New vs Old Computer Benchmarks

 The new computer was delivered and it was EARLY!  NZXT's BLD service attempted to have an ordered computer built and shipped within two business days (if ordered before 3 PM pacific).  Obviously, COVID-19 took its toll there and I was perfectly happy when I ordered the computer on May 4th to be told it should shipped by June 2nd.  They didn't have an option for expedited shipping, and to be honest that would have cost a small fortune for a few days wait,  so I was happy expected to be playing on my new 'puter on the weekend of June 12th.  So imagine my glee when I got the notice that it had been dropped off on May 28th!  

I always say it's better to under promise and over deliver as that way you'll at least meet expectations and hopefully exceed them.  Origin over promised on their build time, so I was upset with what could easily be called a better computer.  NZXT under promised on their build time and I'm over the moon happy about it.  

I could have actually set it up Friday night after work, but I knew I had to backup my data and even if that could be finished, I'd have to finish the windows install and be stuck with an empty computer.  Setting up computers is something that should reasonably take a day, so I just stuck with backing up my Origin.  Years ago I'd tried to set up a completely cable less television experience for Mom and part of it included an antenna with a home built DVR.  Even though they said it wouldn't make much difference in speed, I didn't want there to be any delay so my DVR was built around a solid state drive instead of a hard drive.  After tearing everything apart, giving away the antenae and TV tuner, I kept the portable two terabyte SSD which make it perfect for backing up my data since I only had one and a half terabytes worth of storage on the Origin.  

It's not like that 1.5 TB was full either.  I had about 500 Gigs on the secondary drive and a total of 200 gigs on the main drive.  I probably could have gotten away without backing up the primary drive as that's mainly the OS, programs, a couple games, and the local copies of My Documents, Pictures, Videos, and Music.  Those four folders are all backed up via Microsoft's OneDrive, so I don't need to back them up (in fact, the last time I backed them up then put them down on a re-install, OneDrive screwed up and made copies of it all.  ALL!).  Anywho, over a USB 3 connection, backing up all the data I could get my greedy little digital hands on only took a couple hours.  

Saturday morning rolls around and I get my morning routine in knowing that once I sit down to set up the new computer, I'm not going to stop.  Part of the morning routine was taking Nina in for her new tires and stopping by to pick up mom's grocery order.  By the time I sat down to work on the computer it was just after noon.  I had nothing left on the Origin, so I just shut it down, pulled out all the cables, and got her out of the way.  Unpacking the NZXT was easy and uneventful.  Keep in mind that this is built with all off the parts shelf.  Even the box it was packed in was the original retail box for the case and it had been retaped shut.  instead of a bunch of boxes for the motherboard, processor, ram, SSDs and such, I got a big baggie with all the cables, paperwork, stickers, and such.  The computer had some of that packing foam in it to protect the AIO and the video card, so everything was fine once I had the case cleared out.  Then it was just a matter of setting it down where the Origin PC had sat and hook all the cables back up.   

I think the most frustrating part of any computer set up is Windows.  It's far FAR better than it used to be, but it still takes a good long time to finish setting up windows.  Then you have to go in and update it as it's always going to be at least one major release out of date.  Then you have to go in and update it again as the latest update is almost always followed with a security update.  Then there's the drivers.  Sure, Windows gets them but they're rarely if ever the latest drivers, so you have to go to the manufacturer's site and download them.  MSI for the motherboard, AMD for the processor, Seagate for the hard drives, EVGA for the video card, GSkill for the RAM (yeah, the RAM doesn't have drivers but it does have software for the jewel like lights).  At that point Windows is ready.  

I could jump right into getting games and such installed to test it all out, but I like to be a completionist and wanted to get all the hardware's software set up.  The motherboard has software to control its lights and monitor the settings.  EVGA has software to overclock and control its lights.  Seagate has software to monitor the health of the SSDs.  So on and so forth.  After all of that is it game time?  Nope.  MS Office, iTunes, and Photoshop come next.  I need MS Office as I keep my passwords in an Excel spreadsheet and it's a pain to have to keep picking up the phone to see it (thank you OneDrive for backing up my passwords!).  iTunes because my computer's speakers sound way better than the phone or my Google Hub.  And Photoshop because... well just because.  

Now it's game time, right?  Nope.  Now I want to get my data transferred back over so I can put the portable SSD away.  That actually takes longer than it took to back up everything since it pauses with some files and you have to tell it to ignore, overwrite or other choices.  While that took two hours, I went through and finessed all the little settings and things that make my computer my own.  Screen saver, power settings, getting Chrome setup with an incognito shortcut... stuff like that.  

