DF Weekly: AMD's Zen 5 – why isn't there a solid consensus in reviews?

In this week’s DF Direct, the team discusses a range of topics but it’s the subject of the Ryzen 9000/Zen 5 CPU reviews that made the biggest impression on me. Actually, it was a question raised by one of our supporters, asking about discrepancies in results between various outlets. We saw some reasonable, if modest, improvements comparing the new Ryzen 7 9700X against the last-gen 7700X, while others only saw fractional improvements: two to three percent is barely outside the margin of error in CPU-bound scenarios. So why isn’t there the same kind of consensus we more typically see in GPU reviews?

All of this relates to how tricky it is to get the measure of CPU performance in gaming – but the simple answer is that in a world where in-built game benchmarks only rarely stress the CPU, results will vary drastically based on the actual material being benched. Even the same game tested with the same components on identical settings can produce very, very different results – and this speaks to the diversity of tasks the processor is asked to tackle.

Going back in time here, I remember benchmarking The Witcher 3 using the Core i3 4130 up against AMD’s price-equivalent six-core FX-6300. In cutscenes and the open world, the i3 was faster. However, in the dense city of Novigrad, the FX-6300 ran a lot faster. So, which processor is actually faster? It all depends on what you test, but I’d say that whichever scene is more demanding overall – which area tanks frame-rate hardest – should be the focus of testing – and that’s the Novigrad run. However, both sets of data are valid as they both represent processor performance and both benchmarks together may illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of different CPUs. The question is, how deep do you want to go?

0:00:00 Introduction0:00:54 News 01: PS VR2 tested on PC – without an adapter!0:12:49 News 02: Zen 5 launches to mixed reviews0:29:57 News 03: Space Marine 2 previewed0:40:50 News 04: Half-Life 3 confirmed???!!!!0:50:24 News 05: Jedi: Survivor last-gen screenshots revealed1:06:32 News 06: Classic Doom games get revised port1:11:07 News 07: Final Fantasy 16 PC release may be imminent1:18:51 News 08: Ready at Dawn shut down1:25:56 Supporter Q1: Why isn’t every new game using DirectStorage?1:30:56 Supporter Q2: How could a “Stop Killing Games” directive work for online-only titles?1:39:13 Supporter Q3: Should we be less judgmental about generative AI use?1:48:18 Supporter Q4: Is the Ryzen 5800X3D one of the greatest ever CPUs?1:55:35 Supporter Q5: Why does the PS4 refuse to die?

As I said, CPU benchmarking is tricky – and that’s just one element of processor reviews that can cause confusion. Another controversial topic is how you get the metrics to begin with. It’s pretty much established now that to test, say, a GPU, you pair it with the fastest CPU available. So logically, to test a CPU, you hook it up with the fastest GPU around. However, what resolution should you choose? Some say that higher resolutions like 1440p upwards better represent the actual gaming experience. Others believe that the lower the resolution, the less intrusive the GPU is, giving you ‘pure’ CPU performance.