CPU Hierarchy 2019: Intel and AMD Processors Ranked

Your CPU has a huge effect on overall performance and, to many, is a computer's most important component. However, when it comes time to buy a CPU for your desktop, you'll find a dizzying morass of model numbers and specs from both Intel and AMD. We've listed our the best CPUs for gaming and best processors for applications in other articles, but if you want to know how each chip stacks up against all the others, this CPU Hierarchy is for you. 

Below, we've ranked all the consumer Intel 9th, 8th and 7th Gen processors, along with AMD's Ryzen and Ryzen 2 chips. We determined the order based on average gaming performance across our test suite, but we also include an application performance metric in the application score column. We generate this metric via a geometric mean of application performance in compression, decompression, HandBrake, Blender and the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite.

Unfortunately, recent updates to our application testing suite, along with performance-altering updates to a few of our game titles, have forced us to recalculate our scoring metrics. We've left our historical data, in which the most powerful chip gets a 100 and all others are scored relative to it, but we're working to update to the new metric and will include it in a future update. If you want our recommendations, please check out our Best CPUs page.

AMD's Ryzen 3000 series processors have landed, bringing with them impressive performance improvements borne of the 7nm process and a radical improvement to instructions per cycle (IPC) throughput. We found that the Ryzen 9 3900X and its 12-cores and 24-threads pushes the mainstream desktop into what used to be high end desktop (HEDT) territory. This chip generally outperforms the Core i9-9900K in all threaded workloads and is plenty impressive in single-threaded work, too. The -9900K remains the king of the hill for gaming, but the differences are small at stock settings, meaning that the Ryzen 9 3900X offers an incredible value that offers similar gaming performance and excels in productivity work.
 
Likewise, the 8-core 16-thread Ryzen 7 3700X offers a compelling mix of performance at a friendly price point. This processor grapples with the Core i7-9700K, and like its counterpart, offers similar gaming performance but excels in threaded work. We also put the Ryzen 7 3800X, which is basically a higher-clocked version of the 3700X, under the microscope but found that it doesn't offer many advantages over the 3700X if you're not afraid of pressing the Precision Boost Overdrive button. Enthusiasts can save $75 by opting for the 3700X, making it the better choice if you have sufficient cooling to extract the best performance.

We put the screws to the 6-core 12-thread Ryzen 5 3600X and Ryzen 5 3600, finding both to be capable performers, though the Ryzen 5 3600 takes the value crown with nearly the same performance as its X-series counterpart, but for $50 less. Both CPUs offer far more value than Intel's competing models and come with all the standard value props of the Ryzen range, like bundled coolers and unrestrained overclockability even on lesser B-series motherboards.

The biggest news for those in need of lots of cores and threads is the Ryzen 9 3950X that AMD announced during E3. It sports 16 cores and 32 threads, with a boost clock of 4.7GHz. AMD says it will arrive this month for $749. We'll of course have to wait to run our own benchmarks before passing full judgement. But paired with a lower-cost X570 or X470 motherboard, it could give lower-end Threadripper builds a run for their money.

On the Intel side, the announcement of the Core i9-9900KS, promises all eight cores running at an impressive 5GHz out of the box, which should lead to some fairly substantial performance improvements. We still don't know pricing, or how much stock will actually be available of this binned version of the company's existing Core i9-9900 flagship chips, but Intel revealed those chips will land this month.

*GM = gaming mode

You may be surprised to find that some less-expensive chips ranked above their upscale siblings. For example, the AMD Ryzen 5 2600X comes out ahead of the AMD Ryzen 7 2700X on this list because it offers better sustained performance, which was enough to help it do better on the overall suite of tests. However, depending on the application, you may see stronger results from the higher-end chip.

How We Tested

Unfortunately, the Spectre and Meltdown patches found us updating our testing image after the Ryzen 2000-series launch, which has left us with two distinct groups of test results. We have numerous entries in both databases, but neither is entirely complete (yet). As such, we've combined the test pools based upon relative results to the leading processors.

The numbers above represent gaming performance using eight game titles. We're using a geometric mean of the 99th percentile frame rate data, which we convert to an frames per second (FPS) metric, as our overall measure of gaming performance over the entirety of our gaming test suite. We used the Nvidia GTX 1080 GPU for our tests at HD resolution.

We compare a geometric mean of application performance in compression, decompression, HandBrake, Blender and the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite to generate an application performance score.

We have also included several newer processors that we haven't tested yet, but we've assigned them basic positions in our hierarchy based on their capabilities. Naturally, this list will grow as we add more processors.

Test System and Configuration

Legacy Desktop Processor Hierarchy

Recognizing that a lot of older platforms are going to be paired with graphics subsystems multiple generations old, we wanted to define the top of our range to encourage balance between host processing and complementary GPUs. At this point, anyone with a Sandy Bridge-based Core i7 would realize a gain from stepping up to Coffee Lake or Kaby Lake, for example. And putting AMD's top FX CPUs next to a handful of Core i7s and those older Core i5s represents an upgrade to their status.

Currently, our hierarchy consists of 13 total tiers. The bottom half of the chart is largely outdated; you'll notice those CPUs dragging down performance in the latest games, regardless of the graphics card installed in your PC. If you own a CPU in that range, an upgrade could really take your experience to another level.

Really, it's the top five tiers or so that remain viable. And in that top half of the chart, an upgrade is typically worthwhile if it's a least a couple of tiers higher. Otherwise, there's just not enough improvement to warrant the expense of a fresh CPU, motherboard and RAM (not to mention the graphics card and storage solution you'd be considering as well).

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