In this article by our resident Ryzen tweaking guru "1usmus" we present a customized power plan for AMD's new Ryzen 3000 processors. The new power plan ensures workloads run on the best cores, which not only increases boost clocks, but also stops threads from bouncing between cores too often.
AMD has finally responded to the Boost Clock issues on their Ryzen 3000 processors by releasing a fix for their AGESA BIOS firmware. We take a detailed look at the new clocking behavior and thoroughly test the update on the 12-core Ryzen 9 3900X in our extensive application and game suite.
Just a few days ago, AMD commented on the idle clock behavior of their new Zen 2 processors, which has been criticized by many. The company also released a chipset update for mitigation. We thoroughly tested the new version in our application and gaming test suite using the Ryzen 9 3900X on X570.
By community request, we present our findings on how the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X performs with SMT disabled. This approach has potential, especially for gaming, because it ensures more physical hardware units are available for each thread, and could also benefit the processor's power management.
Ryzen 5 3600 is the most affordable Zen 2 processor in AMD's lineup. At just $200, it offers six cores and twelve threads, yielding a significant advantage in applications against the competition from Intel. Gaming performance is also improved nicely as it is around 10% higher than with previous Ryzens.
We're testing AMD's 12-core, 24-thread Ryzen 9 3900X flagship on a cheap B350 motherboard. Performance results are good, even overclocking works as well as on X570. Special attention is paid to VRM temperatures, which we measure using a FLIR thermal camera.
The flagship of AMD's new Ryzen 3000 lineup is the Ryzen 9 3900X, which is a 12-core, 24-thread monster. Never before have we seen such power on a desktop platform. Priced at $500, this processor is very strong competition for Intel's Core i9-9900, which only has eight cores.
AMD's $330 Ryzen 7 3700X is an 8-core, 16-thread CPU that's clocked high enough to compete with Intel's offerings. Actually, its application performance matches even the more expensive Intel Core i9-9900K. Gaming performance has been increased significantly, too, thanks to the improved architecture and larger caches.
AMD delivers on its promise of backwards platform compatibility with 3rd generation Ryzen Zen 2. We examine the performance and headroom on a high-end motherboard based on the older AMD X470 chipset in a bid to find out if you can save on platform costs by sacrificing PCIe gen 4 support.
We take a close look at memory scaling on AMD's new Zen 2 Ryzen 3900X, testing both application and gaming performance at seven different memory speed and timing combinations ranging from 2400 MHz all the way up to 4000 MHz.
The Core i5-9600K may not have the core-count increases of its higher-priced siblings, but it received a healthy frequency bump over its predecessor, coupled with hardware patches to some vulnerabilities. We already proved that the i7-9700K is the best gaming CPU by Intel. Can the humble Core i5 challenge it in this arena?
AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 2970WX comes with a staggering 24-cores and 48-threads, clocked at up to 4.2 GHz. We take a closer look at application and gaming performance in this review, and test the new "Dynamic Local Mode", which automatically prioritizes busy applications.
AMD's Ryzen Threadripper 2920X comes with 12 real cores, plus SMT, resulting in a total thread count of 24. At $650, the TR 2920X isn't much more expensive than Intel's Core i9-9900K, which loses against Threadripper in multi-threaded workloads.
Intel's Core i7-9700K comes with eight cores, but lacks HyperThreading. In our testing, it still conclusively beats the 6-core/12-thread Core i7-8700K. The much more expensive Core i9-9900K is also under heavy attack: it seems the Core i7-9700K actually is the better gaming CPU.
Today, Intel released their new flagship processor for the LGA 1151 platform. The Core i9-9900K finally comes with eight core and 16 threads, reaching parity with AMD's Ryzen offerings. Maximum Boost Clock has been increased as well, now to a staggering 5 GHz.
AMD is bringing back their Athlon brand with the Athlon 200GE, featuring two cores and four threads. With a price of only $60 for the reviewed processor, this is the cheapest option to join the Ryzen+Vega game and a clear winner when it comes to price/performance.
Ryzen Threadripper 2950X is AMD's new flagship 16-core processor. Precision Boost Overclock works wonders to further increase its performance while always being stable. Our review of the 2950X presents four data sets: stock, manual OC, PBO enabled and PBO with Local Memory Access mode.
Intel's Pentium Gold G5600 processor features HyperThreading, which turns its two cores into four threads. The result is one of the most affordable entry-level CPUs that is fit for gaming. Tough competition comes in form of the AMD Ryzen 2200G, which is similarly priced, but offers four real cores.
The Intel Core i3-8300 was released recently as part of Intel's second wave of Coffee Lake processors. Compared to the i3-8100, it adds 100 MHz to the CPU clock and 2 MB of cache. It lacks the unlocked multiplier of Ryzen, and its integrated graphics are not nearly as fast as those of Ryzen G models. Is it still a good option in the $150 CPU market?
The Ryzen 5 2600 is AMD's most affordable 12 nm processor you can buy, and fills the shoes of the popular Ryzen 5 1600. Thanks to its twelve threads, it will breeze through multi-threaded workloads, and its gaming performance has been improved a lot too, beating last generation's Ryzen 7 1800X flagship.
Intel's $200 Core i5-8500 is part of the second wave of Coffee Lake CPUs, released earlier this year. The processor comes with six cores and six threads and will boost up to 4.1 GHz. Our testing shows that even at higher thread counts, it won't ever go below 3.9 GHz, which will make life difficult for the Ryzen 5 2600 - its main competitor.
The Ryzen 7 2700 is the cheaper, sub-$300 sibling of the flagship 2700X, and has nothing disabled on-die. It even comes with an unlocked multiplier and nearly half the TDP rating, which makes it the most energy-efficient processor we ever tested in multi-threaded workloads.
Intel's recently-released Core i5-8600 comes with an identical boost frequency as the i5-8600K, for a lesser price that happens to match that of the Ryzen 5 2600X. While base frequency might look low with 3.1 GHz, in reality, out of the box, the processor runs above 4 GHz all the time.
AMD's new second-generation Ryzen processors are here. We run the Ryzen 7 2700X flagship through our completely revamped test suite, which features the latest BIOS, OS, and software updates, as well as new tests and games. Results are very impressive and considerably reduce the gap to Intel's offerings.
Priced at an affordable $230, AMD's Ryzen 5 2600X is targeted at a larger market than the Ryzen 7 2700X. The processor still comes with 6 cores and 12 threads, matching the best Intel has to offer. In our testing, we see the new processor neck-to-neck with the Ryzen 7 1700X and beating the Intel Core i5-8600K.
