Render Benchmarks
In this next section, we will now look at rendering performance. This is where we push the CPU by throwing rendering benchmarks and applications that people use in the real-world for rendering. We will see how good the CPU is at these things.
Cinebench R20
The first one we will start with is Cinebench R20. This benchmark is the go-to benchmark for any CPU test. It can test both multi-core and single-core performance from MAXON, it can be used to gauge how CINEMA 4D will behave. Download it and try it yourself.
The CPU multi-core performance is 1404 pts and the single-core is 369 pts. If you head over to our review of the AMD Ryzen 5 3400G desktop APU you’ll find multi-threading performance was a score of 2031. The single-thread score was 415. That gives you some kind of indication of how close they are in terms of single-core performance, potentially just separated by boost frequency.
We also do actually have another comparison because there are results from other CPUs in Cinebench R20 and it shows a graph that shows where your CPU sits in relation to others around it. So, check this out.
In the first screenshot on the left, you will see our Ryzen 5 3500U in multi-core with a score of 1404. According to the graph, this performance exceeds an Intel Core i5 3550 CPU by a good degree. It is actually much closer to Intel Core i7 4850HQ CPU performance.
In the second screenshot to the right is our CPU in single-core testing. This is even more impressive as it is actually faster in single-core than an Intel Core i7 6700HQ CPU. The performance in Single Core is actually very close to AMD’s desktop AMD Ryzen 7 1700X!
Blender 2.81a
This next application is also a popular one. We are using Blender 2.81a and have loaded up the downloadable demo called The Junk Shop. GPU rendering is disabled and we are relying solely on the CPU.
On the Ryzen 5 3500U, it took six minutes and twelve seconds to render. This is fairly slow. Even though we have 8 threads, which is good for a laptop, the CPU only hits 2.8-2.9GHz when the CPU is loaded. The thread count is good, but the frequency isn’t as good as a desktop. We will add in the Vega 8 to the mix in our next article, and see if that helps it improve.
Blender Benchmark
Next, we are going to use the official Blender Benchmark. We simply ran the “Quick” Benchmark Run on the CPU. You can also download this benchmark and run it to compare your results with ours.
The result here is how long it took to render, and it took 54 minutes and 53 seconds. That’s right, almost an entire hour, and that was the quick test! This is super slow, to be honest. The AMD Ryzen 5 3400G was also pretty slow and completed this test in 37 minutes and 67 seconds. 8 threads are nice, but the CPU only hits 2.8-2.9GHz when they are all loaded.