The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 1920X Review: CPUs on Steroids
by Ian Cutress on August 10, 2017 9:00 AM ESTCivilization 6
First up in our CPU gaming tests is Civilization 6. Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.
At both 1920x1080 and 4K resolutions, we run the same settings. Civilization 6 has sliders for MSAA, Performance Impact and Memory Impact. The latter two refer to detail and texture size respectively, and are rated between 0 (lowest) to 5 (extreme). We run our Civ6 benchmark in position four for performance (ultra) and 0 on memory, with MSAA set to 2x.
For reviews where we include 8K and 16K benchmarks (Civ6 allows us to benchmark extreme resolutions on any monitor) on our GTX 1080, we run the 8K tests similar to the 4K tests, but the 16K tests are set to the lowest option for Performance.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Performance
1080p
4K
8K
16K
ASUS GTX 1060 Strix 6G Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire Nitro R9 Fury 4G Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire Nitro RX 480 8G Performance
1080p
4K
On the whole, the Threadripper CPUs perform as well as Ryzen does on most of the tests, although the Time Under analysis always seems to look worse for Threadripper.
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Zoeff - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Yeeeees! Thanks for the review! I was hoping there'd be an embargo lift at this hour. :DZingam - Sunday, August 13, 2017 - link
The best CPUs for MineSweeper in 2017 in a single article!!!!NikosD - Monday, August 14, 2017 - link
Anandtech is simply wrong regarding Game mode or "Legacy Compatibility Mode" as you prefer to call it and make jokes about it.It seems that you don't know what ALL other reviewers say that Game mode doesn't set SMT off, but it disables one die.
So, Threadripper doesn't become a 16C/16T CPU after enabling Game mode as you say, but a 8C/16T CPU like ALL other reviewers say.
Go read Tom's Hardware which says that Game mode executes "bcdedit /set numproc XX" in order to cut 8 cores and shrink the CPU to one die (8C/16T) but because that's a software restriction the memory and PCIe controller of the second die is still alive, giving Quad Channel memory support and full 60+4 PCIe lanes even in Game mode.
And you thought you are smart and funny regarding your Game mode comments...
monglerbongler - Tuesday, July 10, 2018 - link
real renderers buy epyc or xeon. Either they have the money because its corporate money, they have the money because it comes from plebs paying someone comission/subscription money, or they have the money because they are plebs buying pre-built workstations.craptasticlemon - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Here's the real Threadripper review:AMD thrashes Intel i9 in every possible way, smushes it's puny ass into the dirt, and dances on the grave for the coup de gras. It is very entertaining to watch the paid Intel lackeys here try to paper over what is clearly a superior product. Keep up with the gaming scores guys, like anyone is buying this for gaming. I for one am looking forward to those delicious 40% faster render times, for the same price as the Intel space heater.
alysdexia - Thursday, April 18, 2019 - link
its, shit-headswifter
Dr. Swag - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
In paragraph two you say Ryzen 3 has double the threads of i3, I think you mean to say double the cores :)IanHagen - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Not trying to nitpick or imply anything but... There is a logical reason for Threadripper getting five pages of gaming performance review and Skylake-X not even appearing on the charts more than a month after it was reviewed?Ian Cutress - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
Bottom of page one.IanHagen - Thursday, August 10, 2017 - link
With all due respect Mr. Cutress, "circumstances beyond our control" and "odd BIOS/firmware gaming results" didn't prevent anyone from bashing Ryzen for its gaming performance on its debut.