The AMD Ryzen 5 2500X and Ryzen 3 2300X CPU Review
by Ian Cutress on February 11, 2019 11:45 AM ESTGaming: Civilization 6 (DX12)
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Civilization VI | RTS | Oct 2016 |
DX12 | 1080p Ultra |
4K Ultra |
8K Ultra |
16K Low |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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At 1080p and 4K, the extra threads on the 2500X help a lot here.
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romrunning - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link
It may just be me, but all of the links on the "Pages In This Review" at the bottom of the main page simply return me to the main page.romrunning - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link
But the drop-down to the specific page works as expected.evilspoons - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link
It's definitely not just you. I spent a few tries wondering what I was doing wrong and re-read the start of the article until I tried the drop-down menu instead of the links.Ian Cutress - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link
That's my fault, as the hyperlinks need to be manually added. I had messed up the part of the URL after the /show/13945. It should be fixed now.Kevin G - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link
I noticed this as well.IGTrading - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link
Thank you Ian for a good review.I completely agree with the conclusion that the 2300X makes perfect sense, but the 2500X is harder to place in the picture ...
On the other hand, despite 2400G and the 2500X have the same TDP, if I look at the graph with full load power consumption, I can clearly see that the latter has a very generous thermal limit, compared with the 2400G where the thermal envelope seems to be very strictly limited.
Meaning OEMs will probably be able to use the 2500X for cheaper gaming systems where auto-overclocking is used as a feature and AMD will thus be able to offer something better for a lower price.
This also allows AMD to push AM4 harder on the market, giving itself the opportunity to future upgrades for AM4 buyers.
So the 2500X will show considerably better performance than the 2400G despite the similar config (minus the iGPU) while not cannibalizing the 2600 nor the 2400G.
If AMD manages to sell more 2500X through OEMs, AMD also builds a future upgrade market for itself, unlike Intel that will likely push buyers into purchasing new machines.
dromoxen - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link
ppl buying these CPUs are not the sort to be upgrading the CPU.. to most the computer is a closed box and is upgraded as a whole . I do wonder where all these cores are going .. I mean its great to have 4 6 8 cores with another 8 hyperthreads .. but who is using all that power ? Lets make 4 cores the absolute limit , unless you have a Govt permit to purchase more.GreenReaper - Monday, February 11, 2019 - link
Browsers have been getting a lot better at using multiple cores, and websites surely do enough in the background nowadays to justify the effort.RadiclDreamer - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
Why would there be any limit on how man cores? Whats it to you that I want to transcode movies faster, or multitask more, or anything else? And government permit to have more? Thats just insane.kaidenshi - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
He's trolling like he always does. Anything to get under someone's skin enough to get a reaction out of them.