AMD Ryzen 9 3950X and 3900X in workstation test against Intel's Skylake X, Coffee Lake and of course yourself in 65-watt eco mode

1 - Einführung und Testsystem 2 - Gaming: Breakpoint 3 - Workstation: Solidworks 2019 4 - Workstation: Inventor 2020 5 - Workstation: Creo 3.0 6 - Workstation: 3ds Max 7 - Workstation: SPECviewperf 8 - Workstation: Blender, Luxrender 9 - Workstation: Compute und HPC 10 - Zusammenfassung und Fazit

Many people were certainly annoyed by the somewhat sparse sampling, even those who had expected me to take a complete test at the launch. The fact that this was not possible may also be due to AMD's new sampling strategy and the fact that none of the dealers have a CPU before the 25.11. was allowed to give. Genereral verdongelung on all fronts – a pity, but not to change. The question arises as to what else to test? Redundant content is boring, that's the way it is. Unlucky for all excluded.

Introduction

So gaming again? The 1001. Delivering benchmark with the same result is just as reluctant to deliver as the new Ryzen 9 3950X as a real gaming CPU. Even if the X570 boards are aimed at the consumer market, the new Ryzen 9 fits beautifully and some gamblers prefer only the fattest bolts in the PC – such a Ryzen 9 3950X is all sorts of things, but now really not an exclusive player CPU. At least not if we approach the matter in a purely pragmatic way. Zocken goes quite well, but the strengths are now God knows elsewhere.

I'm not going to write any monster articles about this CPU either, as there are many other things waiting in parallel for processing, up to AMD's pretty cheap Radeon Pro W5700. So why not even workstation with real applications and not just the usual suspects a la Cinebench or various synthetics that everyone has? That's just as boring as the thing with the many games. Colleagues have solved this area in part really well and, above all, very comprehensively, which would really be a waste of time. Nevertheless, I have integrated a game with me, for which I would like to provide more data and evaluation than is generally offered. I am more interested in the thread yo-yo on Windows 1909 and how the subjects can handle it.

It is not yet clear how long I will be able to dispose of the Ryzen 9 3950X. That's why there will certainly be follow-ups as long as AMD plays along, let's see. And because I have received a lot of feedback on this, I also tested an Intel Core i9-9900KS, which Schenker kindly provided to me without any preconditions. Yes, there is still that. The remaining CPUs come from my own stock and were not sampled by the manufacturers except for the Ryzens.

Test system and setup

Elegant transition and also a view of the test system, which this time relies on AMD's socket AM4 and X570, Intel's socket 2066 on the X299 and the socket 1151 including Z390. I used only tried-and-tested boards from MSI (X570, Z390), as well as Aorus (X299).  The final question of what to do with RAM has long been a matter of concern to me. Should I run the 32 GB DDR4 on the same clock as the processor manufacturer specifies in the specs, or should I run all CPUs with the same clock?

The expansion with 32 GB is a matter of honour in the workstation area, but after some consultations with SI, the users and some companies who use the applications I use here every day, I ended up at DDR4 3200 for all platforms. First, it's much more comparable, and secondly, I've found even much faster RAM in workstations. Thus, DDR4 3200 is a kind of compromise, because all platforms would have been stable much faster.

But before we start right now, a word about power consumption. If I find the time and AMD doesn't pull the Ryzen 3950X away from me right under the best, there will be an extensive special as teased. But what you can spoil already now is the fact that the Ryzen 9 3950X on a board with a neatly implemented PBO and the limits are really manicure and the Eco-Mode with the 65 watt limit really does what you expect from it.