Ryzen 5 1500X + AB350M Pro4

Okay, time to look at some CPU-Z comparisons. I'll post more benchmarks later. But first, these are the systems I'm comparing to each other:

Old

CPU: Phenom II X6 1090T @ 3.7GHz
GPU: EVGA GTX 1060 SC 6GB GDDR5 @ stock
RAM: 2 x 8 GB Kinsgston HyperX Fury Black @ 1600MHz CL9
HDD: Samsung 850 EVO SSD 250GB + Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500GB
OS: Windows 10 64-bit

New

CPU: Ryzen 5 1500X @ 3.7GHz
GPU: EVGA GTX 1060 SC 6GB GDDR5 @ stock
RAM: 2 x 8 GB G.Skill TridentZ @ 3200MHz CL14
HDD: Samsung 960 EVO SSD (NVMe) 250GB + Samsung 850 EVO SSD 500GB
OS: Windows 10 64-bit

Neither system was maxed out, but I preferred running the Phenom at 3.7GHz and wanted to see what the Ryzen would be like at the same clock speed, even though it will still be an apples to oranges comparison due to all the other factors. Anyways, here are the averages of five benchmark runs for CPU-Z 1.82:

Old

CPU Single Thread: 179.36
CPU Multi Thread: 1078.20

New

CPU Single Thread: 426.42
CPU Multi Thread: 2294.32

So, an increase of 137% and 113%. Not bad. However, as l will show later, the gains vary a lot depending on the benchmark, and games especially can be totally oblivious to the new CPU due to a GPU bottleneck.



Edited by PetrolHead - 19 Dec 2017 at 2:11am

Next up with the averages of five runs:

Passmark 9.0

Old

Total: 3094* (*this is the average of four values, since I forgot to write down the total points for the first run)
CPU Mark: 6149.98
2D Graphics Mark: 551.58
3D Graphics Mark: 7641.66
Memory Mark: 1295.94
Disk Mark: 4043.28

For the CPU Mark, I also took the more detailed values:

Integer Math: 10374.2
Floating Point Math: 7508
Prime Numbers: 21.4
Extended Instructions (SSE): 29
Compression: 8093.4
Encryption: 1451.6
Physics: 335
Sorting: 5734.8
CPU Single Threaded: 1300.6

New

Total: 5287.7
CPU Mark: 10674.8
2D Graphics Mark: 872.58
3D Graphics Mark: 11031.1
Memory Mark: 2178.12
Disk Mark: 11806.84

Integer Math: 21671.8
Floating Point Math: 7992
Prime Numbers: 36.4* (*this contains an outlier value of 30, with the rest being 36-39 and the Phenom also exhibiting only a ~10% difference between runs)
Extended Instructions (SSE): 383
Compression: 13391
Encryption: 2117.8
Physics: 638.4
Sorting: 8056.6
CPU Single Threaded: 1970.2

A lot of values to compare, but for the CPU single threaded we're looking at a slightly over 50% increase and for the CPU mark a slightly over 70% increase. There's a nice increase in the overall system score as well, but the 3D graphics mark is strangely CPU bound (in other words it's too easy for the GPU) and the disk mark varied roughly 30% between tests on my new system, so not all the numbers are very reliable or indicative of real world performance gains.

Let's move on to a few gaming related benchmarks. First up Firestrike (averages of five runs):

Old

3DMark Score: 9628.2
Graphics Score: 13367
Physics Score: 7807
Combined Score: 3504.6

Graphics Test 1: 63.514 fps
Graphics Test 2: 53.57 fps
Physics Test: 24.788 fps
Combined Test:  16.304 fps

New

3DMark Score: 11312.8
Graphics Score: 13504
Physics Score: 12454.4
Combined Score: 4805.8

Graphics Test 1: 64.292 fps
Graphics Test 2: 54.028 fps
Physics Test: 39.542 fps
Combined Test: 22.354 fps

Nothing that surprising here. In the graphics tests the results are in practice the same, in the physics test there's a big difference and in the combined test there's a smaller, yet still notable difference. There's another way of seeing these results: In graphically demanding games - note that this was just Firestrike - my GPU was already performing at its limit with the old Phenom II. The Ryzen upgrade only helps in situations where the Phenom II would be stressed to its limit due to complex physics/AI or where my GPU is overkill and the CPU sets the pace. Unfortunately I didn't benchmark any such games. I was, however curious to see whether the upgrade would have an effect on the lowest FPS figures in a game I was about to start playing, so I did one gaming benchmark:

