OcUK Zen3 review thread

[Naff8000]

4k and ultrawide I didn't expect anything that's pure gpu bound at them resolutions, but at 2560x1440p I expected some difference by now, seriously 1080p gaming has really been dead a long time and people spending this sort of money on a cpu should at least be on 2560x1440p as the minimum standard now and as that is what I class now as minimum standard now, I was hoping to see some real gains in fps at 2560x1440p as I don't believe that resolution is that gpu bound anymore with the gpus we have now, still seems like cpu bottleneck to me at 2560x1440p.

It is frustrating at the lack of reviews. Maybe if you have a 3900x or w/e then you shouldn't expect much at 1440p but I have a 3600 and I know there will be modest gains with any 5000 series, the question is how much?

 

[Curlyriff]

Totally agree. Intel advertises its CPUs as 125w then your should stick to 125w in the motherboard settings, anything extra enabled via non stock motherboard settings is an overclock

Otherwise as you say, if you don't go into the BIOS and disable this stuff then you can get different cpu performance on every motherboard you test and what's the point of that, thats not a CPU test that becomes a motherboard test. I wouldn't expect Hardware Unboxed to understand because they don't spend much time benching motherboards.

Honestly I disagree with your view because most people will buy the board & buy the chip and play with it at default. They won't arbitrary lock their power to the TDP because it is what it says on the box. It is the same nonsense about 600/720p gaming. I don't give two hoots about that cause I don't game at that. I want to see numbers on actual hardware setups I game at and the differences there. I am not bothered whom has the higher IPC, whom has the higher Ghz etc. It is just about relative performance. I generally start with what gives the best performance overall, then I will look at the pricing, if it is too high I look at what is slightly down the stack.

At point do I care that at the TDP rating for either brand is being hit or not when I game and when I want an out the box configuration to work with relative ease. The only time the power numbers come into play is again what is the total system load when gaming and what is highest peak recorded so I know what size PSU I should buy. Does this mean every reviewer should test every different mobo manufacture board with the chip to see the difference. Nope cause I can quite happily check what mobo was used and compare to others or when said bencher then does a mobo review I can compare the differences.

 

[Curlyriff]

So basically from the reviews not doing 1080p testing only, 1440P and above shows no difference from zen 2 for gaming. So anyone with a high end system and monitor that is above 1440p and most people now are wanting the 34" 3440x1440p 21:9 which is again higher than 16:9 2560x1440p are wasting their money for gaming. Seems like a good time to grab Zen 2 bargains then unless you are on 1080p and have a 240hz or 360hz monitor. Next true update will be zen 4 with pcie 6 hopefully not pcie 5 as pcie 6 has now been passed.

I'm on a 5120x3440p basically 4k minus a million pixels (7 million pixels instead of 8 million pixels for 4k). Again hype train for people already with high end systems or gaming at 1440p and above and they are not really destroying Intel yet with their 10900k single thread performance but AMD destroy them in power use.

Good review here from a trusted reviewer :-

I would say that even if you are on 1440p or above a newer 5000 series CPU might be worth it because of the boost with the new AMD gpu's if you are going that way. If you are sticking to Nvidia then a 3000 series makes sense at those resolutions so it is not quite as clear cut.

 

[Purgatory]

It is frustrating at the lack of reviews. Maybe if you have a 3900x or w/e then you shouldn't expect much at 1440p but I have a 3600 and I know there will be modest gains with any 5000 series, the question is how much?

The reviews are all rigged to 1080p and some with 1440p and a lot of the reviews don't even add up compared to others. It seems like AMD has forced reviewers to use certain titles too. Sorry most of us are not playing at an ancient resolution anymore and some reviews are comical at 720p. Real world reviews is what we need at real resolutions people are using.


Best value AMD so far is the 5600x and the 5700x when that appears for pure gaming, rest are a waste of money for gaming only.

 

[Nerusy]

I've been trying to figure out if its worth upgrading 3700x to either 5600x or even 5800x but reviewers are making it hard. Gamer nexus shows that 5600x is faster in 1080p gaming than 3700x by 25% on average. I check techpowerup and it shows that 5600x is only 5% faster than 3700x on average in 1080p. Thats a whopping 20% difference between reviwers.

Fine, i dont care for 1080p, I got 3440x1440 resolution so use 1440p as proxy, there gamer nexus does not provide benchmark and techpowerup says the difference is just 2% in games. Even with smart memory access feature the added 5+2% is not worth the upgrade cost. Guru3d shows diference at ~8%, bring in SAM and total delta will probably be about ~13%. Hmm still not that much of a difference. However guru3d has 2080ti in those tests which probably bottlenecks the system and it is only based on 4 games, so perhaps 5600x is much quicker in games if we put in 3080.