Finally, with all that done, it was now time to benchmark.  

I had been thinking about Benchmarking for awhile, but hadn't made up my mind on what to use.  So, when I got notice that the computer was shipping and would therefore only be a week, I got this list put together:

• CinebenchR23
• A great CPU benchmark that tests both single core and multi core setups
• Geekbench
• An old standard that still gives a good apples to apples comparison
• 3DMark
• This is what I see on most youtube channels for benchmarking.  The two current benchmarks within cinemark are Timespy (testing DirectX 12 gaming) and Port Royal (testing RTX performance)
• It has the benefit of being a company I used years and years ago for benchmarking!
• Games that I already own that include a benchmark
• Assassin's Creed Valhalla
• FarCry New Dawn
• The Division 2
• Wolfenstein: Youngblood*

So, we'll cover these all in turn.

CinebenchR23

I see this on youtube just about as often as I see 3DMark.  Everytime there's a new processor family out, they seem to come out with a new version of Cinebench so that the new processors don't just scorch the old tests.  

In this instance, I was honestly curious how my i5 would stack up.  The new video card would be crushing the old one, but this wasn't exactly a fair fight.  My i5's single core at 5.0Ghz should be able to at least keep up with the Ryzen 7's single core of 3.8Ghz boosting to 4.7Ghz.  But then again, this is a 2 generation old Intel vs a current generation AMD.   Oh, and multi core should be a runaway train for the Ryzen since my Intel is 6 cores with no hyperthreading.  The AMD is 8 cores with 16 threads.   

The Intel i5 9600k single core score was 1300 points.   Multicore was 7029 points.   Cinebench put this as well above average for similar systems.  

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800X single core score was 1513* points.  Multicore was 15304 points.  Cinebench put this as average for similar systems.  

I know, the graphics says the Intel is 3.7GHz, but that's just because it's what the processor reports.  Trust me, it's overclocked.  Now, I added the asterisk next to the Ryzen's single core score.  I want to believe that's the score.  I really do.  But I have my doubts.  Cinebench works by rendering a complex 3D scene (all with the CPU) one square at a time.  I don't remember how many squares there are, but I believe its around 500.  Each square must be rendered before it can move on to the next, but in multicore mode each core is rendering a square.  So the Intel would render 6 squares at once while the AMD would do 16. 

Cinebench would set a 10 minute timer and go through the test as many passes as it could, finishing the last pass once the timer reached 0.  The AMD multi core took about a minute each pass, so it ran about 10 passes.  I don't specifically recall the Intel times, but the single core ran at least twice.  The AMD single core took just over 9 minutes, but then it stopped halfway through the second pass.  No error, no score... nothing.  I tried a couple different things, but we're talking an hour just for this one test, so I finally forced it to do a single pass and score that.  So, in the end I don't beleive the 1513 score, but I honestly don't know if its high or low.

GeekBench

Geekbench has two modes.  One just for the CPU and one for the entire system.  It's supposed to take everything into consideration for the system score including RAM, hard drive, and of course Video Card.  

For the CPU test Geekbench at least gave a clearer answer that the Ryzen was indeed better.  Single cores were 1348 and 1679 for the Intel and AMD respectively.  6146 and 10100 for each on the multicore.  

The one interesting thing I found with the multicore scores on both Cinebench and Geekbench were that the scores weren't further apart.  I'd have expected just a little less then three times as there are 2.6 times more cores in the AMD, but these scores don't show that.  Cinebench is just over twice as more points and Geekbench isn't even twice as high.  BUT, that being said, it is still obviously much higher performing in multicore so it's still a vast improvement with programs that use it.  

The system test was an impressive blowout, and that shouldn't be a surprise.  The Videocard test is a big advantage, the process is an obvious advantage, and even the SSDs and RAM are improved.  

114,863 for the Origin PC and 190,981 for the NZXT system. 

3DMark

If you really want to get nitty gritty with test results, there really isn't anything as good as 3D Mark.  You can look at everything from the processor clock speed, the processor power draw, and the processor temperature.  All of those on the GPU, plus stats on the RAM.  It's overwhelming, so I mainly ignored it except the final scores.  Again, now that we're testing the video card along with the processor, we have a more clear victory.  

Timespy, which doesn't use RTX features, gave a 6,213 CPU score, 10,982 graphics score, and a 9,848 total score for the Origin system.  Reminder, that's the Intel Core i5 9600k overclocked to 5.0 GHz and an Nvidia Founders Edition RTX 2080 video card.  The NZXT got  11,277, 17,912, and 16,459 scores in the same order.  Just look at that CPU score!  It's obviously using multiple cores as it's almost twice the score.  And graphics... that's the first sign of just how much gaming improvement I should expect as a nearly 5,000 point INCREASE isn't anything to sneeze at!

