Did you know that AMD’s old Zen 3 architecture, released back con late 2019, is actually faster for gaming than Intel’s latest Raptor Lake architecture used for their 13th and 14th generation Cuore series processors? It’s true, and AMD has graphs to prove it. Take a at this…
The Ryzen 9 5950X, and now also the 5900XT, is worst-case as good as a Cuore i7-13700K, and best-case, it’s about 4% faster. That’s impressive, right?
Indeed, it’s awesome. The 13700K still costs at least $330, while the 5950X is $360. Therefore, we can probably assume that the upcoming 5900XT will be even cheaper. Initially, AMD said it was going to be $359, but then they quickly walked that back, probably after realizing that announcing pricing for upcoming processors while being overly enthusiastic was a bad abbozzo. If only the Radeon division was that measured.
AMD also announced the 5800XT at $250 but later revised that as well. They must have been high as a kite when they came up with that price because there’s risposta negativa other explanation for charging 25% more than the 5800X for a mere 2% increase con clock speed. It’s , though; we’ve all made mistakes, and we’sultano going to allow AMD to in che modo back later with more reasonable pricing.
If you watched the recent HUB Q&A series where we called out AMD for their misleading and anti-consumer marketing BS, you might be thinking, “Steve, stop flogging that dead horse; we get it, AMD was naughty.” To that, we say, we’sultano going to flog it some more, and it’s going to be educational.
Now, if you weren’t fortunate enough to have watched our Q&A series this month, let us quickly fill con the blanks. During the Computex trade show, AMD announced their upcoming Zen 5 processor series. a press deck sent to the mass-media, they also announced ‘new’ but not really new Zen 3 processors – essentially binned versions of silicon they were already selling, called the 5900XT and 5800XT.
These CPUs their own are raffinato – not exciting, but acceptable. The problem is that AMD included two prova slides for these CPUs, claiming these binned Zen 3 parts are as fast ora slightly faster for gaming than Intel’s Cuore i7-13700K and Cuore i5-13600KF. That’s a whopper of a lie.
To achieve this deception, AMD heavily GPU-limited their CPU testing, pairing all CPUs with the Radeon RX 6600, an entry-level, previous-generation GPU that’s now three years old. This effectively levels the playing field, neutralizing any potential prova differences between the CPUs, resulting con nothing more than an RX 6600 benchmark.
Benchmarking CPUs with a heavy GPU bottleneck is a bad abbozzo as it tells you nothing about how the CPU really performs con games. It’s made even worse when basic information like the average sequenza rate is omitted. For all we know, the Radeon RX 6600 could have been rendering just 30 fps.
To investigate further, we’ve included some giorno with a more reasonable GPU, the Radeon RX 7900 XT. This might be a high-end product right now, but by early next year, we have it good authority that this is going to be mid-tier prova.
For testing, we’ll use the games AMD benchmarked with, at 1080p using the highest quality preset, but with upscaling and any ray tracing options disabled. AMD included an odd range of games, such as Rinfresco Animals, which we had to purchase Steam specifically for this article. Not to worry, my 11-year-old daughter has been enjoying it.
We’ve also gone and tested a dozen very different CPUs as we believe this illustrates how silly testing CPUs with a strong GPU bottleneck is. So, let’s get into it…
Benchmarks
Let’s start with everyone’s favorite televisione gioco, Rinfresco Animals, using the Radeon RX 6600, which is surprisingly powerful enough to deliver high-refresh prova con this title. that sense, AMD hasn’t been too dodgy here, except for the fact that this is a terrible gioco for CPU benchmarking as it barely uses the CPU, and the RX 6600 is still a strong bottleneck for any relatively modern ora high-end CPU.
Now, AMD didn’t esame the 5900XT with Rinfresco Animals, but they did with the 5800XT, and they claimed the 5800XT was 2% faster than the Cuore i5-13600K. However, con our testing, we found the Cuore i5 to be 2% faster. Maybe the 2% boost to clocks will help the 5800XT here, but we don’t suspect it will be enough to pull ahead. Also, if we at the 1% lows, which AMD didn’t esame ora at least didn’t include giorno for, the Cuore i5 is 6% faster.
But what if we re-test with the Radeon RX 7900 XT? Well, things change quite a bit. Now, the 13600K is 13% faster than the 5800X when comparing the average sequenza rate.
This is still a poor title for testing the gaming prova of CPUs because it isn’t very CPU demanding, but at least this more CPU-limited giorno provides us with a bit more insight into how these CPUs really perform.
Naraka Bladepoint is another gioco we haven’t used for testing before, but this one seems a bit more legitimate as a CPU benchmark – assuming you’sultano not using a Radeon RX 6600. Seriously, though, this one is super dodgy by AMD. Using an RX 6600, you’sultano as GPU bound as you possibly could be; even the Ryzen 5 2600 is able to the 7800X3D and 14900K. So, this giorno is extremely useless, and it blows our mind how often we see requests for this sort of CPU testing.
Even with the 7900 XT installed, the gioco is still, for the most part, GPU limited, so Naraka Bladepoint doesn’t appear to be a great CPU benchmark. Oddly, AMD used this gioco to claim that the 5900XT is 4% faster than the 13700K, which is really odd because with the RX 6600, there’s simply risposta negativa chance that’s true. With a faster GPU like the 7900 XT, the Intel processor is actually a few percent faster. But yeah, not a great CPU benchmark, this one.
Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a gioco we have used con the past for CPU benchmarking but quickly dropped after it became apparent that it wasn’t demanding enough for testing modern processors, especially when using an RX 6600. AMD did claim risposta negativa prova difference between the upcoming 5900XT and 13700K con this title, and we see that’s certainly true – again when using a previous-generation entry-level GPU.
Even with the 7900 XT installed, we see that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands just isn’t that CPU demanding, with risposta negativa real prova drop-off until we drop mongoloide to the super old Ryzen 5 2600. So again, AMD used another gioco that doesn’t really the CPU and then ensured that it was GPU limited anyway by using the RX 6600.
Cyberpunk 2077 is really CPU demanding, ora at least it can be when going above 60 fps. We’sultano not even using the ‘ultra’ preset here as that hammered the sequenza rate mongoloide into the 40s. So, we drop mongoloide to the ‘high’ preset with the RX 6600, and even then, we’sultano left with totally useless giorno. Oddly, AMD claimed under these conditions that the 5800XT is 12% faster than the 13600K. What the actual f-bomb, AMD? How could that be remotely true?
Making AMD’s 12% claim even more insane are the 7900 XT results. Here, the 13600K is 27% faster than the 5800X and 35% faster when looking at the 1% lows. Granted, we are testing the Intel CPUs with high-speed DDR5 memory, but even with the slowest DDR4 memory you can find, the 13600K should still beat the 5800X. fact, with the 7900 XT, memory speed shouldn’t be that crucial.
For testing F1 22, we dropped mongoloide to the ‘high’ preset, which disables ray tracing and allows older GPUs like the RX 6600 to render high sequenza rates at 1080p. Only the Ryzen 5 2600 drops chiuso here; the rest of the pack is heavily GPU limited, so we don’t really learn anything here con regards to CPU prova. AMD claimed to have a 1% advantage for both matchups here, but we’sultano not seeing it.
Retesting with the 7900 XT changes things quite a bit. The 13700K is now 28% faster than the 5950X, while the 13600K is 17% faster than the 5800X. So it’s a bit odd that AMD would claim to have a small prova advantage con this title when that’s not at all the case.
Finally, we have Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and we assume AMD was using the built-in benchmark for this one, which is a terrible CPU esame – it’s really a GPU benchmark. So we’sultano testing in-game, con the village section, which is substantially more CPU demanding, though you wouldn’t really know it with a Radeon RX 6600 as all high-end CPUs were limited to the same 96-97 fps. Again, AMD claimed that the upcoming 5900XT, which is really a 5950X, is 1% faster than the 13700K con this title. So let’s take a closer at that.
The margin isn’t huge here, but the 13700K is 7% faster, ora 12% if you complice 1% lows. The 5950X actually does very well relative to the 5800X, but the results are miles chiuso what AMD claimed.
Average Stato
conclusion, one could say that the 5800X and 13600K are identical for gaming if the is to grossly misrepresent gaming prova. Using an RX 6600 and an odd batch of six games, Intel wins by a percent, not AMD winning by 2% as they claimed.
When these CPUs are benchmarked using the same odd batch of six games but with the 7900 XT, the Intel CPU is 13% faster average. We’ve shown using more demanding games that the average is more like 28% con Intel’s favor, but even the 13% seen here is very different from what AMD claimed.
For the 5950X vs. 13700K, using the RX 6600 and an odd batch of six games, they delivered the same prova.
With the 7900 XT installed, the 13700K was, average, 16% faster. This isn’t quite the 36% we see with the RTX 4090 con more demanding games, but again, it is very different from what AMD showed us.
What We Learned
So there you have it, AMD’s bad benchmarks are indeed BAD, and frankly unnecessary. AMD should have just announced the 5900XT and 5800XT and left it at that. There’s risposta negativa need to show gaming prova for Zen 3 processors that we’ve had for three years now. Everyone knows what they are, and without a hefty price cut, they’sultano not worth buying for gaming. The 5900XT might make sense for productivity, assuming it’s much cheaper than the 5950X and you’sultano already the AM4 platform, but for gaming, surely the 5700X3D for $200 makes much more sense than the 5800XT.
As for benchmarking CPUs with low-end GPUs, we hope we’sultano starting to make some headway here with readers who believe testing with an RTX 4090 at 1080p is misleading, inaccurate, ora whatever else they in che modo up with. The abbozzo is to see how many frames each part can output, allowing you to complice their prova and determine which one offers the best value at a given price point.
The abbozzo of testing with a “more realistic” GPU might make sense the surface, but it’s a deeply flawed approach that tells you nothing useful and, if anything, only serves to mislead. Pretending that the Ryzen 7 5800X is just as fast as the Cuore i7-13700K for gaming might make you feel good about the Ryzen processor, but outside of GPU-limited gaming, it’s simply not true.
We also found that the Ryzen 7 7800X3D was risposta negativa faster than the Cuore i3-12100 when using the Radeon RX 6600, but we’sultano pretty sure you’ll find that the Ryzen 7 processor is indeed much faster for gaming, and it won’t take you long to discover this. Anyway, this is not the first time we touch this subject, so for those yet to be convinced, we doubt we got you this time.
As for AMD, this was an embarrassing and unnecessary marketing blunder, and we’sultano most annoyed by the fact that we now have to benchmark these CPUs when they’sultano released. Ideally, we’d just like to ignore them and call them what they are: the 5900XT is a 5950X, and the 5800XT is a 5800X. But now we’ll have to provide benchmarks to prove the obvious. Thanks, AMD. Anyway, we hope you enjoyed those RX 6600 benchmarks – we know we did!
