The AMD Ryzen 9 3950X Review: 16 Cores on 7nm with PCIe 4.0
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 14, 2019 9:00 AM ESTGaming: Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data.
There are no presets for the graphics options on GTA, allowing the user to adjust options such as population density and distance scaling on sliders, but others such as texture/shadow/shader/water quality from Low to Very High. Other options include MSAA, soft shadows, post effects, shadow resolution and extended draw distance options. There is a handy option at the top which shows how much video memory the options are expected to consume, with obvious repercussions if a user requests more video memory than is present on the card (although there’s no obvious indication if you have a low end GPU with lots of GPU memory, like an R7 240 4GB).
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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Devo2007 - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
First page "As we move into 2019" - should be "As we move into 2020"plp1980 - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Is says as we move "through" not as we move "into"Ryan Smith - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
It did originally say "into". We've since fixed it.=)Netmsm - Friday, November 15, 2019 - link
Ryan, why isn't there any Cinebench test?!TheJian - Wednesday, November 20, 2019 - link
Because nobody uses it as Intel said (nobody is 1% or less right?)? Nobody making money is using something that is far slower that PAID products. Pointless to benchmark this in every review, just like it's pointless to test 4k in all vid card reviews when nobody is using that either (ok, nobody here means less than 2%...LOL). Whatever. Surely Ryan is chomping at the bit now to tell me 4k is the new enthusiast standard...LOL. Yeah, wake me when 1440p is, as it still isn't LONG after you said that at 660ti article. Still not even 5% years later, heck, both added up don't hit 7% last I checked (month ago?). 1080p however? 65% of users of 130mil steam gamers (this is pretty accurate for the world elsewhere no doubt). Should test LOADS of 1080p games, and maybe benchmark 1/2 at 1440p, only 1-2 at 4k if at all (should be done once a year or in a separate review of 4k yearly?). Until people use it, quit wasting time.Anandtech (and many others) seem to do a lot of testing that is NOT how a user would do use their PC. Handbrake crap quality etc. Who uses FAST? FASTER? You blind already so blur doesn't matter? Cinebench freeware same story. Intel seems to have a point though they didn't mind before losing massively on all these things they are now whining about.
https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hard...
Yep, still right, not even 5% yet for 1440p, 7% accurate total 4k+1440p still...LOL. Keep dreaming ryan ;)
Netmsm - Sunday, November 24, 2019 - link
impertinent words! These are not the answer.Everybody who works on editing films knows how helpful the Cinebench tests are in specifying which CPU will be faster.
alysdexia - Thursday, November 28, 2019 - link
shall be swifterpeevee - Monday, November 25, 2019 - link
"Anandtech (and many others) seem to do a lot of testing that is NOT how a user would do use their PC."Absolutely. And all their tests get the same amount of space. Including those nobody can use or reproduce. BS all the time, like off-screen rendering, compute on Dolphin emulator, in-house 3DPM... Ancient codecs, irrelevant settings... Somebody needs to bring them back into reality.
Ian Cutress - Tuesday, March 24, 2020 - link
There is. It's in our benchmark database. www.anandtech.com/benchasking - Sunday, July 5, 2020 - link
@Ian Cutress there is significant doubt (in the form of harrasement) being expressed on the forums about your conclusion on page two of this article that the power consumption of Ryzen chips changed (went upward) between Zen+ and Zen 2. Would be interesting to see your further thoughts: https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/will-cpu-supp...