CPU Performance
The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as the proverb goes. And Ryzen eats, heartily, when the cores and SMT are taxed fully.
Ryzen 7 1800X sets the highest Handbrake score we have seen to date, usurping the 10-core Intel Core i7-6950X. One reason for this is that CPU utilisation on the Intel cores is not as high as AMD's. That said, you cannot argue with the numbers.
Cinebench, on the other hand, produces a tad higher CPU utilisation across its benchmark. Even so, Ryzen 7 1800X is mighty impressive, beating out the $1,100 Core i7-6900K with consummate ease. Put simply, it offers more performance for less than half the current Intel price: no brainer if your applications are massively threaded, right?
wPrime also shows a similar story, indicating Ryzen 7 is a great chip for workloads with an insatiable desire for cores and threads, and such results bode well for how the server version, Naples, is likely to perform. The numbers also make for very encouraging reading to those of you who look at premium desktop solutions as a way into workstation PCs.
It's easy to get carried away by AMD CPU numbers that match the very best that Intel has to offer on the desktop. Though AMD has improved its single-threaded capability markedly - four ALUs can run on one thread - Intel still maintains an overall IPC lead. The lead is certainly diminished, yet if a program requires superlative single-threaded performance, the Core architecture remains more potent, evinced by a Core i3-7350K easily outdistancing the Ryzen 7 1800X. This is despite the fact that XFR did kick in, with our logs revealing a peak speed of 4.075GHz during the PiFast run.
We'd summarise this page as Ryzen being reasonable in single-thread and excellent in multi-threaded apps, particularly if value for money is thrown into the mixer. Bulldozer/Excavator architectures have truly been consigned to the dustbin of history.
