Gaming Benchmarks
These benchmarks do not represent real-world gameplay by any stretch of the imagination. These tests are conducted using built-in benchmarking tools utilizing the game engine. These tests are designed to stress the CPU’s power system as well as ensure proper functionality. These are all run at CPU limited resolutions to try our best to remove the video card as a bottleneck.
One additional note about gaming performance is that these are average values. They do not tell the whole story. Specifically, Destiny 2’s low’s and high’s help tell a very different story than what the average reports are. Fortunately, while the lows are considerably lower than that of Intel CPU’s, the amount of frames that drop into the lowest range are extremely few. As a result, it isn’t something you necessarily feel. I had intended on showing averages, minimums, and maximum frame rates, but this proved to be an extremely massive undertaking. Not all the in-game benchmarks provide this data, which means I have to use something like NVIDIA’s Frameview to do it. For that data to be meaningful, I had to gather this data on all the processors listed, which is a daunting task. This is something I hope to bring to future reviews, but couldn’t get done here.
3DMark 10
3DMark is a synthetic test that is very popular, and as a result, we are including it going forward. As you can see, the 9700 non-K and 9700K score similarly to the Ryzen 7 3700X. Oddly, with the 9700K overclocked, it scores lower than it did at stock settings. This isn’t something I’ve ever seen as far as I can recall and it wasn’t the case with the 9900K. At any rate, it only barely edges out the Ryzen 7 3700X but again costs much more.
Heaven
Given that games rarely stretch beyond eight threads, it isn’t surprising that we see fairly close performance across all of these test platforms. Of course, the most interesting data point would be the increase seen in the Ryzen 3000 series over the Ryzen 7 2700X.
The Division 2
In The Division 2, the Ryzen 7 3700X easily provides the best bang for your buck here. While all of the Intel systems in this lineup provide equal or greater performance, only the 9900K delivers a decisive lead and the cost difference at the time of this writing is rather extreme.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Unfortunately, this is a test where the gap between Intel and AMD is a rather significant one, with Intel offering upwards of 37FPS more than AMD on average. The game is quite demanding, and this is unfortunate. However, in my experience, it is somewhat of an outlier. It’s also worth noting that we are CPU limited here, and playing the game as it was intended would leave you more GPU bound.
Hitman 2 (2019)
Hitman 2’s results are similar to those of SOTTR although, the gap isn’t quite as large. Intel does have a fairly significant lead here, but again this is a CPU limited test.