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AMD Ryzen 9 3950X review





The review today hardly will need an introduction, the monolith has arrived, the consumer, and not even HEDT, the sixteen-core processor in the Ryzen 3000 family, the Ryzen 9 3950X. It is fast, feisty, agile and even affordable. Join us in a review of the Ryzen 9 3950X processor.
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Hilbert Hagedoorn
Don Vito Corleone
Posts: 40292
Don Vito Corleone
Posts: 40292
Posted on: 11/14/2019 05:37 PM
57
They should have just said the max for these two processors were 4.5 and 4.6.
57
schmidtbag
Senior Member
Posts: 5637
Senior Member
Posts: 5637
Posted on: 11/14/2019 05:37 PM
I personally don't see this happening unless Zen chips are produced with a monolithic die, and that's just not going to happen. AMD is knowingly sacrificing some latency for the sake of increasing the overall performance at a lower price. For the most part, I think that sacrifice is very much worth-while.
The differences in latency are, for the most part, irrelevant, except to those who care about bragging rights. The only potential issue I see is with VR, since the last thing VR needs is worse latency.
At least the 7600K and 9600K don't have HT - Intel CPUs with HT are the ones that are aging terribly.
@nizzen is right it's latency. Hope Zen3 get this under control, but as it stands it's not like it's far behind the 9900k.
I personally don't see this happening unless Zen chips are produced with a monolithic die, and that's just not going to happen. AMD is knowingly sacrificing some latency for the sake of increasing the overall performance at a lower price. For the most part, I think that sacrifice is very much worth-while.
The differences in latency are, for the most part, irrelevant, except to those who care about bragging rights. The only potential issue I see is with VR, since the last thing VR needs is worse latency.
Personally if i would care about games only and would spend 500$ on a new CPU it would be the 9900k. But i would definitely avoid the current i5 9600k at all cost. I don't think under 8 threads will cut it 2-3 years from now in the most demanding new titles. The 7600k is aging badly and i think the same will eventually happen to the 9600k.
At least the 7600K and 9600K don't have HT - Intel CPUs with HT are the ones that are aging terribly.
Clouseau
Senior Member
Posts: 2664
Senior Member
Posts: 2664
Posted on: 11/14/2019 05:47 PM
Ryzen's Achilles' heal is latency for gaming. That is why it bests in synthetic benches and dies sometimes in games. The only way to mitigate that issue is by fine tuning the ram timings. Faster frequency plays a part but not as much as tuned timings. Going for 3600 CL16 B-die and clocking it to 3800 provided the IF can handle 1900 is the safest best bet. 3200 just cannot cut it. Sometimes the cost of those 3200 CL14 Flare-x sticks end up costing more than the 3600 CL16 sticks I am using. The prices are all a matter of timing.
Ryzen's Achilles' heal is latency for gaming. That is why it bests in synthetic benches and dies sometimes in games. The only way to mitigate that issue is by fine tuning the ram timings. Faster frequency plays a part but not as much as tuned timings. Going for 3600 CL16 B-die and clocking it to 3800 provided the IF can handle 1900 is the safest best bet. 3200 just cannot cut it. Sometimes the cost of those 3200 CL14 Flare-x sticks end up costing more than the 3600 CL16 sticks I am using. The prices are all a matter of timing.
kakiharaFRS
Senior Member
Posts: 562
Senior Member
Posts: 562
Posted on: 11/14/2019 05:47 PM
hey everyone I'm back from Borderlands 3 testing..and the least you can say is that the game doesn't care one bit about cpu clockspeed
I have a 1080Ti, don't mind the actual fps number I have a ton of crap running in the background and some unsolved HW problems also it's my personal game settings
9900k - cpu clock 5.1Ghz - north bridge clock 4.8Ghz
- FramesPerSecondAvg: 84.15
- FrameTimeMsAvg: 11.88
9900k - cpu clock 4.2Ghz - north bridge clock 3.9Ghz
- FramesPerSecondAvg: 83.75
- FrameTimeMsAvg: 11.94
good example of a game that doesn't care about cpu clock or is limited by the GPU more than the cpu -0.30fps with -900Mhz core clock !
after that don't say I'm an Intel fanboy I'm not doing the 9900k any favor here lol
hey everyone I'm back from Borderlands 3 testing..and the least you can say is that the game doesn't care one bit about cpu clockspeed
I have a 1080Ti, don't mind the actual fps number I have a ton of crap running in the background and some unsolved HW problems also it's my personal game settings
9900k - cpu clock 5.1Ghz - north bridge clock 4.8Ghz
- FramesPerSecondAvg: 84.15
- FrameTimeMsAvg: 11.88
9900k - cpu clock 4.2Ghz - north bridge clock 3.9Ghz
- FramesPerSecondAvg: 83.75
- FrameTimeMsAvg: 11.94
good example of a game that doesn't care about cpu clock or is limited by the GPU more than the cpu -0.30fps with -900Mhz core clock !
after that don't say I'm an Intel fanboy I'm not doing the 9900k any favor here lol
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Don Vito Corleone
Posts: 40292
I asked AMD exactly that again earlier this week. With no plausible answer.
Initially, I figured, it had to be memory latency related. Then I figured, it has to be inter-core CCX latency related. Then I figured, is that single-core high-frequency really that important for gaming? And then I realized that Intel has been dominating the processor market for like forever, of course, developers have been optimizing their game engines for the processor architecture that sell the best. Then there is yet another factor you need to include, Windows 10, it was not very well optimized for how Ryzen got core priority for the faster cores. It's there now though.
So yeah, there is no simple single reason that can point out and address as to why AMD is a tiny bit behind Intel, and pretty much in front of the rest of it all. It's a combination of factors, and some games react well or worse to that set of variables. You can tell though that it's definitely getting better. Not quite there yet, but the curve is definitely progressive good for AMD in terms of CPU limited gaming.