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i7-6950X in 2016. That worked out to about
$86 per thread. Today, the 12-core Ryzen 9
3900X is $21 per thread.
More cores typically translates into
more performance. And more affordable cores,
means more performance than ever before. But
it all depends on whether you can use those
cores or not. Today, it’s mostly 3D animation
artists who can use it the most, along with those
who do video editing or video encoding.
Other multi-threaded apps usually occupy
the workstation arena for engineering, scientific
or software development. This isn’t always the
case (you’d be surprised how many workstation
apps don’t use more than a few cores), but standby of clock speed or megahertz, along
when it is, Ryzen 9 is going to be your answer 9 with the efficiency of the chip. Efficiency
out of 10 times. So hands down, we’d basically denotes how well a CPU uses each
recommend Ryzen over Core for multi-threaded clock tick. Obviously, the higher the efficiency
applications. and clock speed, the better.
The go-to here is typically Intel, which has
IF YOU DO SINGLE- had an advantage in efficiency and an
THREADED OR LIGHTLY- advantage in clock speeds over AMD’s older
THREADED WORK, BUY... chips. While Intel still has a decent clock
CORE i9 OR RYZEN 9 advantage, the efficiency of Ryzen has greatly
We can go ga-ga over the massive amount of improved. In fact, we’d have to say that it’s
cores available today, but the harsh truth is the mostly a wash these days.
vast majority of applications still run on a For example (on the next page), when we
single core, or just a handful. Even tasks use Cinebench R20 to measure the
where you’d think more cores would matter, it performance increase of both the Core
usually doesn’t. Adobe’s Photoshop, for
example, really doesn’t use a lot of cores until
VIDEO: CORE i9-9900K
you hit certain filters or tasks.
VS. RYZEN 9 3900X
When you take the number of cores out of
Watch now at go.pcworld.com/ice
the equation, it comes down to that old
SEPTEMBER 2019 PCWorld 75
