GTA V, Hitman (2016), Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Grand Theft Auto V
We measure performance during Grand Theft Auto V's F-16 flight sequence with the built-in benchmark.
Core i5-7600K establishes a slight lead over the SMT-disabled Ryzen 5 1600X, but overclocking reveals just how effective Kaby Lake can be when we wring out all of its available headroom. If only we could explain that (repeatable) frame time spike it suffers toward the end of our benchmark...
Hitman (2016)
The overclocked Core i5-7600K lands at the top of our Hitman charts. Separately, disabling the Ryzen 5 1600X's SMT feature once again hurts performance and introduces frame time spikes.
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor appears mostly graphics-bound, so there isn't much difference between the various host processors. That's good new for Ryzen 5 1600X, which provides solid performance against Intel's Core i5-7600K.
It appears that turning off SMT helps average frame rates a little. However, the frame time charts reveal worrying spikes that affect smoothness. Overclocking does help smooth out those wrinkles.
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