 I didn't expect much difference on Port Royal and wasn't surprised.  Just about twice the score.  The surprising thing was them putting it into a game sense with how many frames per second you could expect out of a game.  I briefly played Battlefield V and found that on ultra settings I was getting just about 50 FPS.  Let's assume it's just guessing high (different settings, different resolution), but the ratio remains.  My 50 FPS would turn into 80 FPS.  From a little janky to perfectly fine for me.  

Nice! 

Games

Now for the actual games.  A quick word about the game selections.  You'll probably notice some key games missing, like Death Stranding, Cyberpunk 2077, and Control.  all games that I wanted to have more performance in and helped spur on this desire for more graphic card power.   Well, none of them have an ingame benchmark.  Youtubers that use them in scoring have special software to count the frames per second and get averages while they play, and even then they admit it's not an apples to apples comparison.  Well, I don't have that software and I want apples to apples, so all of those games were out.  

Unfortunately I just don't have many recent games that would make a lot of sense.  In fact, the initial ones I wanted to try, Valhalla, The Division 2, and New Dawn were all without any RTX.  Umm... that's kind of a big deal.  So, one game that I had played a bit with RTX but hadn't purchased yet was Wolfenstein Youngblood.  It's not great as it doesn't have a lot of RTX features, but it would have to do (and I could buy it for under $30).  

Origin vs NZXT

Assassin's Creed Valhalla: 51/24 vs 67/41
This is game I was playing and stopped because it got a little too janky.  It did seem a tad slow, but occasionally it just got unplayable.  These numbers agree as the Origin had  minimum FPS of 24 and an average of 51.  Remember, I'm trying to get 60 or higher as that seems and feels smooth.  The NZXT had a minimum of 41 and an average of 67.  In otherwords when it's at its craziest, it will be a little slow but still playable.  The rest of the time it should run like butter being cut with a hot knife.  

FarCry New Dawn: 63/52 vs 93/53

This is a game that I never really played.  I loved FarCry 5 and thought this would be a natural extension of it.  It kind of is... but it's set in a post apocalyptical world (if you're interested in these games and don't know why its post apocalyptical, then nevermind).  I'll get around and play it, but if it was like FarCry 5, it was already playable and everything extra is just icing on the cake.  Really, they both had the same minimums, but that's where the similarity ends.  Sure, the Origin was going to play just fine with an average of 63, but you can see by the max FPS and the actual frames rendered, it's still at a disadvantage.  The NZXTs should run smooth throughout and actually max my monitor's refresh rate most of the time (my monitor only goes up to 75 Hz!!!). 

The Division 2:

This was a game that I could have used any advantage in.  I almost exclusively played it multiplayer with my brother and a couple of his friends.  There's a saying in multiplayer gaming:  Frames win Games.  Here, the score doesn't show all that much as it's only about a 30% increase, but look at the graphs.  The Origin was struggling the entire time and only average 57 because it started so high.  When the action got hot, it was below that 57.  And the CPU was getting HIT.  The NZXT's 75 average FPS is just that... it was almost always at 80 and only dipped below a bit near the end.  The CPU is just chillin in the background most of the time.  So yeah... much more playable!  

Wolfenstein: Youngblood
I don't have as much to say about this one as I haven't played it enough to know whether it was fine or not.  The numbers in both tests (there are two separate benchmarks) seem to indicae I'll get a good boost though.  A couple things to mention.  First, I don't know why the first screenshot came out in black and white.  It was the very first one I got from the game so I figured it was normal.  After I got the second screen shot, I figured it was that way for the first benchmark.  But then both of them came out in color for the NZXT passes.  So... I don't know.  Second, I haven't the slightest idea what was going on for the second benchmark with the NZXT as it's actually LOWER than the Origin.  And I'm sorry, but I just refuse to believe that's the case.  I'd run it again but at this point it's the only number that doesn't make sense so I'll just call it an outlier and a mistake.  Do what you will with the numbers on that one. 

Conclusion:

This new system should feel much smoother in games.  Basically, it's like starting over two years later as the Origin was very smooth in all of its games when it was new.  It should make Control, Death Stranding, and Cyberpunk 2077 playable and should keep up with all the AAA titles for the next couple years.  I'm sure when the 4000 series cards come out (or whatever they call them) I'll be tempted, but hopefully it will be easier to get a new video card and I won't be stuck with having to buy a whole new computer.