let's get this out of the way even the
most ardent a
d fan knows that intel is king when it
comes to gaming
and amd always has been and always will
be nothing but a second choice
for poor people and everyone including
myself
has only themself to blame for getting
wrapped up in the hype around the 3rd
gen rise and launch
and jumping on the bandwagon too early
let's throw up some numbers here shall
we so as you guys can see here
a simple die shrink was never going to
um
a simple die shrink was hey
um amd is tied with intel yeah
yeah that's csgo that that that's known
to favor
intel yeah well i mean
are you sure you labeled this correctly
yeah intel goes here
andy goes here this is gaming yeah
usually
is it sure that's right
could it be that intel
is behind amd for gaming
we are going to need to go a little bit
deeper here folks
speaking of deeper if you ever want to
take a deeper look at what's going on
with
your network connection glasswire allows
you to monitor your network activity
and block badly behaving apps use offer
code linus to get 25
off at the link in the video description
let's do the technical stuff first at
the core of this launch
is zen 2 amd's aptly named next
generation zen micro architecture that
incorporates a new
chiplet layout consisting of multiple 7
nanometer cpu dies
and a dedicated 12 nanometer io die all
joined together by an infinity fabric
interconnect that runs at
double the bandwidth of the previous
generation in order to reduce latency
amd has also thrown in a more efficient
branch predictor much faster avx
support for super fast frequency
switching a feature that improves both
performance and efficiency kind of like
intel's speed shift
and finally game cash one of the dumbest
bits of branding that we've seen
since super graphics cards
as it turns out game cash is just
marketing speak for
doubling the amount of level 3 cash on
the cpu
the good news is that stupid name aside
it does help
feed ryzen's hunger for extremely fast
data access
to the point where amd claims that this
optimization alone
is worth double the benefit of going
from ddr4 2666
all the way to 3600 on the previous
generations
improving matters even further 3rd gen
ryzen now
natively supports ddr4 3200
and has been seen overclocking as high
as 5100 megahertz
to put that in perspective first gen
ryzen
was so picky about memory that for a
while
you needed high-end samsung bdi modules
in order to hit 3 200 megahertz by
contrast
3rd gen ryzen's new off-die memory
controller design has amd claiming a
sweet spot
of ddr4 3733 that's frankly astounding
so they managed all this
by optimizing trace routing to the cpu
and
decoupling the memory frequency from the
infinity fabric clock
that means that you're no longer
overclocking the infinity fabric
when you overclock your memory speaking
of overclocking
amd's updated ryzen master utility
provides
full timing control while booted to the
os
and lets you import and export those
settings
including settings that are generated by
third-party ryzen memory overclocking
calculators
so if you've got a similar setup to an
exported profile from someone you know
then you can actually use those numbers
as a jumping off point
which is really cool we're hoping to
follow up with a full overclocking guide
but in a nutshell
it's pretty different but in a good way
there's even more that amd's done here
too but the tl dr
is that this is far more than just a die
shrink
and it all adds up to a pretty hefty
performance improvement
and the crazy part is that's all before
we even get to the new motherboards
now many second generation and some
first-gen ryzen boards
should get support for 3rd gen chips but
for the best experience
amd is of course recommending their new
x570 chipset
with x570 supported devices including
the chipset itself
and the link that it has to the cpu are
gonna run at pci express
gen 4 which is capable of double the
bandwidth of the previous generation
that means that high performance devices
like multi-gigabit network cards
usb 4 controllers nvme storage and
future graphics cards will be able to
run their best
on x570 okay
so that was a lot of new stuff to take
in so i'm just going to sum it up here
amd now has much faster course and
making matters worse for intel their
modular approach to chip design
has enabled them to pack in more of them
today
right now amd has a 12 core
24 thread consumer cpu on store shelves
and it's priced to match the core i9
9900k
with a measly eight cores and 16 threads
and what's even crazier is it's got 105
watt tdp
which intel happens to measure at their
base clock and amd measures
at their boost of course it's one thing
to be told all of this
and quite another to see it so here's
the test setup that we're using today
we're going to be pitting the best that
both teams have to offer against each
other with the most current software
and firmware patches on as equal footing
as possible
it's worth mentioning up front that we
did observe some interesting behavior
when testing between ddr4 3200 and 3600
on both intel and amd here we settled on
3600 for this review but let us know if
you'd like to see a follow-up on
performance at different memory speeds
now let's finally get back to those
gaming charts
immediately we see that not everything
is ryzen friendly but amd
has closed the gap considerably over 2nd
gen
with even our much less expensive ryzen
7 sample
pulling off respectable numbers compared
to intel's flagship consumer core i9
9900k but
mere numbers do not tell the whole story
here
take battlefield 5 for example this
looks like a clear win for intel
that is until we fire up obs in the
background
and start streaming our gameplay now
amd's on top
now you might think that that's simply
because amd has more cores
and a more efficient interconnect but
look closely here we saw a lot of run to
run variation in frame rate
seemingly at random what this suggests
to us
is that the cpu isn't always using the
most efficient group of
cores to run the game assigning the game
to only one of the dies
made things a lot more stable and faster
so with some windows scheduler
or game optimization we think amd could
have significantly more performance on
their hands
