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Rendering, Encoding, Compression & AVX
Rendering
As expected, the tuned Threadripper 1900X provides similar performance as an overclocked 1800X in our multi-core Cinebench test, though it ekes out a win at stock settings thanks to its higher frequency. Threadripper 1920X's extra cores/threads allow it to take a commanding lead over the rest of the group.
Cinebench's single-core benchmark places Ryzen Threadripper 1900X in the middle of the group. And again, we see the 1900X's stock configuration use its higher XFR boost to beat out the overclocked version. Intel's processors continue to offer higher clock rates and IPC throughput though, so they take the top spots in our chart.
Corona utilizes all available cores and threads, so we see similar performance from the 1900X and Ryzen 7 1800X, though the latter takes a slight lead after tuning.
The single-core POV-Ray testing repeats what we saw under Cinebench: the stock 1900X edges our our overclocked configuration again. Meanwhile, the multi-core POV-Ray and Blender tests benefit from the 1900X's higher frequencies in stock trim. Threadripper 1900X doesn't benefit much from its quad-channel memory during those tests, as evidenced by its similar performance to the Ryzen 7 1800X when they are both locked to the same frequency. PCMark 10's rendering and visualization test tells much the same story.
The 1900X offers solid performance in our OpenCL-accelerated LuxMark test, though. We don't have OpenCL-based results from the Core i7-7820X, but that's not a mistake. We spent considerable time trying to get this test to run correctly on any Skylake-X processor, to no avail. Intel later confirmed our suspicions that OpenCL isn't correctly taking advantage of AVX-512 instructions, so we'll have to wait for a fix before we can generate results. The company has plans to support AVX-512 in a future release of the Intel OpenCL SDK.
Encoding & Compression
LAME finds the 1900X offering similar performance as Ryzen 7 1800X once again, though the eight-core Threadripper is a bit faster in our x264 HandBrake test.
We re-ran that benchmark on the 1900X using dual- and quad-channel memory configurations and recorded a 20% performance advantage with quad-channel. The tuned 1900X only offers a 3% performance lead over our overclocked 1800X, suggesting that some of its advantage may be lost to poor application scaling or code that isn't optimized for the unique Threadripper architecture.
We see a larger delta between the Intel and AMD processors during the HandBrake x265 test than the x264 test, but that is likely due to the former's heavy use of AVX instructions. Again, the tuned 1900X's 10% performance improvement with x265 and quad-channel memory doesn't equate to a large win over a tuned Ryzen 7 1800X. We also provide results from Y-Cruncher, a single- and multi-threaded program that computes Pi using AVX instructions. We tested with version 0.7.3.9474, which includes Ryzen optimizations.
Compression workloads benefit greatly from multi-core architectures, provided the storage subsystem can feed the processor fast enough to utilize its full capabilities. The stock 1900X offers similar performance as an overclocked 1800X during the multi-core compression workload, which is a byproduct of its quad-channel memory advantage. A tuned Core i7-7820X takes the overall lead, but the overclocked 1920X challenges.
The decompression benchmark benefits from integer performance, and the 1920X's ability to work on 24 threads concurrently provides a tremendous advantage over the rest of the pack. AMD's 1920X available resources allow it to post an almost-50% lead in overclocked trim.
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