CPUs.

Application Benchmarks

We already know Ryzen tends to dominate in workstation tasks even with a clock speed disadvantage, simply there's more than to larn about these numbers. In Cinebench R20's multi-cadre score the 3900X and 3700X provided roughly the aforementioned performance, making them around 14% faster than the 9900K when matched clock-for-clock. Moreover, they were 18% faster than the previous-gen 2700X. That'due south a significant comeback in IPC performance.

Testing single cadre performance sees a 13% operation uplift for tertiary-gen Ryzen parts over the 2700X. They were also 9% faster than the 9900K, and then pretty proficient stuff from these new processors.

The dual chiplet pattern of the 3900X improved operation in the V-Ray benchmark by 2% over the 3700X, not a substantial divergence but information technology was consistently faster in this test. This meant when matched at the same clock speed, the 3900X was 6% faster than Intel's i9-9900K and 13% faster than the 2700X.

Using the Corona benchmark, this time the 3900X was iii% faster than the 3700X. The 3900X was also 5% faster than the 9900K and xvi% faster than the 2700X. At present permit's come across how things look in a few games.

Gaming Benchmarks

The first game we're checking out is Battleground V. Despite a hefty reduction in clock speed, the Core i9-9900K notwithstanding manages to take the top spot. The 1% depression functioning was very impressive and here the 9900K was 9% faster than 3rd-gen Ryzen processors.

When looking at the boilerplate frame charge per unit we run into that the 3700X was viii% faster than the 2700X, while the 3900X was 13% faster. This means that even when matched at the same clock speed with the same number of cores, the 3900X is still 5% faster than the 3700X, very interesting.

The 9900K likewise takes the kickoff place in Far Cry New Dawn, beating the 3900X by a 5% margin for the average frame rate, and 10% for the 1% low result. This is while running at a frequency lower than out of the box.

That's not to say AMD hasn't taken a noteworthy bound: the 3900X was a total 20% faster than the 2700X, while the 3700X offered a 16% performance improvement.

Even at 1080p with an RTX 2080 Ti, Total War: Three Kingdoms is more often than not GPU leap. Nosotros can still encounter some improvement to the 1% low results and again Intel comes out on height.

World State of war Z has received an update that dramatically improves operation. This update sees Ryzen processors perform significantly better and now the 3900X is able to roughly match the 9900K in our IPC test.

The dual chiplet 3900X was again a bit faster than the single chiplet 3700X, offer a iv% bump for the boilerplate frame rate. The 3900X was 14% faster than the 2700X, while the 3700X was nine% faster.

Another game we decided to check out was World of Tanks. This championship was recently redesigned to take better advantage of multi-core CPUs. When matched at the same clock speed the 3900X provided marginally better 1% low performance than the 9900K, while average frame rates were about the same.

The 3900X was faster than the 3700X by 4% and a full xiii% faster than the 2700X.

The terminal game we're looking at is Rainbow Vi Siege. Even though this title is mostly GPU spring, we see the 9900K performing a skillful bit faster when looking at the average frame rate. 1% depression functioning was closer across the board.

Memory and More

Something we discovered when first testing the Ryzen seven 3700X was the much lower-than-expected write memory bandwidth. After discussing this with AMD, they explained they made a compromise here as customer workloads do very little writing. Rather than using this space to amend something that isn't needed, they invested the silicon real estate in more beneficial ways to achieve performance gains.

The end outcome beingness that the Core Complex Dice to IO Die link for reading memory is 32 bytes wide, simply it'south only xvi bytes broad for writing, and this is why the peak write bandwidth is finer cut in half. However, considering the 3900X has two CCDs it features ii 16 bytes wide lanes for writing and this brings the peak bandwidth support to around 50 GB/s.

Moving on to cache bandwidth we meet the 3700X and 3900X are virtually identical and both offer substantial gains for L1, L2 and L3 bandwidth over the 2d-gen 2700X. L3 cache bandwidth has been increased anywhere from around 40 to l% with 3rd-gen Ryzen.

We also see a 30% improvement in L2 bandwidth and an well-nigh 100% increase in L1 bandwidth. That's an incredible performance uplift and information technology goes a long manner in explaining why we saw 100% performance gains in applications such as WinRAR.

As for memory latency, not much has changed. If anything we've seen an increase in memory latency from 2nd-gen Ryzen and nosotros encounter this when looking at DRAM and L3 cache latency. The DRAM latency is 50% higher than that of the Core i9-9900K and this volition be partly responsible for the difference in gaming operation but seen.

Another reason for the slightly lower gaming performance is core latency. When compared to 2d-gen Ryzen, the newer architecture is a massive improvement. For the all-time matched cores we're seeing a 30% reduction in latency and at least a 26% reduction for the worst matched cores. This ways best case the core to core latency is actually reduced by 35% for the 3rd-gen Ryzen processor when compared to Intel'due south Coffee Lake architecture. Problem is, worst instance latency is 54% higher, and this isn't very good, peculiarly when playing latency-sensitive games.

Wrap Upwardly: Generational Upgrades

AMD has taken a big step frontward with 3rd-gen Ryzen. We knew that from the moment nosotros first tested the 3700X and 3900X and we were expecting good things after AMD claimed a fifteen% uptick in IPC functioning prior to launch.

Our take is they weren't exaggerating: with cores and clock speeds at parity the 3900X provided an 18% comeback over the 2700X in Cinebench's multi-core test and thirteen% for the single-cadre test. Nosotros too saw a 13% improvement in Five-Ray and 16% in Corona.

You can't actually use games for measuring IPC gains only they're still interesting to look at for clock-for-clock comparisons. One obvious effect with games is that they're not always CPU jump and even when they are, the degree to which they are CPU jump can vary.

For case, we saw pocket-size functioning gains in Rainbow Half-dozen Siege and Total War: Three Kingdoms, but in these two titles nosotros were heavily GPU jump. The 3900X was ~13-fourteen% faster than the 2700X when testing with World of Tanks, Globe War Z and Battleground V and an even more meaning 20% performance comeback in Far Cry New Dawn.

Eventually we may look into adding HEDT platforms to this comparison, in the concurrently you can check out our reviews of Intel Cascade Lake-Ten and 3rd-gen Threadripper.

Shopping Shortcuts:
  • AMD Ryzen seven 3700X on Amazon
  • AMD Ryzen nine 3900X on Amazon
  • Intel Core i9-9900K on Amazon
  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600X on Amazon
  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600 on Amazon
  • Intel Core i5-9600K on Amazon
  • Intel Core i5-9400F on Amazon
  • AMD Ryzen 5 2600X on Amazon
  • GeForce RTX 2070 Super on Amazon
  • GeForce RTX 2060 Super on Amazon

This article was originally published in July fifteen, 2022. It's but as relevant today every bit information technology was and then, so nosotros've bumped information technology as part of our #ThrowbackThursday initiative.