For the past few weeks we've been busy benchmarking two CPUs in over 30 games: AMD's Ryzen 5 2600 and Intel'southward Core i5-8400. Before we get into the benchmark results -- and I promise there's a boatload of them -- here are a few quick notes on the exam setup.

The Core i5-8400 rig features the MSI B360 Gaming Plus, a high quality B360 board that has no problem getting the nearly out of the hexa-core CPU. Of grade, we are limited to DDR4-2666 on this board, but we've gone with G.Skill's high quality and very depression latency FlareX CL14 memory. Cooling the i5-8400 is Intel's stock unit of measurement.

So for the Ryzen five 2600 nosotros used the Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero and nosotros have two configurations: a stock out of the box configuration using the Wraith Stealth box cooler and Thou.Skill FlareX CL14 retention clocked at 2933 MHz. And a 2nd test setup, running with a iv.2 GHz all-core overclock using aggressively-tuned Chiliad.Skill Sniper 10 DDR4-3400 memory with tightened sub timings. Hither the cooler was upgraded to the Corsair H115i Pro.

For testing we have 36 games on the card. Each game has been tested at 720p, 1080p and 1440p resolutions using the GeForce GTX 1080 Ti. I would have liked to include the Vega 64 Liquid as well, but considering we had already ran 324 individual tests, three times each... nearly 1,000 benchmark runs later, we weren't super keen to make that 2,000. For at present let'southward just focus on the CPU comparison and permit the 1080 Ti work on the properties, and so grab a beverage, some snacks and get comfy. Let'southward become into it.

Gaming Benchmarks

ARK: Survival Evolved, ARMA 3, Ashes of the Singularity, Assassinator'southward Creed, Battlefield one

Starting time upwards we accept ARK: Survival Evolved and this isn't a title I often test but due to popular asking it'southward been included in the slue of games tested. It's ofttimes listed in the tiptop x most played games on Steam and then I imagine there'southward a few of you keen to see the results.

I was expecting this one to go poorly for Ryzen simply the results are very surprising. We're more often than not GPU jump though at 720p we do see Ryzen edging ahead. Still due to the GPU limits the overclocked Ryzen 5 2600 was no faster than the stock configuration.

Some other game that's quite popular on Steam and always heavily requested is ARMA 3. In the past this game has run horribly on AMD processors, including Ryzen but I've been told the games been updated recently to better apply the Ryzen CPUs, or at to the lowest degree CPUs with more than a single core and that certainly appears to exist the case.

Out of the box the Ryzen 5 2600 had no trouble matching the Core i5-8400 and the games clearly CPU express, as the overclocked 2600 offered impressive gains.

Even at 1440p we saw a massive 20% increase in operation when overclocking Ryzen'due south cores and memory. This meant the 2600 was now 19% faster than the Core i5-8400 when comparison the average frame rate. I'g quite shocked by these results given how poorly Ryzen performed terminal time I tested with ARMA iii.

Come on you knew Ashes of the Benchmark was going to be included and information technology's near the simply game that supports DX12, that I've tested using DX12, with a GeForce graphics card. Hither nosotros see that the Cadre i5-8400 and Ryzen five 2600 are very evenly matched out of the box. Testing at 1080p and 1440p does see us primary GPU bound with the 'crazy' preset enabled and so overclocking Ryzen isn't hugely benign. At 1440p just a 5% increase is seen, and so 7% at 1080p and then a reasonably impressive eleven% at 720p.

Okay so some interesting results in Assassin's Creed Origins, allow'south talk about what's going on here. Y'all'll discover that the stock Ryzen five 2600 allows for the exact same performance at 1080p that it does at 720p and this is because we're CPU limited. Overclocking solves this and at 1080p nosotros see 2600 able to match the 8400, however both CPUs are now GPU limited. We know this because at 720p the overclocked 2600 is able to pull alee of the 8400 by a noteworthy margin for the average frame charge per unit.

Then finally at 1440p we're nearly entirely GPU bound though the stock Ryzen 5 2600 configuration does still struggle to max out the GTX 1080 Ti.

Testing with Battlefield 1 shows just how good the Core i5-8400 is, out of the box with no messing around it delivers very strong operation in this demanding title. The Ryzen v 2600 is as well very respectable and while it was only half-dozen% slower for the frame time outcome at 1080p, the average frame rate was 12% lower. That margin is somewhat nullified at 1440p as nosotros get heavily GPU leap, though information technology is interesting to annotation that overclocked even at this resolution the 2600 provides a much better ane% low result.

And so at the lower resolutions nosotros see that overclocking the 2600 improves the average frame charge per unit by almost 20% and while that is an impressive gain information technology does only brand the tuned Ryzen processor a few pct faster than the Core i5-8400. But again it's the 1440p results that are the almost impressive, here the 2600 was xviii% faster than the 8400 for the frame time upshot.