The AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 3700X and 3900X Raising The Bar
by Andrei Frumusanu & Gavin Bonshor on July 7, 2019 9:00 AM EST** = Old results marked were performed with the original BIOS & boost behaviour as published on 7/7.
Benchmarking Performance: Web Tests
While more the focus of low-end and small form factor systems, web-based benchmarks are notoriously difficult to standardize. Modern web browsers are frequently updated, with no recourse to disable those updates, and as such there is difficulty in keeping a common platform. The fast paced nature of browser development means that version numbers (and performance) can change from week to week. Despite this, web tests are often a good measure of user experience: a lot of what most office work is today revolves around web applications, particularly email and office apps, but also interfaces and development environments. Our web tests include some of the industry standard tests, as well as a few popular but older tests.
We have also included our legacy benchmarks in this section, representing a stack of older code for popular benchmarks.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
WebXPRT 3: Modern Real-World Web Tasks, including AI
The company behind the XPRT test suites, Principled Technologies, has recently released the latest web-test, and rather than attach a year to the name have just called it ‘3’. This latest test (as we started the suite) has built upon and developed the ethos of previous tests: user interaction, office compute, graph generation, list sorting, HTML5, image manipulation, and even goes as far as some AI testing.
For our benchmark, we run the standard test which goes through the benchmark list seven times and provides a final result. We run this standard test four times, and take an average.
Users can access the WebXPRT test at http://principledtechnologies.com/benchmarkxprt/webxprt/
WebXPRT 2015: HTML5 and Javascript Web UX Testing
The older version of WebXPRT is the 2015 edition, which focuses on a slightly different set of web technologies and frameworks that are in use today. This is still a relevant test, especially for users interacting with not-the-latest web applications in the market, of which there are a lot. Web framework development is often very quick but with high turnover, meaning that frameworks are quickly developed, built-upon, used, and then developers move on to the next, and adjusting an application to a new framework is a difficult arduous task, especially with rapid development cycles. This leaves a lot of applications as ‘fixed-in-time’, and relevant to user experience for many years.
Similar to WebXPRT3, the main benchmark is a sectional run repeated seven times, with a final score. We repeat the whole thing four times, and average those final scores.
Speedometer 2: JavaScript Frameworks
Our newest web test is Speedometer 2, which is a accrued test over a series of javascript frameworks to do three simple things: built a list, enable each item in the list, and remove the list. All the frameworks implement the same visual cues, but obviously apply them from different coding angles.
Our test goes through the list of frameworks, and produces a final score indicative of ‘rpm’, one of the benchmarks internal metrics. We report this final score.
Google Octane 2.0: Core Web Compute
A popular web test for several years, but now no longer being updated, is Octane, developed by Google. Version 2.0 of the test performs the best part of two-dozen compute related tasks, such as regular expressions, cryptography, ray tracing, emulation, and Navier-Stokes physics calculations.
The test gives each sub-test a score and produces a geometric mean of the set as a final result. We run the full benchmark four times, and average the final results.
Mozilla Kraken 1.1: Core Web Compute
Even older than Octane is Kraken, this time developed by Mozilla. This is an older test that does similar computational mechanics, such as audio processing or image filtering. Kraken seems to produce a highly variable result depending on the browser version, as it is a test that is keenly optimized for.
The main benchmark runs through each of the sub-tests ten times and produces an average time to completion for each loop, given in milliseconds. We run the full benchmark four times and take an average of the time taken.
Web Tests Analysis
Overall, in the web tests, the new Ryzen 3900X and 3700X perform very well with both chips showcasing quite large improvements over the 2700X.
We’re seeing quite an interesting match-up against Intel’s 9700K here, which is leading all of the benchmarks. The reason for this is that SKU has SMT turned off. The singe-threaded performance advantage of this is that the CPU core no longer has to share the µOP cache structure between to different threads, and has the whole capacity dedicated to one thread. Web workloads in particular are amongst the most instruction pressure heavy workloads out there, and they benefit extremely from turning SMT off on modern cores.
