Those of you wondering whether or not an upgrade to AMD RYZEN right after its commercial availability will be worth it, now you can test your own PC against the first RYZEN-powered chip for free.
How, you ask?
Well, turns out AMD has released the source file it used to demonstrate the performance of the company’s forthcoming Summit Ridge CPU. While this is not something that we get to see every day, the fact that Blender is a free and open-source platform, now practically anybody can carry out a comparative analysis between their own system and the RYZEN-based chip.
The procedure is relatively simple and can be done by following these steps:
Step 1: Download Blender
Start by downloading the right version of Blender for your operating system from the URL www.blender.org/download. As you probably already know, this is one of the best free renders around today that can deliver some rather outstanding results.
The version used by AMD is the existing 64-bit version of a 2.78a for Windows 10. Note that because Blender updates can lead to performance creep, you should ideally use the same version for test purposes.
Note that if you want to replicate the test conducted by AMD on your hardware, you must go with Windows 10. Any other OS platform, including Windows 7 or Windows 8 won’t really match up.
Step 2: Download the source file from AMD website
Following the download and installation of Blender, now it’s time to pay a visit to the official Download page on AMD’s website and save the source file on your hard drive.
Step 3: Start the AMD Project
Begin the test by double-clicking on the file named RyzenGraphic_27.blend. If the OS has successfully associated the Blend project with Blender, it will launch automatically. In case, it doesn’t open automatically, just start up Blender and open the file manually from File > Open.
Step 4: Verify the render sample size
Now you are all set to hit the launch button. However, before you proceeding, make it a point to check the render sample size. In case you downloaded the file within the past 24 hours or so, it should retain its default sample size of approximately 150.
Worth noting, confusions regarding the sample size abound as AMD had originally demoed at 3.4 GHz twice with two different settings.
Step 5: Time to GO!
Press F12 or simply pull down the menu and click on Render. Because Blender is heavily multi-threaded, the time to complete the test will vary depending on your system’s clock speed, core count, as well as microarchitecture.
Step 6: Evaluate the test results
So, how did it go? Just to put things into perspective, the eight-core RYZEN takes 36-seconds for the 150 sample size on Windows 10. That speed is significantly faster than an eight-core Xeon E5-2687W PC powered by Windows 8.1 (49-seconds) and tracks with the eight-core Core i7-6900K.
However, note that this is just a rough estimate, and not a 100% accurate depiction of what RYZEN can do. For a better idea, we will have to wait till the chip is reviewed by others more comprehensively, under more controlled test setups.