The Evolution of CPU Gaming Performance, AMD vs. Intel

[Music] welcome back to harvard unboxed today i have for you what is the final installment in my cpu architecture progress benchmark series bit of a mouthful there it's almost like a monitor name anyway this time we are comparing a decade of amd and intel cpus head to head now for those of you who missed the first few videos in this series this all began with a look at the intel 10th generation core series comparing the core i3 i5 i7 and i9 models at the same core frequency and core count this gave us a clear and very interesting look at how l3 cache capacity influences gaming performance and we found that for today's games intel often saw its biggest performance uplifts with increasing the l3 cache capacity rather than adding more cores so by limiting all cpus to just four active course with eight threads at the same clock frequency we got a really good look at stuff that hasn't really been tested before and that led to comparisons with older intel cpus naturally the next step was to do the same with amd processors while normalizing the core count and clock frequency and this exposed just how weak the fx series was and just how much of an improvement amd has made and continued to make with ryzen in the end this cpu architecture benchmark was a really interesting way of looking at the progress both companies had made now all that was left to do was test a few more generations such as sandy bridge ivy bridge haswell and of course rocket lake and throw all that data together so for this test all cpus were clocked at 4.2 gigahertz with the exception of the ryzen 7 1800x which was clocked at 4.1 gigahertz but that's just a two and a half percent frequency discrepancy that might really influence the data in a meaningful way models using ddr4 memory were paired with ddr4 3200 cl 14 and then the ddr3 models use ddr3 2400 cl 11 memory other than that everything is as apples to apples as it possibly can be with every model running with four cores active please note though no cores were disabled on the fx a350 so if you believe that that's an eight core cpu then i guess a cause were active whatever the case though it's either a really slow quad core or a beyond terrible eight core processor so i'll leave it up to you guys to pick which one of those you prefer to think of it as and finally for this look at game performance i'm going to be using the radeon rx 6900xt for all the testing okay let's dig into the data starting with the rainbow six siege results we see when comparing the 2012 options so the pile driver bridge architectures we see that intel delivered a 21 greater average frame rate and a 29 stronger one percent low so a significant advantage to intel there and as a result amd was forced to sell their parts at a much lower price and that really stung given that the fx dies were almost twice the size at 315 millimeters squared and it also meant they were significantly more power hungry then from ivy bridge to haswell we're looking at a very strong 23 performance uplift and i don't recall seeing margins that big back in 2013 but of course games weren't as demanding back then and gpus weren't nearly as powerful in fact back then it was extremely difficult to highlight the benefits of smt technology for games by 2013 though things were already getting dire for amd as they were now competing with haswell and clock for clock intel was ahead by almost 50 percent at least in this example broadwell with its ed ram doesn't offer much over haswell here just a four percent gain so nothing to write home about along with broadwell we also received skylake in 2015 and by this point virtually no one even uttered the name amd when discussing cpus and that's because with all things equal intel was now offering 73 greater performance in this example but this is also where things started to stagnate for intel from skylake to kaby lake we see their smallest performance gain in generations basically nothing was gained from the 6700k to the 7700k then as we discovered recently since skylake the only way intel has really been able to improve performance in a meaningful way has been to increase the l3 cache capacity and of course add more cores but we didn't look at that and this started with the 8700k which jumps up from the 7700k 8 megabyte l3 cache to 12 megabytes and this resulted in a mere four percent performance boost in rainbow six siege then intel upgraded to a 16 megabyte l3 cache with the 9900k and although the core count for this test has been locked at four and the clock frequency remains the same at 4.2 gigahertz the frame rate was increased by five percent of course while intel was stuck with what was essentially skylake but with more calls and cash amd had reappeared on the scene ryzen was unleashed for the first time in 2017. so five years after the fx 8350 was launched and the first generation architecture was almost 40 percent faster in this example when compared to the fx series now as impressive as that game was it meant amd was still miles behind intel when it came purely to gaming performance in this example they'd roughly caught up to haswell so where intel was back in 2013. of course first generation ryzen was still very appealing as it offered many more calls and as such was a productivity beast so although the gaming performance wasn't exactly impressive it was good enough and there were plenty of other positives that helped make the series a success and a good step in the right direction for amd but as intel added two more calls with coffee lake amd needed to press forward and they did that with zen plus and here we're seeing with the 2700x which has half its course disabled it offered a decent nine percent improvement still 17 slower than intel's 2018 architecture but the gap was slowly closing and it was 2019 when things really heated up amd launched zen 2 and now they were hot on the heels of intel here we see the 3800x trailing the 9900k by just a 3 margin when matched at the same core count and frequency though both are eight core processors intel cpus at the time did clock a bit better though so the margin was a bit more like five to ten percent but still amd was right there then 2020 is where