When creators with the AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ CPU are done designing the world around us, it’s only natural that they’d want to kick back and play some games. Today I wanted to give you a brief look at what to expect with the 2560x1440 resolution that has proven so popular in this high-end segment.

Testing by AMD labs as of 7/27/2017. All results an average of five runs using “high” graphics presets. System configuration: ASUS ROG Zenith Extreme X399 (BIOS 0303), 4x8GB DDR4-3200 (14-14-14-36), GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, Windows® 10 x64 Creator’s Update, Ryzen Balanced Performance Plan.

A picture says a thousand words: the Threadripper platform effortlessly transitions into making quick work of graphically demanding games. In the workloads we tested, we saw average framerates around 60, 120, and 144 FPS, depending on the title. That’s a great experience for today’s 1440p displays!

Seeing this level of performance on graphically challenging games makes me happy, because I know that represents plenty of horsepower for games like CS:GO and Rocket League where raw framerates are king.

Introducing Game Mode

Making a hugely multi-core CPU that’s ready for gaming is a challenging effort, because most PC games are designed for the typical 4-8 core processor. When greater core counts enter the picture, things can get squirrelly: poor thread scheduling can reduce performance, or (more rarely) the game may simply not run at all. The Threadripper team at AMD spent a long time thinking about how we can help our customers avoid these scenarios altogether, and we call it Game Mode.

Game Mode is a new feature in AMD Ryzen™ Master that reconfigures the platform in two key ways:

It temporarily disables half of the CPU cores, which turns the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X into an 8C16T device (like the AMD Ryzen™ 1800X) and the 1920X into a 6C12T device (like the AMD Ryzen™ 1600X). For the truly technical, this is a 4+4 CCX configuration on one die. This ensures the game encounters the number of cores it was truly designed to handle. Please note that Game Mode does not disable SMT.

We tell the OS to use a Local Mode (NUMA) memory, which keeps a game and its memory footprint inside one CPU die and the locally-connected DRAM. This minimizes several key latency points in the system, which most games love.

Together, these changes can make a big difference for the games that weren’t designed with a beastly 12-core or 16-core processor in mind! When you’re ready for heavy threaded workloads, switching back to “Creator Mode” in AMD Ryzen Master effortlessly reverts these changes.

See footnote.

Game On

From the beginning, we envisioned the AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ platform as a do-it-all powerhouse built for the enthusiasts with demanding workloads that span work and play. With the powerful “Zen” architecture, tons of compute, and AMD Ryzen Master to optimize gaming performance, we think we got the recipe right for these users. We can’t wait to see what you do with Threadripper!

Robert Hallock is a technical marketing guy for AMD's CPU division. His/her postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.

FOOTNOTES:

Testing by AMD Performance labs as of July 22, 2017 on the following systems. PC manufacturers may vary configurations yielding different results. Results may vary based on driver versions used.

System Configurations: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X processors on an ASUS ROG X399 Zenith Extreme motherboard. All systems equipped with 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 RAM, Samsung 850 PRO 512GB SSD, Windows 10 RS2 operating system, Geforce TX 1080 Ti graphics adapter, Graphics driver 384.76 :: 7/22/2017.

The Threadripper 1950X achieved average frame rates as follows in the following games at 1080p: In Gears of War Ultimate High (DX12), an average frame rate of 104.8 in default UMA mode and 121.11 in Legacy Game Mode, resulting in an improvement of (121.11/104.8=1.14 or 14%) in legacy game mode; In Fallout 4 (Ultra), an average frame rate of 60.08 in default UMA mode and 72.29 in Legacy Game Mode, resulting in an improvement of (72.29/60.08=1.17 or 17%) in legacy game mode; In Hitman Absolution (Ultra), an average frame rate of 76.54 in default UMA mode and 84.92 in Legacy Game Mode, resulting in an improvement of (84.92/76.54=1.10 or 10%) in legacy game mode. In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare an average frame rate of 91.27 in default UMA mode and 146.25 in Legacy Game Mode, resulting in an improvement of (91.27/146.25=1.38 or 38%) in legacy game mode.

On average, with a sampling of over 60 actual games and settings as detailed in 1950X_LGM_vs_Mission.xlxs, performance uplift with Legacy Game Mode enabled is about 5% over Creator Mode. RZN-70