x86 CPU MAME Performance Chart Updated for Zen 3... *Fixed*

[Josh128]

I created this last year to see how the Zen 2 CPUs stacked up for emulation / MAME. My son recently upgraded from my old Ryzen 1700 to a new Ryzen 5600X so I took the opportunity to run though this suite of games on it and updated my chart. Keep in mind these are not normalized for for frequency, but all CPUs are running at stock settings w/ stock coolers here. The Zen 3 chips are a big step up in both IPC and frequency.

My previous post had a wrong % calc for the Zen 3 chip, I deleted and reposted with the correction here. Turns out it is a pretty damned impressive step up in these emulation workloads, beyond what Zen 2 over Zen 1 / + is.

[spmbx]

So basically everything newer than a 10 year old i5 cpu is overkill?

[SCARTicus]

So basically everything newer than a 10 year old i5 cpu is overkill?

Indeed. What a waste of time. MAME exists. It is very, very old. No one cares.

Also this list is pathetic. Almost every last one of the games tested have very good ports on real consoles. You don't have to stoop to emulation to play them; a good playing experience already exists.

God will punish you for wasting his precious gift of life.

[Josh128]

So basically everything newer than a 10 year old i5 cpu is overkill?

Indeed. What a waste of time. MAME exists. It is very, very old. No one cares.

Also this list is pathetic. Almost every last one of the games tested have very good ports on real consoles. You don't have to stoop to emulation to play them; a good playing experience already exists.

God will punish you for wasting his precious gift of life.

I wont dignify this level of asshole-ish ignorance with any meaningful response. If anyone else wants to, knock yourself out.

[Josh128]

So basically everything newer than a 10 year old i5 cpu is overkill?

Not at all. When using the frame delay option to eliminate lag in builds like GroovyMAME, you need the fastest CPU you can get. Depending on the game, you can easily choke even a near top of the line CPU like a 9900K when using a frame delay setting of 8 or 9. These tests were done without any added frame delay or shaders.

[Josh128]

Necrobump, but just wanted to see how a Zen 5 9900X compares to its older brothers here. Didnt run all the games on the list, but what I ran shows the uplift varies from title to title, ranging from ~30% to ~70% over a 4.6GHz 5600X.

[Guspaz]

Most of your improvements are probably from the improvements that Zen 4 made over Zen 3 and the increased clockspeed rather than the improvements specifically made in Zen 5. The 9900X compared to the 5600X sees a 19% increase in base clocks and a 22% improvement in boost clocks.

Zen 5 alone didn't see much IPC gain over Zen 4... unless it's paired with 3D v-cache, then it *really* flies.

[Josh128]

Most of your improvements are probably from the improvements that Zen 4 made over Zen 3 and the increased clockspeed rather than the improvements specifically made in Zen 5. The 9900X compared to the 5600X sees a 19% increase in base clocks and a 22% improvement in boost clocks.

Zen 5 alone didn't see much IPC gain over Zen 4... unless it's paired with 3D v-cache, then it *really* flies.

IPC gains completely depends on the workload. It has very nice IPC >10% gains over Zen 4 in Cinebench R20, 23, and 24. Its also +15%-20% IPC in Geekbench 6, and some incredible speedups in web browser functions (+53% in Jetstream 2 and Speedometer 3.0) and the Dolphin Emulator, where it gets a 28% IPC uplift vs. Zen 4 SKU for SKU. Zen 5 got a lot of shit for its 5% gaming over Zen 4, and overall thats true, but there are many much greater IPC gains over Zen 4 that are largely glossed over. Not to mention full AVX-512 which can provide some very nice speedups in apps that utilize it. Im pleasantly surprised.

Look at my Dolphin Bench score - 136 seconds! 7900X gets around 174 seconds.

[Despatche]

Yeah, one area in which Zen really improves gen after gen is "raw CPU power" stuff like emulation. Gains are also significant in RPCS3, xemu, etc. AVX-512 is pretty significant! I wonder how relevant TSX even is anymore...

I should point out that MAME just released a huge update for Namco's System 23 stuff. It's still officially labeled not working for now, but it all seems to work much better than it did before with only minor issues. Problem is System 23 is now a lot more CPU intensive as a result. My humble 5600X can't quite cut it, but I wonder how something like a 9600X or better would benchmark.

[Josh128]

If you have a particular game and MAME build you'd like me to try, let me know.