This was tested with a 2080Ti a relevant question is if RTX 3090 or RNDA2 GPU starts to shift performance a little the other direction. Pairing a stronger GPU with a multi-core CPU that has more additional combined cache from additional physical cores is a fairly relevant consideration. Game engine and OS level improvements could improve overall multi-cores performance there are obviously limitations in area's, but there are also gains in area's as well. I general would agree with what's said and implied. There are interesting aspects here on the 5800X performance in different regions and lines of thinking. The Ryzen 3900X and 3900XT are $10's and $20's more while offering 4 additional cores. In some scenario's they win relative to the Ryzen 5800X in other area's they lose. I'd actually argue some of those area's have implications about the overall future gaming and where things are headed as well in regard to that.
Take blender for example with path tracing the 3900X/3900XT appear to have real benefits over the Ryzen 5800X and how that shakes out in regard to future GPU innovations is a bit up in the air if GPU's can utilize that edge for RTRT performance in scenario's where that matters perhaps there performance for gaming pulls out ahead or narrows the gap. Another interesting scenario is the compression and/or decompression results and it's a split with WinRAR Ryzen 5800X wins while in 7-Zip the 3900X/3900XT wins. I don't know how NTFS compression plays into things with both nor LZX or XPRESS 4K/8K/16K, but it's all actually fairly relevant information potentially to know about those differences. I'm curious how things will shake out as GPU's get closer and closer to more RTRT performance that more closely correlates with path tracing. I know path tracing and the way RTRT is being handled have distinctive differences for now anyway, but the real question is how they intertwine and how it relates to GPU innovation moving forward as well and in regard to multi-core performance as well and yes even compression/decompression that can impact things. If you're using a NVME drive as a fast storage device and it's not for the OS itself with write logging for example and rarely write the device and rely primarily on read performance I'd absolutely recommend enabling NTFS compression on the device and/or using LZX or XPRESS 4K/8K/16K compression on it for both the storage density gains from compacting the contents within the device as well as the bandwidth gains by shrinking them down in size.
The Ryzen 5800X show definite advantages to the Ryzen 3900X and 3900XT at lower cost though when more latency sensitive use cases came into play on the other hand so it's quite a mixed bag as to which is optimal and why and where some of the results could shift and morph over time to skew results and exaggerate things in favor of one direction versus the other. I forget now if the Zen 2 CPU's have support for infinity cache or not.
I'm curious of the Blender path tracing results times drop if you compress the test data files involved in the benchmark test with various compression methods or if it actually doesn't impact those results. I think that has real solid implications of where RTRT performance could head as GPU innovation improves in regard to multi-core performance. If the compression aspect becomes more critical to performance and favors more heavily leaning multi-core hardware rather than a slight frequency or IPC edge that's a consideration as well which offers me the best long term performance as opposed to what's best here and now. Intended use cases as well as projected future use cases aspects of consideration. I think most all of us agree path tracing is fantastic and we all wish that performance could be achieved in real time ray tracing at 60FPS + with resolutions we are able to play at. That would be quite amazing. I think the future of ray tracing and what allows us to transition that direction most efficiently holds a lot of weight in today's purchasing decisions.
To summarize if I could pay $10's/$20's more for Ryzen 3900X/3900XT over a Ryzen 5800X and upgrade my GPU down the road 2 or 3 GPU generations later and end up better RTRT results that's pretty important to consider because that's where graphics are headed and where the most concerning performance bottleneck will be in a lot of future games as time marches on. I guess what I'm getting at is if I had to buy one CPU and keep it for a decade, but still had the option to swap out the GPU for improvements which will end up more beneficial if I'm looking at ray tracing performance in regard to gaming and especially if gleaning more heavily at real time path tracing which obviously has it's work cutout, but keep inching closer at the same time.
