Ryzen Versus Core i7 In 11 Popular Games

By Paul Alcorn
published

Hitman (2016), Metro: Last Light Redux, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Hitman (2016)

The Core i7-7700K and -6900K offer the best performance though Hitman's benchmark sequence at 1920x1080, jumping out to an ~18 FPS lead over the Ryzen processors.

Image 1 of 7

Interestingly, the Core i5-7600K lands behind AMD's Ryzen trio in our average frame rate measurement, but demonstrates a better minimum frame rate.

Image 1 of 7

A GPU bottleneck nudges all of the CPUs closer together, helping Ryzen 7 1800X come closer to its Intel competition at 2560x1440.

This time around, Core i5-7600K sneaks in above the Ryzen 7 1700 when we compare average frame rates. But the Kaby Lake-based CPU continues to post a higher minimum frame rate than the Ryzen family.

Metro: Last Light Redux

Image 1 of 7

The Ryzen and Core processors settle into two distinct categories during the Metro: Last Light Redux benchmark, though the groups are distinguished by just 2 FPS.

Image 1 of 6

We run into the graphics wall at 2560x1440. The top two Intel CPUs eke out a narrow win, but there's just not much room for host processors to stretch their legs under these conditions.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Image 1 of 7

It looks like a graphics bottleneck of some sort limits performance, even down to 1920x1080, in the Shadow of Mordor test. Only AMD's FX-8350 fares notably worse than the rest of the pack.

Image 1 of 7

The Ryzen processors make a resurgence when we bump this game's resolution up to 2560x1440. All three models sweep past Intel's Core CPUs. Shadow of Mordor is one of the few titles that demonstrated significant changes after shifting from FHD to QHD, so we retested multiple times to verify accuracy.

Paul Alcorn
Paul Alcorn
Deputy Managing Editor

Paul Alcorn is the Deputy Managing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He writes news and reviews on CPUs, storage and enterprise hardware.

177 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Overall good CPU but compared to Intel it sucks. You are better with Kaby Lake. AMD CPU needs this, that or that...same story as with their video cards. Wait for performance increase which happens but by that time competitor has newer generation product. Look at difference between Nvidia and AMD high end offering.

    Almost forgot...to me a real upgrade is going to be Intel 2066 socket.
    Reply
  • Loxosceles19
    Were all the test cpus at stock clocks?
    Reply
  • Sakkura
    Most of these performance differences are not that relevant. I mean if you have a 60Hz monitor, practically all these tests max that out.

    So Ryzen is definitely better value for money than Broadwell-E even for gaming. Neither of those can currently match Kaby Lake, but they're not supposed to anyway. Ryzen 3/5 will compete with Kaby Lake by being cheaper and presumably only a little slower, and thus better value for money.
    Reply
  • PaulAlcorn
    19423857 said:
    Were all the test cpus at stock clocks?

    Yes, we tested at stock clocks.
    Reply
  • prince_13
    i hope this review is not paid by Intel .!
    Reply
  • prince_13
    how much intel paid u ? XD
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    Intel does not pay for our reviews. Thank you.
    Reply
  • Rookie_MIB
    Well, what I gather from this round up is that Ryzen 7 series is a workstation CPU which can game decently well. So - if you use your computer for productivity (video processing, VMs, compiling etc) in addition to gaming, it's the processor to buy. It's vastly less expensive that Broadwell-E, and performs as well (if not better) in some regards.

    If your computer is used for gaming first with some secondary workstation uses, you're better off with Kaby Lake. The almost 5ghz clock speeds rule for gaming where it's not highly optimized for higher thread counts.

    My Ryzen 7 1700 arrives today BTW. :D :D :D

    I am definitely curious to see how the APU's which are coming fare. An actual decent x86 architecture with a really good IGP? If they could stick a 2GB hunk of HBM on it.... lordy that would be fast.
    Reply
  • BulkZerker
    Anyone remember when disabling hyperthreading got you an fps boost in video games (ffs that was an issue in battlefield 3)? Its that, all over again.
    Reply
  • mitch074
    To be expected - most current games are developed to make use of 4 threads on Intel CPUs, no more no less, once compiled on PC.

    As for "it should have been finalized before release", yeah right - even consoles need firmware updates once out to fix non-optimal settings. And if the situation under Linux is any indication, even Intel isn't exempt - they had to rewrite a whole new power management scheme to make use of Sandy Bridge, and even then you may end up with a frozen system now and again if you don't disable power management. We're talking SERVERS here, people! the kind of machine that runs 24/7 and thus working power management means real MONEY!

    So to me, a grounds up brand new CPU architecture (something Intel hasn't done in more than 5 years) that works reliably out of the box and can beat the established champion in several benchmarks and real-world tasks for half the price is a GREAT accomplishment. And if Deus Ex and Shadow of Mordor are any indication, Ryzen can indeed kick Kaby Lake in the butt when properly used.

    What can be understood from this article is that, CURRENTLY, AMD's Ryzen isn't the best gamer CPU out there as games aren't geared towards it yet. You can game properly with it though, and it more than likely will get faster with time. If you need to build a gaming rig today, go Kaby Lake; if you're building a workstation, go Ryzen - knowing you can game on it too. If you can wait a few months though, all bets are off.

    As for AMD's performance in the GPU market, look at how many GameWorks games are out there, and how fast AMD's performance climbs up after game release (from a couple of weeks to a few months) - while it took almost a full year for Nvidia to catch up on DX12 performance!
    Reply