AMD’s Zen 3 finally conquers Intel in gaming
1080p gaming domination means AMD’s CPUs beat Intel’s in basically every way.
While last year’s AMD CPUs were better on multi-threaded processing tasks and basically every raw CPU benchmark against Intel’s similarly priced chips, its slower single-core performance meant that Intel still had the edge in most gaming circumstances. This, however, is no longer the case following AMD’s announcement of its Zen 3-based Ryzen CPUs in October.
A 19 percent bump in Zen 3 instructions per cycle, a doubling of the L3 cache memory access and a max 4.9GHz boost frequency on the top tier Ryzen 9 5950X CPU, combines to provide enough power for this chip to beat a Core i9-10900K CPU in single core performance on Cinebench R20, according to AMD’s internal testing. This translates to an average framerate increase of 26 percent across 40 leading games at 1080p resolution, when you compare the new 5000 series chips against the former 3000 series AMD CPUs. When AMD used these same games to test the relative performance between a Ryzen 9 5900X and an Intel Core i9-10900K CPU, AMD’s chip won in most of the reported titles, showing as much as 20 percent improvements in games like League of Legends and CS:GO.
Obviously these are early reports coming directly from AMD, so you have to factor in the potential for variance and a bit of cherry picking when it comes to results, but if they do hold up to scrutiny then AMD will have toppled Intel in the last major area of CPU performance: gaming.
Of course this PC gaming dominance is likely to be short lived since Intel announced its 11th generation Rocket Lake desktop processors were slated for release in the first quarter of 2021. The seven percent average margin of the Ryzen 9 5900X over Intel’s 10th Gen desktop i9 in 1080p gaming isn’t exactly huge. So it’s reasonable to assume that Intel will regain the title for best single-core performance and overall gaming capabilities early in 2021, alongside the release of its 11th gen CPUs, even if AMD’s chips maintain overall performance leads.
While the PC is perhaps the most prestigious battleground for performance gaming prowess, it’s worth recognising that AMD will be supplying both Sony and Microsoft with custom processors for their next gen consoles. The PS5 is slated to have an 8-core AMD Zen 2 CPU running at 3.5GHz and a custom AMD RDNA 2 GPU that should be around 10 times more powerful than the PS4 and the Xbox Series X will have similar, but slightly better, all-AMD components.
There still don’t seem to be that many laptops with AMD CPUs just yet, but their more efficient multi-core design is perhaps even better suited to the thermal constraints of ultra portable devices – so far the few that we’ve seen offered massive performance gains over Intel chips. The one element AMD doesn’t win on is the integrated GPUs, and it’s a lead that Intel is supposedly leaning into for its 2021 Rocket Lake chips. Intel is aiming to double its current integrated GPU performance on the next generation of processors, which should provide enough grunt for entry-level 1080p gaming. Apart from this one element, the gaming processor landscape is awash with red.
“While the PC is perhaps the most prestigious battleground for performance gaming prowess, it’s worth recognising that AMD will be supplying both Sony and Microsoft with custom processors for their next gen consoles.”