Metro Last Light Redux (3.00 x64), max settings @1080p

(Averages of five benchmark runs)

Old

Total Frames: 8573.6
Total Time: 171.0154
Average Framerate: 50.168 fps
Maximum Framerate: 112.44 fps
Minimum Framerate: 15.144

New

Total Frames: 8814
Total Time: 171.15328
Average Framerate: 51.534 fps
Maximum Framerate: 162.356 fps
Minimum Framerate: 15.004

Not much of a difference, except for the maximum framerate. The minimum framerate is practically the same, although it has to be said that with the Phenom II it varied between 13.72 fps and 16.27 fps, whereas with the Ryzen 5 it varied between 9.73 fps and 18.25 fps. Maybe more benchmark runs would have given a more representative average, maybe the test is just sensitive to whatever Windows is doing in the background or maybe frametimes just are a bit all over the place with my Ryzen 5 at its current settings.

To sum up the benchmarks, the Ryzen 5 1500X is a good replacement for my old Phenom II, which was still totally usable despite its age. In gaming I am limited by my GPU at the moment, so that's what I'll upgrade next, but I could also try to overclock my GPU a bit further. As for the 1500X, I know there's still some performance to be squeezed out of it. I'll start with memory timings and see where I end up. I'll post the timings and some benchmark results when I'm ready to move on to bumping the CPU multiplier a bit higher.

As I stated in the first post, the XMP speed of 3466MHz didn't work, so I've set the speed to 3200MHz and lowered the CL value to 14 from 16. Other than that all RAM timings have been XMP values. The next step was to feed my XMP profile info to Ryzen DRAM calculator by 1usmus to get timings for the speed 3200MHz. I'll first use the "Safe" preset and if everything works fine, I might go for the "Fast" preset or 3466MHz and "Safe". We'll see what happens. These are the timings that the calculator gives me:

tCL: 14
tRCDWR: 16
tRCDRD: 16
tRP: 16
tRAS: 35
tRC: 51
tRRDS: 6
tRRDL: 9
tFAW: 39
tFAWDLR: 0
tFAWSLR: 0
tWTRS: 4
tWTRL: 12
tWR: 24
tRCPage: 0
tRDRD SCL: 3
tWRWR SCL: 3
tRFC: 560
tRFC 2: 416.1
tRFC 4: 256
tRFC (alt): 416
tRFC 2 (alt): 309.1
tRFC 4 (alt): 190.2
tCWL: 14
tRTP: 12
tRDWR: 7
tWRRD: 3
tWRWR SC: 1
tWRWR SD: 7
tWRWR DD: 7
tRDRD SC: 1
tRDRD SD: 5
tRDRD DD: 5
tCKE: 8

I'll write down the old values when I edit them in BIOS.

Here are the benchmark results with the new timings.

Passmark 9.0

Memory Mark: 2216.6
Database Operations: 92.8 KOps./s
Memory Read Cached: 27128.4 MB/s
Memory Read Uncached: 17578.8 MB/s
Memory Write: 8987.2 MB/s
Available RAM: 14487.6 MB
Memory Latency: 58 ns
Memory Threaded: 44914  MB/s

AIDA64

Memory Read: 48462.2 MB/s
Memory Write: 47562 MB/s
Memory Copy: 44226.2 MB/s
Memory Latency: 76.48 ns

L1 Cache Read: 459.12 GB/s
L1 Cache Write: 230.188 GB/s
L1 Cache Copy: 459.116 GB/s
L1 Cache Latency: 1.1 ns

L2 Cache Read: 423.664 GB/s
L2 Cache Write: 226.626 GB/s
L2 Cache Copy: 384.774 GB/s
L2 Cache Latency: 4.7 ns

L3 Cache Read: 315.002 GB/s
L3 Cache Write: 217.934 GB/s
L3 Cache Copy: 248.62 GB/s
L3 Cache Latency: 12.2 ns

The cache results should not really be affected by the timing changes and differences between these five benchmark sets are mostly indicative of how much the results vary from run to run.

Aida64 shows small gains for the memory accross the board, but weirdly the Passmark memory test shows worse results for the read tests. I wonder if that small bump in read-to-write latency affects those numbers at all. I might test setting tRDWR back to six, but otherwise I think I won't tweak the timings more - at least not before we have a working version of AGESA 1.0.0.7.

I doubt the gains (and losses) seen here affect other benchmark results in any noteworthy way, but I'll probably run some tests just out of curiosity.


Edited by PetrolHead - 31 Dec 2017 at 12:46am