It’s always fascinating to see how new hardware stacks up, especially when it comes to demanding creative applications like DaVinci Resolve Studio. Back in November 2020, there was a lot of buzz around AMD's Ryzen 5000 series processors, and we decided to put them to the test.
AMD has been a solid contender for Resolve users for a while, ever since their 3rd gen Ryzen and Threadripper CPUs came out. It wasn't just about the core counts, though those were certainly a plus; the inclusion of PCI-E Gen 4 was a significant factor, especially for a GPU-heavy application like Resolve. Intel, at the time, was still largely on PCI-E 3.0, and often offered fewer cores. So, the expectation was that the new Ryzen 5000 series would only widen that performance gap.
Interestingly, the Ryzen 5000 series didn't necessarily offer a massive leap in raw core count over their predecessors. However, AMD was touting a significant IPC (instructions per clock) improvement – around 19%. In theory, this could translate to a substantial performance boost, application dependent, of course. We were eager to see how this played out in DaVinci Resolve.
Our testing involved a range of Ryzen 5000 CPUs – the 5600X, 5800X, 5900X, and 5950X – pitted against Intel's 10th Gen and X-series processors, as well as AMD's own previous generation Ryzen 3000 series and Threadripper 3rd Gen. We used a specific version of our PugetBench for DaVinci Resolve benchmark (V0.92) and DaVinci Resolve Studio 16.2.7 for this comparison.
So, how did they perform? Well, the results were quite compelling. At the lower end, the Ryzen 5 5600X managed to outperform the Intel Core i5 10600K by a respectable 14%. Moving up, the Ryzen 7 5800X edged out the Intel Core i9 10900K by about 5%. But where AMD really shone was with their higher-end chips. The Ryzen 5 5900X and 5950X significantly outperformed their Intel counterparts, the Core i9 10900X and 10940X, by 29% and 22% respectively. This meant that, depending on your budget, you could be looking at a performance increase anywhere from a modest 5% to a rather impressive 29% over similarly priced Intel processors.
While in some other applications, like Photoshop and After Effects, the Ryzen 5000 series absolutely dominated, their performance in DaVinci Resolve was still strong enough to solidify AMD's lead. The combination of improved IPC and the benefits of the PCI-E 4.0 platform made them a very attractive option for video editors and colorists looking for a powerful and efficient workstation.
