AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D Review: No Compromise Gaming And Creator Performance
AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D: 3D Rendering, Audio and Video Encoding
LAME XP Audio Encoding
For this test, we created 16-copies of our own 223MB WAV file (an 11 minute Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to the MP3 format using the multi-thread capable LAME XP tool. Processing times are recorded below, listed in minutes:seconds. Shorter times equate to better performance.
Intel's architectures perform best in this audio encoding test, but AMD's Zen 4 based chips aren't far behind. Here, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D slots in just behind the standard Ryzen 9 7950X yet again, trailing by just 3 seconds, but clearly outrunning the 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X.
Blackmagic RAW Video Encoding Speed
The Blackmagic RAW Speed Test is a CPU and GPU benchmarking tool that tests full-resolution Blackmagic RAW video decode performance. The tool can be used to evaluate the performance at various resolutions and bitrates on the CPU or using OpenCL on a GPU. We're reporting two results here, both using 8K resolution, but at differing bitrates and compression levels.
We saw more of the same in the Blackmagic RAW Speed Test. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D offers strong overall performance, but ultimately slots in just behind the standard Ryzen 9 7950X.
Cinebench R23 Rendering Benchmark
Cinebench rendering performance test based on Cinema 4D from Maxon. Cinema 4D is a 3D rendering and animation tool suite used by animation houses and producers like Sony Animation and many others. It's very demanding of system processor resources and can utilize any number of threads, which make is an excellent gauge of computational throughput. This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders and animates 3D scenes and tracks the length of the entire process. The rate at which each test system was able to render the entire scene is represented in the graphs below.
Cinebench tells essentially the same story as the Blackmagic RAW Speed. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D offers strong single and multi-threaded performance here, but drops in just behind the top-end Raptor Lake chips and the Ryzen 9 7950X.
POV-Ray CPU Ray Tracing Benchmark
POV-Ray, or the Persistence of Vision Ray-Tracer, is an open source tool for creating realistically lit images. We tested with POV-Ray's standard 'one-CPU' and 'all-CPU' benchmarking tools on all of our test machines and recorded the scores reported for each. Results are measured in pixels-per-second throughput; higher scores equate to better performance.
The tables turn somewhat in POV-Ray. Here, the Ryzen 9 7950X3D's larger cache gives it a slight edge over the Ryzen 9 7950X, but it's not quite able to catch the 13th Gen Core i9 chips.
Blender Rendering Benchmarks
Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite that can handle everything from modeling, rigging, and animation to simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking. It has a purpose-built benchmarking tool that will track the time it takes to complete rendering a particular model (or models). We used the CPU-focused benchmark with all three models currently available...
The Ryzen 9 7950X3D lags behind the standard Ryzen 9 7950X rendering the various Blender models used in this benchmark. The differences aren't stark, but the performance degradation is enough to place the Ryzen 9 7950X3D behind the 13th Gen Core i9 processors.
Y-Cruncher Multi-Threaded Pi Calculator
Y-Cruncher is a multi-core-capable tool that calculates the value of pi to a specified number of digits. In this case, we ran the tool on all threads and had the application calculate the value of pi to 1 billion digits. The values below are the time required to perform the calculation expressed in seconds. As a result, lower values indicate better performance.
The Ryzen 9 7950X3D as able to outrun the the standard Ryzen 9 7950X yet again in Y-Cruncher, by about a second and a half. Raptor Lake still holds onto the overall lead, but the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is nipping at its heals.
The Ryzen 9 7950X3D as able to outrun the the standard Ryzen 9 7950X yet again in Y-Cruncher, by about a second and a half. Raptor Lake still holds onto the overall lead, but the Ryzen 9 7950X3D is nipping at its heals.
STARS Euler3d Multi-Threaded CFD Benchmark
STARS Euler3d is a computational fluid dynamics benchmark which uses a CFD grid that contains 1.23 million tetrahedral elements and 223 thousand nodes. The benchmark executable advances a mach 0.50 Advisory Group for Aerospace Research, or AGARD, flow solution for an aeroelastic test wing. The benchmark score is reported as a CFD cycle frequency in Hertz.
The scales tip in the other direction yet again, in this computational fluid dynamics benchmark. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D trails the Ryzen 9 7950X by a couple of percentage points, but clearly outruns the previous-gen 16-core 5950X and 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X.
This benchmark is multi-threaded, but is also dependent on platform bandwidth, and cache and memory latency, so the final results are not determined by compute performance alone. Cache sizes / speed and memory bandwidth affect the score as well...
The scales tip in the other direction yet again, in this computational fluid dynamics benchmark. The Ryzen 9 7950X3D trails the Ryzen 9 7950X by a couple of percentage points, but clearly outruns the previous-gen 16-core 5950X and 12-core Ryzen 9 7900X.