it all came crashing down for intel amd released n3 and it was the final death blow for the 14 nanometer process clock for clock amd was now 16 percent faster and of course zen 3 did clock very well so for the most part amd was now faster for gaming intel did try to lessen the blow with rocket lake and while some gains were made in some instances like what we see here intel actually managed to take a big step backwards so that was a long look at the rainbow six siege results therefore i will summarize some of the following games such as assassins creed valhalla for example which provides us with far less interesting data as this one is mostly gpu limited and really doesn't make good use of the cpu we see that intel capped out with the introduction of skylake and amd never managed to catch them but if we look back to 2012 where intel is up to 56 percent faster so that margin is just seven percent in intel's favor at least when matched clock for clock at the same core count battlefield v was brutal on the amd fx 8350 here it managed just 47 fps on average while the 3770k was good for 95 fps a 102 performance increase from intel in 2012 and if that wasn't bad enough intel managed to achieve a 37 increase with haswell jumping up to 130 fps on average and almost 180 increase from the fx 8350 then from haswell to broadwell we see a modest eight percent increase and from broadwell to skylake just a four percent increase while kb lake offered nothing new after that ryzen arrived and we're again looking at haswell-like performance though that's not entirely true while the average frame rates were much the same in fact the first gen horizon is about six percent slower here the one percent low performance of ryzen was almost 30 percent greater leading to a far better gaming experience thanks to much smoother frame rates amd then achieved an 11 increase from zen to zen plus while intel boosted clock to clock performance by 5 by increasing the l3 cache capacity of their core i7 range again it was then two where amd really started to apply pressure boosting performance from zen plus by 16 and this example that was enough to match intel at the same core count and clock frequency this time though intel does see a performance uplift with their 11th generation jumping up to 177 fps on average which is a 10 boost though the 1 low figure wasn't really improved despite that improvement amd is still out in front with zen 3 offering 8 more performance on average this means from 2017 intel has achieved a performance improvement of 20 while amd almost tripled that with a 57 improvement from zen to zen 3 so very impressive stuff there from amd f1 2020 isn't as hard on the cpu as battlefield 5 but even so we see strong gains across most of the generations especially when looking at the amd architectures the 2012 match up sees intel able to deliver 46 greater performance with ivory bridge when compared to piledriver then from ivy bridge to haswell we see a modest 12 increase and this time broadwell offered a 10 boost over haswell so for a few years there intel was managing to eke out some decent gains on the 14 nanometer process without adding more cores but again that all came to a screeching halt with skylake and we see no real change from the 6700k to the 8700k which was a problem for intel as amd had started to strike back with ryzen in this example ryzen wasn't exactly amazing out of the gate with the 1800x only able to match the 5 year old 3770k zen plus gets amd up to speed with the haswell architecture or thereabouts and zen 2 puts them on par with broadwell and not a great deal behind skylake through the coffee lake then a massive boost with zen 3 sees them hit the lead and even the most recent rocket lake architecture can't beat zen 3. hitman 2 shows an 11 performance increase from sandy bridge to ivy bridge which isn't something we've often seen though i wonder how much of this is down to the difference in pci express bandwidth given we're comparing pcie 2.0 versus 3.0 whatever the case though it means that in 2012 intel's architecture offered 33 more performance in this title then from 2012 to 2013 intel managed to improve performance by a whopping 38 percent and that meant their lead over amd was now blown out to 84 and as we've seen a number of times now intel did manage reasonable performance gains from haswell to broadwell then to skylake and that's where things slowed considerably for the blue team it wasn't until the 11th gen that intel managed a solid performance uplift in this example it was enough to beat amd's zen 3. but well before the arrival of zen3 amd did have to make do with first generation zen and here they were still slower than intel's five-year-old haswell architecture zen plus did get them on par with haswell and then zen 2 pushed them up to skylake which meant they were now also comparable with coffee lake for intel the horizon zero dawn data is very similar to assassin's creed valhalla in the sense that they were able to max this one out with skylake amd on the other hand took until zen 3 to get there meaning amd improved performance by just over 50 from 2017 to 2020 while intel made no real gains but of course intel was already well out in front but this does show great innovation from amd compared to complete stagnation from intel okay moving on to cyberpunk 2077 and what we have here doesn't look that dissimilar to other cpu demanding games that we've already checked out in 2012 intel enjoyed a 48 architectural performance advantage and by 2015 that margin more than doubled to 110 with skylake this is why the fx series was such a disaster for the company and aware that it was a failure they had to completely shift gears with a fundamental redesign and that took time so from 2012 it would be five years before we would see another flagship cpu from amd and in that time they were forced to do battle with intel who in this example had a 110 architectural advantage while using half as much power very brutal stuff there but what we can see here is intel steady refinement of their 14 nanometer process up until sky lake from sandy bridge to skylake intel found almost 50 percent more performance over a four year period which is remarkable however from sky