If say 5600x is 15% faster in ultrawide QHD and SAM brings another 5% performance then total 20% increase in FPS seems like a decent incentive to upgrade from 3700x alongt with better 1% lows but the benchmarks are all over the place. Hopefully somebody will do a 3600x(3700x) vs 5600x video later on to address this once 6800xt comes out.

 

[Purgatory]

as a 1440p and 4K gamer I understand zen 3 will have mostly small improvements but I personally play all sorts of games and there are games out there where even at 4K zen 2 sucks, such as anything made by Ubisoft and recently flight simulator and mmorpg like WoW

fs2020 and fsx is not a lot cpu bound at 1440p (unless you are running it at worst quality, which no one is doing) and above it's gpu bound and at 4k it is massively bound by the gpu.

Also rest of the games no idea and ubisoft games like assassin's creed is not cpu bound at 1440p if you check the reviews.


This is why I don't trust AMD with their benchmarks and the list of things reviewers are made to add to reviews.

BTW I have 2 3950x systems and one built, one waiting to be built with a 3090 when I can finally get one. One uses a 34" 3440x1440p and other will use a 49" 5120x1440p... So I doubt I will see any cpu bound situations.


The reviews are all rubbish and don't even match up with each other so far and some game reviewed at 1080p and 1440p are all over the place some no difference and then others with a 30% to 40% better which is utter rubbish.


Only one or two reviewers have reviews that make logical sense, rest are made up rubbish or systems not setup right.

 

[chroniclard]

fs2020 and fsx is not a lot cpu bound at 1440p (unless you are running it at worst quality, which no one is doing) and above it's gpu bound and at 4k it is massively bound by the gpu.

Also rest of the games no idea and ubisoft games like assassin's creed is not cpu bound at 1440p if you check the reviews.


This is why I don't trust AMD with their benchmarks and the list of things reviewers are made to add to reviews.

BTW I have 2 3950x systems and one built, one waiting to be built with a 3090 when I can finally get one. One uses a 34" 3440x1440p and other will use a 49" 5120x1440p... So I doubt I will see any cpu bound situations.


The reviews are all rubbish and don't even match up with each other so far and some game reviewed at 1080p and 1440p are all over the place some no difference and then others with a 30% to 40% better which is utter rubbish.


Only one or two reviewers have reviews that make logical sense, rest are made up rubbish or systems not setup right.

All right Donald.

 

[pugheaven]

5800x is the go to CPU right now, simple as that from this point onwards until INTEL do something new. if on a budget, 3600x/3800x are still great processors if you can now pick up cheaper because of 5000 series.

 

[Purgatory]

I've been trying to figure out if its worth upgrading 3700x to either 5600x or even 5800x but reviewers are making it hard. Gamer nexus shows that 5600x is faster in 1080p gaming than 3700x by 25% on average. I check techpowerup and it shows that 5600x is only 5% faster than 3700x on average in 1080p. Thats a whopping 20% difference between reviwers.

Fine, i dont care for 1080p, I got 3440x1440 resolution so use 1440p as proxy, there gamer nexus does not provide benchmark and techpowerup says the difference is just 2% in games. Even with smart memory access feature the added 5+2% is not worth the upgrade cost. Guru3d shows diference at ~8%, bring in SAM and total delta will probably be about ~13%. Hmm still not that much of a difference. However guru3d has 2080ti in those tests which probably bottlenecks the system and it is only based on 4 games, so perhaps 5600x is much quicker in games if we put in 3080.

If say 5600x is 15% faster in ultrawide QHD and SAM brings another 5% performance then total 20% increase in FPS seems like a decent incentive to upgrade from 3700x alongt with better 1% lows but the benchmarks are all over the place. Hopefully somebody will do a 3600x(3700x) vs 5600x video later on to address this once 6800xt comes out.

Spend your money on a better gpu at that resolution, then wait for the prices to come down and if you need more cores grab a 5800x (if you don't have a 8 core zen 2 already) or a 5900x as a good future upgrade for more than just gaming, but for gaming only in the future 5700x will probably be best one to get if you don't already have a 3700x and game at over 1440p and above.

 

[Purgatory]

All right Donald.

Enjoy the hype train or upgrade your monitor from 1080p.. That's the reality of this .. We are high end users most of us on here and first thing we have is a high end monitor and 1080p is not high end and has not been for a decade. Unless you are into Esports and have 240hz or 360hz 1080p monitor then grab the 5000 series for sure it does destroy at 1080p at anything else nope.