speaking of more performance
productivity is ryzen's traditional
stomping ground
and stomping i think would be a generous
way to describe intel's treatment under
amd's heels here
at worst amd roughly matches intel in
per thread performance
while also having more cores at the same
price
and at best it's like watching that
south park episode where the kids hockey
team plays the detroit red wings
check out this mozilla firefox compile
test
that is the ryzen 7 3700x
running over a minute and a half faster
than intel's flagship consumer core i9
9900k
now normally when we run through these
graphs we feel like we need to provide
voice over commentary about
which kinds of workloads lean more
towards which
product or if you're this kind of
professional maybe you should consider
this but
today we kind of are just killing time
while the graphs roll because it's as
simple as if you've got real work to do
on your computer
you should buy a ryzen 3rd gen and the
good news keeps rolling
amd's thermal performance which can
finally be measured without applying a
temperature offset calculation
is pretty decent the new chips sit at
cozy but
manageable temperatures which is
especially relevant because amd's
precision boost
unlike intel's turbo boost does not have
a duration limit
so much like a gpu ryzen 3rd gen will
keep
boosting for as long as it can within
its thermal
and power budgets in other words these
things are designed
to redline under a prime95 small fft
load
that translates to a sustained frequency
not a whole lot higher than bass clock
but that's okay because under a more
realistic scenario like a long blender
render
ryzen 3rd gen cpus manage to
consistently stay a few hundred
megahertz
over bass when we try disabling the
power limits and enabling the most
aggressive options for precision boost
overdrive
things did heat up quickly and i suspect
that voltage tweaking is going to be the
main way to get better overclocks on
these higher end verizon chips
with upgraded cooling of course required
leading us perfectly
to one of the major downsides of the
x570 platform
the active cooling usually in the form
of a small
fan required to control the heat output
of the motherboard chipset
it's a real bummer for me to see this
cooling trend come back because
tiny proprietary cooling fans tend to be
one of the least
reliable components in a pc which means
that
if it fails the best case is that you're
jury-rigging a cooler to limp along
and the worst case is that your
motherboard throttles your performance
or cooks itself before you realize that
anything is wrong
unfortunately this cooling is a
necessary evil apparently due to the
additional power required by pci express
gen 4.
the good news is that at least it does
make a difference for storage throughput
right now we're looking at nearly two
gigabytes per second worth
and we could expect more in the future
it's also worth noting here that even
while we were hitting our aorus ssd with
four continuous looping file copies
of about a gig of photos each
crystaldiskmark's sequential right
numbers
barely dipped below what you might
consider reasonable for an entry-level
nvme ssd
without any additional load on it not
too shabby
but pci express gen 4 seems to
contribute to toasty operation
on the other side of the link as well
and our ssd got
really hot during benchmarking despite
its
massive heatsink i think we're gonna
have to start coming up with some really
creative ssd cooling solutions folks
because while you want the controller to
be cool
the nand itself actually if it gets too
cool
its reliability gets hurt anyway that's
a conversation for another time
for now now that we've made our way
through performance it's time to talk
value
and there's just no way to dance around
this intel must adjust their prices
the ryzen 7 3700x mostly matches the
core i9 9900k
blow for blow but is priced lower
than a core i7 9700k which
lacks hyper threading so it's a bad
story now and we haven't even looked at
amd's less
expensive overclocking capable chips
remember
every ryzen is unlocked or amd's
upcoming
16 core ryzen 3rd gen now strictly
speaking
if you're a gamer intel can technically
still claim to be on top
and the core i7 9700k could
still appeal to you if you're all about
that raw frame rate
but intel's margin of victory is very
thin compared to what we're used to
seeing
and we're only expecting the gap to
shrink so if you do almost
anything else on your computer it gets
pretty tough to justify
so then guys
this is it take in the moment because
for the first time
in over a decade amd
is essentially on top of the consumer
cpu race
and much like in the athlon 64 days
intel
has no meaningful response on their
roadmap
meaning that it is intel who is going to
have to slash their prices
in order to stay competitive and the
craziest part of all of this
is that with team blue still trying to
ramp up 10 nanometer production
amd may end up having a response for
that
by the time it rolls out so the final
word
and i really can't stress enough how
important this is is whether you like
amd
or hate amd they're back in a big way
and you should be absolutely freaking
stoked
because competition is always good
for the consumer speaking of good
ifixit's essential electronics toolkit
is compact and goes anywhere you go
and can be used to fix almost anything
it includes their most popular precision
bits that are held in place with high
density foam so you can
throw it around with any of the bits
falling out and it's got a lifetime
warranty
get yours today for just 24.99 at
ifixit.com
linus we're gonna have that linked below
so thanks for watching guys
if you disliked this video you can hit
that button but if you liked it
hit like get subscribed or you know i
was thinking about saying like if this
video made you blue
or if you're if you're blue about this
video hit the you know it's not funny
um while you're down there check out the
link to where to buy the stuff we
featured in the video description also
down there is our merch store which has
cool shirts like the one i'm wearing
and our community forum which you should
totally join
and amd will always be a second choice
for poor people
sorry wow i can try one more time