Last calendar month we tested the gaming performance of AMD's Ryzen vii processors past pairing them with a Titan 10 Pascal and playing 16 new games at 1080p and 1440p. Those results were reasonable but non quite where you lot would expect them to be given the incredible productivity functioning of AMD'south latest architecture.

Since then nosotros've been looking at Ryzen from a few different angles, exploring the impact of retention scaling, CCX performance as well every bit software/firmware updates. The biggest gains past far at this point accept come from game developers.

Recently AMD spent a few weeks working with the teams at Stardock and Oxide Games to heave Ryzen'south performance in Ashes of the Singularity and the resulting update offers up to 30% more performance for the Ryzen seven 1800X. We've too seen Dota 2'south minimum frame rate boosted past roughly xv% for the 1800X and optimizations are coming to other games as well.

This is exciting stuff and while we can't wait to see more games to take full advantage of Ryzen, in the meantime we've decided to put a rumor to the test.

It was recently claimed that Ryzen's gaming functioning is really meliorate than we remember, just that it'southward limited by Nvidia's GeForce graphics cards. Armed with that allegation, fans of the red team ran amuck, rapidly spreading what may very well be misinformation.

Curious to see if there is any truth to the story, we grabbed a test organization and installed a GeForce GTX 1060 and Radeon RX 480. Both were equipped with the latest display drivers and were only put upwards against low quality settings at 720p to help eliminate GPU bottlenecks.

In total nosotros benchmarked xiii games, five of which were tested using DirectX 11 and DirectX 12.

Nosotros configured both the 7700K and 1800X to run at 4.0GHz only you can ignore Kaby Lake's downclock because I'grand not trying to show which processor is faster. Both chips have likewise been paired with DDR4-3200 memory (we now accept some new CL14 stuff from Chiliad.Skill which works great with Ryzen).

That almost sets the scene, so permit's start with the titles that support both versions of DirectX and see whether Ryzen processors are improve equipped with a graphics card from AMD or Nvidia.

Ascension of the Tomb Raider [DX11 & DX12]

Looking at Ascent of the Tomb Raider first, we see that the 7700K was just 5% faster than the 1800X when both are paired with the GTX 1060, though if nosotros compare minimum frame rates the 7700K is 14% faster.

Swapping to the RX 480, the 7700K is at present 9% faster than the 1800X on average while its pb in minimum frames is extended to xviii%.

When testing Tomb Raider using DX11, Ryzen actually performs worse in relation to the 7700K with the RX 480.

Things wait different when testing with DX12, however. Starting with the GTX 1060 results, we find that the 7700K is fourteen% faster when comparing the average frame rate, even so later swapping to the RX 480 the 7700K is just vii% faster.

You could argue we might be running into a GPU bottleneck with the 7700K here at 172fps. The fact that there is an eighteen% variation in minimum frame charge per unit performance using the RX 480 and just 15% with the GTX 1060 certainly does propose this.

For those wondering, these results are based on the canned benchmark, just the figures from the level Geothermal Valley line up with what I was seeing from the custom PresentMon pass. I can include those results afterward if necessary simply I will probably wait for Vega before touching on this once more.