AMD Zen 3 Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 5950X, 5900X, 5800X and 5600X Tested
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 5, 2020 9:01 AM ESTGaming Tests: Borderlands 3
As a big Borderlands fan, having to sit and wait six months for the EPIC Store exclusive to expire before we saw it on Steam felt like a long time to wait. The fourth title of the franchise, if you exclude the TellTale style-games, BL3 expands the universe beyond Pandora and its orbit, with the set of heroes (plus those from previous games) now cruising the galaxy looking for vaults and the treasures within. Popular Characters like Tiny Tina, Claptrap, Lilith, Dr. Zed, Zer0, Tannis, and others all make appearances as the game continues its cel-shaded design but with the graphical fidelity turned up. Borderlands 1 gave me my first ever taste of proper in-game second order PhysX, and it’s a high standard that continues to this day.
BL3 works best with online access, so it is filed under our online games section. BL3 is also one of our biggest downloads, requiring 100+ GB. As BL3 supports resolution scaling, we are using the following settings:
- 360p Very Low, 1440p Very Low, 4K Very Low, 1080p Badass
BL3 has its own in-game benchmark, which recreates a set of on-rails scenes with a variety of activity going on in each, such as shootouts, explosions, and wildlife. The benchmark outputs its own results files, including frame times, which can be parsed for our averages/percentile data.
| AnandTech | Low Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Low Quality |
High Resolution Low Quality |
Medium Resolution Max Quality |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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lightningz71 - Friday, November 6, 2020 - link
With the switch to DDR5 coming, there is a need to update the IO die anyway. They could move to a previous node bulk process like TSMC 10nm or Samsung's 8nm and reduce pin count for just three CCDs and manage three CCDs and one IO die in a package well enough. Given that the next CCDs will be on N5P, power draw should come down for those as well, enabling them to stay in the same envelope.lmcd - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link
Samsung's 8nm is provably undesirable for high-volume parts though. I'd argue going the other way, pick a low power node and see if you can get the chiplet architecture in high-end laptop and desktop APU SKUs. That would push their release cadence ahead to same timeframe as desktop and absolutely dominate Intel.eastcoast_pete - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
Thanks Ian and Andrei! The one major fly in the ointment for me is the pricing of the entry-level Zen 3 processor. At least one option under $ 200 would have been nice. But then, both AMD and Intel are about making profit for their shareholders, and I guess there isn't a business reason for AMD to offer an entry-level Zen3 below $ 200.owoeweuwu - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
why no high resolution + max quality?lame benchmark
Spunjji - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link
Because you won't see any significant difference between the CPUs; It'll just be a bunch of bars next to each other.If that's your use case, then pretty much any of the CPUs in these benchmarks will be enough for you. If you're concerned about how well the CPU you buy now will work with future games then it's a bit of a crap shoot, but these results will give you a better idea than nothing at all.
RedOnlyFan - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
So there's not much improvements for gaming. Meh.silverblue - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
CS:GO, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Death Stranding, Serious Sam 4, Hitman 2, Division 2, Flight Simulator 2020 etc. are all showing large gains at 1080p over Zen 2, particularly CS:GO. Check out videos by LTT/Hardware Unboxed (3950 only today)/Gamers Nexus (again, 3950 only today).silverblue - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link
Sorry, just realised five days later that I meant to put 5950. Anyway, you all knew what I meant.Spunjji - Sunday, November 8, 2020 - link
It's like you read a different reviewPaazel - Thursday, November 5, 2020 - link
Would be great to see 2600k and a 6700k for reference. These were large benchmark CPU's that lot of people have/had!