The AMD 2nd Gen Ryzen Deep Dive: The 2700X, 2700, 2600X, and 2600 Tested
by Ian Cutress on April 19, 2018 9:00 AM ESTTranslating to IPC: All This for 3%?
Contrary to popular belief, increasing IPC is difficult. Attempt to ensure that each execution port is fed every cycle requires having wide decoders, large out-of-order queues, fast caches, and the right execution port configuration. It might sound easy to pile it all on, however both physics and economics get in the way: the chip still has to be thermally efficient and it has to make money for the company. Every generational design update will go for what is called the ‘low-hanging fruit’: the identified changes that give the most gain for the smallest effort. Usually reducing cache latency is not always the easiest task, and for non-semiconductor engineers (myself included), it sounds like a lot of work for a small gain.
For our IPC testing, we use the following rules. Each CPU is allocated four cores, without extra threading, and power modes are disabled such that the cores run at a specific frequency only. The DRAM is set to what the processor supports, so in the case of the new CPUs, that is DDR4-2933, and the previous generation at DDR4-2666. I have recently seen threads which dispute if this is fair: this is an IPC test, not an instruction efficiency test. The DRAM official support is part of the hardware specifications, just as much as the size of the caches or the number of execution ports. Running the two CPUs at the same DRAM frequency gives an unfair advantage to one of them: either a bigger overclock/underclock, and deviates from the intended design.
So in our test, we take the new Ryzen 7 2700X, the first generation Ryzen 7 1800X, and the pre-Zen Bristol Ridge based A12-9800, which is based on the AM4 platform and uses DDR4. We set each processors at four cores, no multi-threading, and 3.0 GHz, then ran through some of our tests.
For this graph we have rooted the first generation Ryzen 7 1800X as our 100% marker, with the blue columns as the Ryzen 7 2700X. The problem with trying to identify a 3% IPC increase is that 3% could easily fall within the noise of a benchmark run: if the cache is not fully set before the run, it could encounter different performance. Shown above, a good number of tests fall in that +/- 2% range.
However, for compute heavy tasks, there are 3-4% benefits: Corona, LuxMark, CineBench and GeekBench are the ones here. We haven’t included the GeekBench sub-test results in the graph above, but most of those fall into the 2-5% category for gains.
If we take out Cinebench R15 nT result and the Geekbench memory tests, the average of all of the tests comes out to a +3.1% gain for the new Ryzen 2700X. That sounds bang on the money for what AMD stated it would do.
Cycling back to that Cinebench R15 nT result that showed a 22% gain. We also had some other IPC testing done at 3.0 GHz but with 8C/16T (which we couldn’t compare to Bristol Ridge), and a few other tests also showed 20%+ gains. This is probably a sign that AMD might have also adjusted how it manages its simultaneous multi-threading. This requires further testing.
AMD’s Overall 10% Increase
With some of the benefits of the 12LP manufacturing process, a few editors internally have questioned exactly why AMD hasn’t redesigned certain elements of the microarchitecture to take advantage. Ultimately it would appear that the ‘free’ frequency boost is worth just putting the same design in – as mentioned previously, the 12LP design is based on 14LPP with performance bump improvements. In the past it might not have been mentioned as a separate product line. So pushing through the same design is an easy win, allowing the teams to focus on the next major core redesign.
That all being said, AMD has previously already stated its intentions for the Zen+ core design – rolling back to CES at the beginning of the year, AMD stated that they wanted Zen+ and future products to go above and beyond the ‘industry standard’ of a 7-8% performance gain each year.
Clearly 3% IPC is not enough, so AMD is combining the performance gain with the +250 MHz increase, which is about another 6% peak frequency, with better turbo performance with Precision Boost 2 / XFR 2. This is about 10%, on paper at least. Benchmarks to follow.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
545 Comments
View All Comments
fallaha56 - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Er look again Intel fanboisTechradar review with fully patched intel systems is showing exactly the same thing...
Spectre2 patch looks like it has a massive hit
Tropicocity - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Then why do other reviews not show even near the level of performance gap between Ryzen 1 and Ryzen 2? It's not as if spectre or meltdown patches would somehow make the 2 series way better than the 1fallaha56 - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
XFR, ram, cooling, MCE, lots of variables hereBut the key difference is the patching and quite possibly the RAM
DearEmery - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
I tend to keep away from the comments here because I lack the knowledge to really contribute.I couldn't resist the urge to pop in because I'm certain this is the only time that sentence will be me boasting, when I'm reading comments from 'kill3x' and 'realistz' concerning 'hard fails'.
Follow my great example and realize your anecdote (leaving aside your 'hard fail' comprehending results and placing them in context the article hands you plenty of, assuming you read every word you should have), is right on the edge of worthless and garbage. Then read all the comments (particularly page one and two). Then come back tomorrow to get potential updates. Then go back into whatever game you were playing and be silly gooses there.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Hey Kill3x,To clarify, are you looking at the same sub-score we are, or the overall average? Our posted results are off of the first scene, Valley, as that's the most strenuous. The overall average is going to be higher, as you can see here: https://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU16/1471
kill3x - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
Thank you for your reply, Ryan. Yes, this is more on point. But then again, if you mean Geothermal valley, I have different results there. The first area is Siberian wilderness with heavy snow, and I have lower results there. So a question arises about testing methods and testing scenes. Was it combat? Static? In a cave or on the top of area? All of these things affect FPS heavily. That's why the best way to review hardware in games is using scripted scenes and showing results in a video with detailed options' setup. Why didn't you guys just use ingame benchmark which 100% runs same scenes with same density? All of this looks like reviewer tried to cherrypick results in favor of Zen+. When you can't reproduce the result of a benchmark with same hardware as reviewer used is example of a bad approach and distortion of perception of your visitors.But then again, thank you, Ryan, for speaking with us and listening to our rant.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, April 19, 2018 - link
"Why didn't you guys just use ingame benchmark which 100% runs same scenes with same density?"To clarify, we do. We just use one of the scenes, and not the average of all of them. This is the same scene we've used for over a year now, since introducing this benchmark to our CPU & mobo testing suite.
kill3x - Friday, April 20, 2018 - link
Ryan, I retested Valley scene in built-in benchmark, this time with 8700k and gtx 980 Ti. I used high instead of very high, all options like on your screenshot. I got 122 FPS on valley with this settings. On 980 Ti. I'm really trying to keep this polite, but this is 20% difference on marginally weaker card. This just can't be a "gap" kind of error. These benchmarks are horribly wrong. Make your site and Ian a favor, Ryan, please consider retesting this. People are already suspect you of shill (rightfully so). Be an honest guy and just admit that a technical mistake was made, and correct it. Noone would blame you, mistakes happen. If you leave that as it is, it will be a much bigger mistake.divertedpanda - Saturday, April 21, 2018 - link
Your setup is no where near similar to theirs. You can't use your PC to Bench vs Them, and call it scientific.......kill3x - Saturday, April 21, 2018 - link
Yeah my setup's is nowhere near similar to theirs, and still my results are 20% better on 2 different CPUs. That kinda puts credibility of their review to zero, with all my respect to Ryan. The only goal was to put Ryzen 1 and CFL-S CPUs in a bad light, so people will buy new Ryzen 2 CPUs and suddenly find out that its capability's are not that huge.