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AMD-Zen-Feature

There's a new leaked benchmark for AMD'due south Ryzen (née Zen), and it shows a CPU core that'due south capable of slugging it out with the upper-end of Intel's production line in a way that no AMD chip has in nearly v years. This is the closest we've come to 3rd-party metrics for how Zen will perform — past leaks have either focused on single tests similar Ashes of the Singularity or have been official, advisedly controlled demos of the scrap by AMD itself.

This information comes from French tech mag Canard PC, which managed to exam an applied science sample CPU with a base clock of three.15GHz and a boost clock of 3.3GHz. That'southward beneath the three.4GHz base of operations clock that AMD has promised for top-end Ryzen cores, so if nosotros assume a pocket-sized boost clock of iii.6GHz it means final examination results should be somewhat higher than what we see below.

ZenTests

Since the text is in French, we asked our (non-native) French speaker Jessica Hall to help with the translation, with one paragraph for each event. The offset graph is based on 3D rendering and video encoding functioning in a number of applications. The ES Ryzen chip with all eight cores active wins past Intel'due south half-dozen-cadre Cadre i7-6800K and is bested but by the eight-core Cadre i7-6900K, with its much college boost clock of three.7GHz. The French reads:

Performance – animal/front-facing/impaired calculations. [this is a direct-upwardly number crunching test]. With its 8 true cores, Zen achieves prowess despite its express frequency ["clock speed?"] of 3.3gHz. It's getting dangerously close – for intel – to the Core i7 6900K by offering performances comparable to the Core i7 5960X at the same frequency. AMD's story from a few months ago seems to be well verified in practice, and this is excellent news. Compared to the FX-8370, there's a performance gain of about 35% at the aforementioned frequency, which is also in line with the manufacturer's forecasts.

Next up, nosotros've got an overview of game performance, as calculated using Far Weep 4, Filigree: Autosport, BF4, Arma III, X3: TC, The Witcher three, and Anno 2070. Game performance isn't literally a single-thread test anymore — virtually games tin accept reward of four or and so cores — just only a scattering of titles can reliably benefit from more than that. This is particularly truthful where Intel chips are concerned, since Intel CPUs have offered vastly better single-thread performance than their AMD counterparts. Of the two sets of benchmarks, this is going to be less friendly to AMD than its counterpart higher up. The French translation is: "If the results seem much more disappointing beyond the average of video games tested, continue in mind that the epitome tested was an 8-core with a fairly depression frequency (especially in Turbo fashion). However, the games remain very sensitive to frequency and still struggle to exploit more than iv cores. Difficult in these conditions to compare information technology with a cadre i7 whose frequency exceeds 4GHz. All the same, the Zen architecture shows an efficiency that we have not seen in AMD for a long time."

Endmost to within 3% of the Core i5-6500K is a meaning achievement for Ryzen, since nosotros expect clock speeds to exist at least modestly higher on shipping hardware. It's also a vast comeback over previous generation cores based on Excavator or Piledriver. For the first time, if these leaks are accurate, AMD tin credibly say it's offering some competition to Intel in gaming.

Finally, there's power consumption. The text states: "The power consumption measurement of the Zen CPU was taken from the amperemeter[multimeter? voltmeter/ammeter?] clamp on the ATX 12V connector at full load. Although it is less accurate than the oscilloscope we commonly use, it gives a good thought of the performance of the 14nm LPP process of Global Foundries. Afterward removing the VRM losses from the motherboard, information technology can exist estimated that the CPU consumes only nether 90W, a value very shut to that of a 6900K. Auspicious results for the future."

Once again, very strong results here from AMD. Ryzen at 93W is significantly below the FX-8370, yet much faster than that cadre. In absolute terms, Intel's performance-per-watt is likely higher, though this volition need to exist checked benchmark-by-criterion. What's changed is that AMD tin can, once again, credibly merits to be offer competitive performance. Information technology's a huge leap frontward for the smaller CPU business firm.

Equally e'er, these test results should be taken with a grain of common salt. They aren't official, they aren't run on last hardware, and they can't be verified at this bespeak. But, importantly, these examination results practice generally friction match what I've personally been expecting Zen would offering. It'due south never been reasonable to think AMD would, in one cruel dive, leap from farther backside Intel than information technology e'er was during the Bad Old Days when the P4 was cleaning the Athlon XP'due south clock. What AMD needs Zen / Ryzen to do is bear witness that information technology can build a chip that's competitive with Intel, at solid toll points, with a core information technology can scale and improve over the side by side few years. If these benchmarks are authentic, with a little more oomph from clock speed and a piddling adjustment for the whims of any specific single exam, it's washed that overall.