Onboard Video Performance
Onboard performance isn’t something that you think about when it comes to high-end CPUs because I think the expectation is that you will be adding a dedicated GPU but there are situations where a dedicated GPU isn’t needed or you may need to run the integrated graphics while waiting on your video card to come in or be replaced. So I do still want to check out the performance of all three of the non-X CPUs when it comes to integrated GPU performance. For that, I have run a few basic tests with a mix of older and newer games and benchmarks. Integrated GPUs aren’t anywhere near the performance of even the lowest-end GPUs but it is still interesting to see what they can do. To start that I went with the always consistent 3DMark with both the older Fire Strike benchmark and the newer Time Spy which is DX12. I only used the graphics score, not the total score to take the CPU performance out of the equation as much as possible. In both tests, we saw interesting results with the unique 7950X3D. In Fire Strike the stacked L3 cache did help and we see it performing better than all of the other 7000 Series CPUs which are all together with nearly the same score. It wasn’t enough to put it up in the range of the latest Intel CPUs or AMDs older APUs. In the Time Spy test, however, the 7950X3D was in the mix with the other 7000 Series CPUs but down near the bottom of the pack.
In Unigine Superposition I ran the 1080p medium detail and 720p low detail tests and the results here weren’t much different than the previous tests. The 7950X3D did well in the 720p test running well ahead of the other 7000 series CPUs and with the 13600K. Its 1080p performance on the other hand is behind compared to the 12600K and 13600K it sits between but that is still faster than the other new AMD CPUs.
Then from there on, I jumped into game tests. Some of our tests are older games but I did also add in a few newer games as well to get an idea of newer games when tested at 1080p and low or medium settings. In Far Cry 5 and Tomb Raider, the 7950X3D is right in line with the other 7000 series CPUs which are all at nearly the same FPS. But there were a few other games where the other 7000 series CPUs also did this but the 7950X3D didn’t fall in line. Borderlands 3 for example is noticeably slower than the others and the same thing happens in Hitman Absolution. It also happens in Shadow of the Tomb Raider as well. Then with TF2 and Ghost Recon Wildlands, the results are tied more to the CPU side of things with the faster CPUs doing better there but in TF2 the 7950X3D is lower than it was in my CPU testing.
