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AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X Game Mode, Benchmarked

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VRMark & 3DMark

Test Notes

We used the same test platforms and settings outlined in our recent AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1920X Review. AMD's gaming performance is a moving target that continues improving over time. So, today's story reflects all processors re-tested with the latest chipset, BIOS, GPU drivers, and game patches.

ConfigurationsLocal (NUMA) / Distributed (UMA)Legacy Mode (On/Off)SMT (Multi-Threading)
Creator ModeDistributedOffOn
Game ModeLocalOnOn
Custom - Local/SMT OffLocalOffOff
Custom - Local/SMT (on)LocalOffOn

VRMark & 3DMark

We aren't big fans of using synthetic benchmarks to measure game performance, but 3DMark's DX11 and DX12 CPU tests provide useful insight into the amount of horsepower available to game engines.

Futuremark's VRMark test lets you gauge your system's suitability for use with the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift, even if you don't currently own an HMD. The Orange Room test is based on the suggested system requirements for current-generation HTC Vive and Oculus Rift HMDs. Futuremark defines a passing score as anything above 109 FPS.

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VRMark responds well to high IPC throughput and frequency. Overclocking in Game mode yields the best performance, offering better results than overclocking under Creator mode.

The DX12 tests favors higher thread counts, so Creator mode becomes desirable.

Futuremark's threaded DX11 physics test responds well to the full complement of cores and threads, so the overclocked Local/SMT configuration dominates. Data locality, enforced through the Local setting, is the only difference between Creator mode and Local/SMT, so it appears the DX11 test favors this.

The API test also lends itself to high core counts. Both the Creator mode and Local/SMT configuration provides access to Threadripper 1950X's 32 threads. However, the Local/SMT configuration suffers during the DX12 and Vulkan tests.


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AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950XView Deal
25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • beshonk 18 September 2017 15:23
    "extra cores could enable more performance in the future as software evolves to utilize them better"

    I can't believe we're still saying this in 2017. Developers suck at their job.
    Reply
  • sztepa82 18 September 2017 15:31
    "AMD aims Threadripper at content creators, heavy multitaskers, and gamers who stream simultaneously. It also says the processors are ideal for gaming at high resolutions. Ryzen Threadripper 1950X isn't intended for playing around at low resolutions, particularly in older, lightly-threaded titles. ____Still, we tested at 1920x1080____ ...."

    Thank you for being out there for us, Tom's, no other website has ever done that. The only other thing we can hope for is that you'll also do a 2S Epyc 7601 review playing Project Cars in 320x240.
    Reply
  • shrapnel_indie 18 September 2017 16:57
    Each change requires a reboot, chewing up precious time as you save open projects, halt conversations, and try to remember which web browser tabs to relaunch.

    not if you're running the right browser with the right options active. Firefox can remember the last tabs you had open and reopen them upon startup... of course this is within the last Firefox window closed, and you have to properly exit. (no killing the thread(s).)
    Reply
  • soulg1969 18 September 2017 20:57
    When I go to pause the video (ad) your site takes me to another tab. Bye, bye.
    Reply
  • Yuka 18 September 2017 21:07
    Since this CPU (and Intel's X and XE line) are aimed for big spenders, when are you guys going to test multi GPU in these CPUs?

    Also, you mentioned streaming as part of the big CPU charisma, but there was no actual test with it. Why not just run OBS with the same software encoding settings for each platform and run a game? It's not that hard to do, is it?

    Cheers!
    Reply
  • Dyseman 18 September 2017 22:27
    Quote- 'When I go to pause the video (ad) your site takes me to another tab. Bye, bye.'

    It's easy enough to disable the JW Player with ublock. Those videos are not considered ads but adblockers, but you can tell it to block anything that uses JW Player, then whitelist any other site that needs to use it for NON-ADs.
    Reply
  • rhysiam 19 September 2017 00:26
    Thanks for this investigation Toms, really thorough and interesting article.

    It's interesting and a little disappointing that an OC to 3.9Ghz seems to pretty consistently achieve a small but measurable bump in gaming. The 1950X can use XFR to get to 4.2Ghz on lightly threaded workloads. Obviously in well-threaded games the CPU isn't going to be able to sustain 4.2Ghz, but it's a bit disappointing it can't manage 3.9-4ghz across the 4-6 cores used in gaming workloads. In fact, judging from the results it seems to be sitting around 3.7-3.8Ghz or so in most games. That seems low to me. There should be plenty of thermal and power headroom available to to get 4-6 cores up to nice high clocks, which should be enough cores for pretty much every game in the suite (except perhaps AOTS). If that was happening we'd see the OC making no difference, or even perhaps causing a slight performance regression in games (like it does in synthetic single-threaded tests). But clearly that's not the case.

    It seems to me that AMD's power management implementation is resulting in some pretty conservative clock speeds in the 4-6 core workload range. That has implications outside of gaming as well, because 4-6 thread workloads are quite common even in the productivity and content creation space. It's hardly a deal breaker (we're only looking a couple of hundred mhz), but I'm curious whether others think AMD is giving up a little more performance than they should be here? Or am I missing something?
    Reply
  • jdwii 19 September 2017 03:49
    20187640 said:
    Thanks for this investigation Toms, really thorough and interesting article.

    It's interesting and a little disappointing that an OC to 3.9Ghz seems to pretty consistently achieve a small but measurable bump in gaming. The 1950X can use XFR to get to 4.2Ghz on lightly threaded workloads. Obviously in well-threaded games the CPU isn't going to be able to sustain 4.2Ghz, but it's a bit disappointing it can't manage 3.9-4ghz across the 4-6 cores used in gaming workloads. In fact, judging from the results it seems to be sitting around 3.7-3.8Ghz or so in most games. That seems low to me. There should be plenty of thermal and power headroom available to to get 4-6 cores up to nice high clocks, which should be enough cores for pretty much every game in the suite (except perhaps AOTS). If that was happening we'd see the OC making no difference, or even perhaps causing a slight performance regression in games (like it does in synthetic single-threaded tests). But clearly that's not the case.

    It seems to me that AMD's power management implementation is resulting in some pretty conservative clock speeds in the 4-6 core workload range. That has implications outside of gaming as well, because 4-6 thread workloads are quite common even in the productivity and content creation space. It's hardly a deal breaker (we're only looking a couple of hundred mhz), but I'm curious whether others think AMD is giving up a little more performance than they should be here? Or am I missing something?

    Ryzen hits a certain point in return pretty darn fast for example CPU might only use 1.15V to get 3.6ghz stable but 3.9ghz needs like 1.3V way to much.
    Reply
  • papality 19 September 2017 05:20
    20185985 said:
    "extra cores could enable more performance in the future as software evolves to utilize them better"

    I can't believe we're still saying this in 2017. Developers suck at their job.

    Intel's billions had a lot to say in this.
    Reply
  • tacobravo 19 September 2017 09:35
    You need to label your graphs
    Reply