A barebone against 6 CPUs - Which Ryzen processor fits best into the XMG Apex 15? | Page 9

Conclusion

With all that data I think we can conclude that you should only run a higher core count CPU in your Apex 15 if you really need those cores. If you are a gamer, go for the 6-core Ryzen 3600 or if you got some more to spend go for the 8-core 3700X. The 3900 and 3950X are only for those who really use production applications at least weekly. Not to mention that the 3950X is overkill in regard of price to performance. The 3900 can be nearly as fast as the 3950X, especially when using ManualOC OC/UV.

Additionally I want to mention the pretty obvious flaw of the Silent (32W or 45W) and Power Saving (28W) power modes being totally useless for users with the 3900, 3950X. Their power draw can exceed those limits even in idle, which makes them useless for any task. ManualOC is the way to go if you really want to safe power, reduce temperarture spikes, reduce fan noise and maybe even increase the overall performance a little, IF you don’t need single core performance to often. But games? … Well, let’s be honest, even the very most games do not see the advertised single core boost regularly, because they simply use more than just 2 threads. Games using only 1-2 threads heavily are a rarity these days.

Notable mentions

And finally let’s talk about my little experiment with the 3800X and 3900X. Are those processors any different than their 65W counterparts? The answer is yes and no. The 3900X showed minor differences compared to the 3900. In fact it was a little worse overall in regards to power draw and temperature.

The 3800X on the other hand was amazingly different compared to my 3700X. It was overclockable a little higher than my 3700X, but the most impressive difference was the power draw. The 3800X sample processor showed up to 15W less power draw for the same tasks than the 3700X, while the performance was roughly equal. The difference was so big I asked myself what was going on there. Since I also noticed some lately upcoming discussions on cheaty power telemtry on Ryzen mainboards (https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/gz1lg8/explaining_the_amd_ryzen_power_reporting/) I thought that this could very well be the case here, too. The numbers looked too good and I found suspicious values reported by HWInfo running on my Apex 15, too.

So I tried to contact u/The-Stilt, who originally draw attention to this topic and chatted with him for a couple of days. I also purchased a simple AC power meter to check if there is some suspicious things going on. But nothing. The results seem to be legit. We basically concluded that it could still very well be, that the mainboard telemetry is affected by the BIOS in some way, otherwise the power deviation would not be that far off. The performance and power draw of the 3800X seem to be explainable with simply superior silicon quality.

But stop right there. Before you abandon your processor and run out to purchase a presumably more efficient processor consider what I wrote in the beginning. I only got one processor each. My sample size is too small to conclude anything here. So in the end I just got somewhat lucky with this 3800X sample processor. Some 3700X out there could very well match those characteristics. Or maybe it’s true and the 3800X is more power efficient in average. But I can’t say for sure if that’s the case. As I said, my sample size is way too small.

Upcoming Hardware

And there is another reason to hang on your current processor for some more months. Zen 3 is coming! The launch will be very soon, on 8th October. There are rumors that Zen3 will finally be faster than Intel in every task, even in gaming. But let’s be patient and wait for some benchmarks. Well, XMG already told us some weeks ago, that they still can’t guarantee Zen 3 support in the current Apex 15 notebook generation, even if they are positive about their ODM will make it happen one day. Sooner or later there could also be a successor model of the Apex 15, but that’s not sure. Sales have to continue to be as good as they are. But to be honest, if they already say the sales are good, why they shouldn’t go for a successor model?

If you have any questions regarding the presented data or processors feel free to use the comment section for that. Don’t forget to watch the video if you want to hear me pronounce “Zen 3” as “Sssen Sssree” over and over again. It’s not made for my tongue

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