Whilst we didn’t have the time yet to test the new 3900X and 3700X with SMT off, AMD’s core and op cache works the same in that it’s sharing the capacity amongst two threads, statically partitioning it. I’m pretty sure we’d see larger increases in the web benchmarks when turning off SMT as well, and we’ll be sure to revisit this particular point in the future.
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FireSnake - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link
Awesome!I have been waiting for this one.
Let us start reading.
WaltC - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link
One thing I noticed before I return to the reading is the odd bit about chipsets and memory speeds. Pretty sure the memory controller is on the CPU itself as opposed to the chipset, and I've been running DDR4-3200 XMP CL16 on my Ryzen 1 on both x370 and x470 MSI motherboards with no problems--the same DDR4 2x8 config moved from one motherboard to the next.futrtrubl - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link
Guaranteed supported memory speeds and what overclocked memory can generally be used are two very separate things. And yes, that 3200 memory is considered an overclock for the CPU.WaltC - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link
Right--so why tie the memory controller to the chipset? QUote: "Some motherboard vendors are advertising speeds of up to DDR4-4400 which until X570, was unheard of. X570 also marks a jump up to DDR4-3200 up from DDR4-2933 on X470, and DDR4-2667 on X370." Almost every x370, x470 motherboard produced will run DDR-4 3200 XMP ROOB. There's an obvious difference between exceeding JEDEC standards with XMP configurations and overclocking the cpu--which I've also done, but that's beside the point. Pointing out present JEDEC limitations overcome with XMP configurations is a far cry from understanding that the chipset doesn't control the memory speeds--the memory controller on the cpu is either capable of XMP settings or it isn't. Ryzen 1 is up to the task. You can also take a gander at vendor-specific motherboard ram compatibility lists to see lots of XMP 3200MHz compatibility with Ryzen 1 (and of course 2k and 3k series).edzieba - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link
The new chipset means new boards, to which can be applied more stringent requirements of trace routing for DDR. Same as with the more stringent requirements for PCIe routing for PCIe 4.0.WaltC - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link
OK--understood--but improved trace, imo, is mainly for PCIe4.x support with x570-- really not for DDR 3200 support, however, which has already been supported well in x370/x470 motherboards--which I know from practical experience....;) In my case it was as simple as activating the XMP profile #2 in the bios, saving the setting and rebooting. Simply was surprised to see someone tying the mem controller to the chipset! I know that the Ryzen mem controller in the CPU has been improved for Ryzen 3k series, but that has more to do with attaining much higher clocks > 3200MHz for the ram, and is relative to the CPU R 3k series, as opposed to the x570 chipset, since the mem controller isn't in the x570 chipset. All I wanted to say initially is that both DDR 4 3000 & 3200MHz have been supported all the way back to x370 boards, not by the chipset, but by the Ryzen memory controller--indeed, AMD released several AGESA versions for motherboard vendors to implement in their bioses to improve compatibility with with many different brands of memory, too.BikeDude - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link
You mentioned 2x8GB. Try with 2x16GB and you might not be as lucky or will have to work harder to get the timing right. Motherboards that only seat two DIMMs will be noticeably easier than four DIMM motherboards.If AMD did anything to help grease the wheels, I'm sure many users will appreciate that.
FWIW, this overclocking guide has helped me a lot: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-ryzen-memor...
mat9v - Sunday, July 7, 2019 - link
Does anyone know if 3900X has 3 cores for each CCX (as in 1 core in each CCX disabled) or does it have two CCX's of 4 cores and two CCX's of 2 cores?photonboy - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
3+3rarson - Monday, July 8, 2019 - link
WaltC, you're correct. The memory controller is part of the IO die, not the chipset. The chipset is connected to the IO die via 4 PCIe lanes.While the subsequent iterations of Ryzen have indeed improved memory support along with the new chipsets, the chipsets have nothing to do with that. I'm assuming the author is using the chipsets to delineate generations of memory improvement, but it could be just as easily (and more clearly) stated by referring to the generation of Ryzen processors.