lake to rocket lake which is a six year gap they've found just 13 more performance in this example and that really allowed amd to close in now the second last game we're going to test is shut off the tomb raider and again we see that back in 2012 intel enjoyed the benefit of a significantly more efficient architecture delivering 32 more performance at the same frequency then from ivy bridge to haswell we see a further 23 increase for intel and from haswell to broadwell a 13 increase then things start to slow down skylake was just five percent faster than broadwell here and that means from the sixth generation to the tenth intel booster performance by just six percent we also see amd shadowing haswell with zen and then matching it with zen plus but by the time zen 2 arrived amd were up to speed and they raced ahead with zen 3 though intel did catch them up a little bit with rocket lake watchdog's legion provides us with another good example of intel stagnation over the last six years essentially hitting a brick wall with sky lake though they recently overcame that in this example with rocket lake but again we're only talking about a 12 increase six years after the release of skylake we also see once again just how brutal pre 2017 was for amd back in 2012 for this example intel was 31 faster but a year later they managed to blow that margin out to 95 with haswell and amd wouldn't be able to match that level of performance until 2017 with zen so that data provided some really interesting insight into how amd and intel cpu architectures have compared over the past decade we've seen amd come from absolutely nowhere to now beating intel in quite a few tests with intel coming from miles ahead to now six years of mostly stagnation at least when discussing the architecture the architectural refinements anyway let's now take a look at the nine game average before wrapping this one up well these results aren't terribly surprising given what we just saw back in 2012 intel is ahead by a 43 margin on average when comparing the fx 8350 and core i7 3770k at the same frequency that's a massive performance difference compounded by the fact that amd consumed significantly more power and sadly that wasn't the worst case scenario for amd just a year later intel had extended that margin to 77 and then by 2015 they were 110 ahead and technically the 6700k wasn't even intel's flagship desktop part in 2015. that honor goes to the core i7 5960x and it's 20 megabyte l3 cache but that's a completely different story so given the massive performance discrepancy amd was forced to slash pricing from the 195 usmsrp the introductory price in 2012 to just 120 us in 2015 with some sales seeing it drop as low as 90 u.s that's 90 u.s for a current generation flagship amd processor that'd be like amd having to sell a part like the 5800x for less than 200 today had the situation not improved for them thankfully for everyone except maybe intel the situation did improve for amd and although zen wasn't a gaming monster in 2017 it was good enough and with numerous other strengths was a success and a great cpu series zen plus continued that trend in 2018 by 2019 amd was smashing intel's desktop cpu sales i know i've already said it but this really was an interesting look at the architectural performance differences for gaming between amd and intel processors over the past decade and for me it really does highlight just why our content and that of many others has been so positive towards amd's ryzen processors from about 2018 onwards and why i was so pro intel prior to 2017. it was extremely difficult to recommend amd cpus for gaming back in 2012 and the following years i only saw it become increasingly difficult it's really wild to see that from 2015 to 2021 that the gaming performance of intel's architecture has improved by just 11 whereas amd saw a 48 increase from 2017 to 2020 but the arrival of ryzen marked a turning point and while i wasn't completely sold on the first generation at least not for gaming there were plenty of scenarios where you could recommend amd and that in itself was a big deal at the time based on the data just seen you can see why zenplus started to shift things in amd's favor and sure they were still well down on intel for gaming when cpu limited but a lot of the time games aren't cpu limited and not all gamers want to just game and that in my opinion made ryzen a much more well-rounded solution especially given the price tag with amd and intel now evenly matched in terms of gaming performance so amd does have a significant efficiency advantage which is quite funny looking back at the 2012 data but given how competitive things are now i can't wait to see what the next generation of hardware brings of course we'll have intel's 12th generation elder lake cpu soon and they promise massive changes for intel so obviously that is very exciting and i can't wait to get into the testing so make sure you stick around for that and yeah that is going to do it for this what's probably going to be the final installment in this series for now though you know elder lake around the corner it might be interesting to add some 12th gen data to this and we'll see how far into the future we can carry it but anyway if you guys enjoyed it let me know if you'd like to see us at elder lake in a few months time but yeah that is really going to do it for this one if you liked the video do give it a like please you can subscribe for more content and if you'd like to become a harbor and box community member and get some pretty cool perks in return then float plain patreon links for those are in the video description you'll get access to our exclusive discord server where we have an absolutely amazing tech community i reckon probably the best tech community there is big call i know but i think it's a safe one we also have a monthly live stream where tim and i are getting engaged with the harvard unbox community behind the scenes content uh q and a's a lot of cool stuff there so if you're interested check the links out it is definitely worth checking that stuff out but if not perfectly fine i would like to thank you for watching this video i'm your host steve and i'll see you again next time [Music] you