 

[Joxeon]

Bloody TechpowerUp, Nvidia shills have made an error in their testing to make Ryzen 5000 much slower! Lol just kidding.

W1zzard of TPU really should improve his testing. For a start he's using 3200Mhz memory, but that doesn't explain much lower results alone.

3200 is what AMD shows at the stock memory speeds, sure you can run faster memory but the Intel CPUs can also run memory over 4400.

It is frustrating at the lack of reviews. Maybe if you have a 3900x or w/e then you shouldn't expect much at 1440p but I have a 3600 and I know there will be modest gains with any 5000 series, the question is how much?

Probably up to 10% with a RTX 3090 and less with weaker GPUs.

 

[Purgatory]

5800x is the go to CPU right now, simple as that from this point onwards until INTEL do something new. if on a budget, 3600x/3800x are still great processors if you can now pick up cheaper because of 5000 series.

Yup if you don't have a 8 core or more zen 2 , the smart buys are the 5800x and future 5700x for gaming only systems in the high end with a 3090 or 6900xt, but reality is 5600x (5700x when out too) will be fine too for a nice system with a 3080 or 6800 or 6800xt.

If you have a 3900x or 3950x and using above 1440p for gaming only then it's a waste of money. Especially at the prices these chips are selling for now if you can find a good price still.

Anyways nice to see AMD doing good but good at a certain resolution and in multi core use they still destroy Intel and really how it should be with the massive amount more of cores.

 

[Nabeshogun]

lol same, ive been waiting for it and im very tempted to jump to the 5600x now

I'm still in the figuring out what the hell might make sense for me stage, and I'll need to see what Big Navi brings and stuff, but it's looking like a 5600x might be worth it (I do know I'll be shooting for 3440x1400 so it'll mainly be gpu bound) .... that is unless I twiddle my thumbs until AMD brings out the missing cheaper cpu option... as I've got tons I still need answers about (how good will super-resolution be vs DLSS, are AMD doing something in the future with DirectStorage like the RTX i/o (I can't see why they wouldn't, it's in the consoles I think), how much I care about SAM, etc)

 

[JohnStewart]

Some interesting results from Puget Systems using Adobe Lightroom Classic, with the 5950x being slower than the 5900x.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...c-AMD-Ryzen-5000-Series-CPU-Performance-1957/

 

[Kelt]

The reviews are all rigged to 1080p and some with 1440p and a lot of the reviews don't even add up compared to others. It seems like AMD has forced reviewers to use certain titles too. Sorry most of us are not playing at an ancient resolution anymore and some reviews are comical at 720p. Real world reviews is what we need at real resolutions people are using.


Best value AMD so far is the 5600x and the 5700x when that appears for pure gaming, rest are a waste of money for gaming only.

I know I'm in a small percentile of users but that doesn't stop me from wishing there were more tests at 3440x1440.

Best guess, if I was buying a new CPU now, a 3600 would still be a great buy, as I would still be GPU bound, as I am now.

 

[Sedgey123]

I think its hard to justify upgrading from Zen2 to Zen3 if its just for gaming and above 1080p, there seems to be next to no difference between the generations.

 

[Purgatory]

 

[Purgatory]

 

[Grim5]

fs2020 and fsx is not a lot cpu bound at 1440p (unless you are running it at worst quality, which no one is doing) and above it's gpu bound and at 4k it is massively bound by the gpu.

Also rest of the games no idea and ubisoft games like assassin's creed is not cpu bound at 1440p if you check the reviews.


This is why I don't trust AMD with their benchmarks and the list of things reviewers are made to add to reviews.

BTW I have 2 3950x systems and one built, one waiting to be built with a 3090 when I can finally get one. One uses a 34" 3440x1440p and other will use a 49" 5120x1440p... So I doubt I will see any cpu bound situations.


The reviews are all rubbish and don't even match up with each other so far and some game reviewed at 1080p and 1440p are all over the place some no difference and then others with a 30% to 40% better which is utter rubbish.


Only one or two reviewers have reviews that make logical sense, rest are made up rubbish or systems not setup right.

20% higher framerate vs zen 2 even at 4K in FS (gpu rtx3090)

 

[Hotwired]

I reckon if you want to see 4k results you should check in when the GPUs turn up since they are #1 component in making a difference at 4k.

We've seen some 4k results in this cpu launch and they're really very dull cos most of the time its a wall of deadlocked cpus i3 sitting beside i9 all waiting on the overloaded gpu to finish drawing super slow 40-80 frames a second.