Channel: Hardware Unboxed

Views: 86,239

Rating: 4.9332705 out of 5

Keywords: hardware unboxed

Id: wAX1lh985do

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 02 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ArseBurner]

Intel really hit a snag with their 10nm delays and tying their chip designs to a specific process node. Core counts aside they wanted to be at around about Rocket Lake performance back during 8th gen, but not having a fallback plan in case their lithography didn't pull through put an end to that.

AMD OTOH being fabless were naturally used to being flexible about manufacturing on different processes, and using two different nodes for the core and I/O dies was truthfully rather genius that let them have their cake (TSMC) and eat it too (GloFo wafer agreement).

[u/DevastatorCenturion]

That facial expression needs to not.

[u/InvincibleBird]

Timestamps:

• 00:00 - Welcome back to Hardware Unboxed
• 01:31 - Test System
• 02:29 - Rainbow Six Siege
• 06:45 - Assassin's Creed Valhalla
• 07:21 - Battlefield V
• 09:11 - F1 2020
• 10:22 - Hitman 2
• 11:28 - Horizon Zero Dawn
• 11:55 - Cyberpunk 2077
• 13:05 - Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• 13:52 - Watch Dogs Legion
• 14:31 - 9 Game Average
• 16:34 - Final Thoughts

[u/likebudda]

I picked up a 1600AE for my HTPC back when they were $75 at Micro Center. I should've upgraded to the 3600 when they were $150 but I was anticipating a $200ish 5600 non-X that never came to be. Now I think it'll be years before I can afford a GPU that matches well with Ryzen 5000 series processors.

[u/dparks1234]

On the surface this looks like "AMD Good, Intel Bad", but there's actually quite a lot to analyze. Intel has been on the Skylake architecture since 2015, and the 14nm lithography process since 2014. AMD being fabless essentially lucked out when TSMC jumped ahead with their 7nm mamufacturing. Zen 3 was a solid architectural upgrade over Zen 2, but would it beat Skylake if it was still stuck on GloFlo 12nm? It's impressive that Skylake still trades blows with Zen 3 considering it's basically been stagnant for half a decade. The chiplet design was highly innovative, but I can't in good faith say they clobbered Intel considering a portion of their success comes down to manufacturing factors outside of AMD's control.