Discussion Speculation: Zen 4 (EPYC 4 "Genoa", Ryzen 7000, etc.)

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Vattila

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Except for the details about the improvements in the microarchitecture, we now know pretty well what to expect with Zen 3.

The leaked presentation by AMD Senior Manager Martin Hilgeman shows that EPYC 3 "Milan" will, as promised and expected, reuse the current platform (SP3), and the system architecture and packaging looks to be the same, with the same 9-die chiplet design and the same maximum core and thread-count (no SMT-4, contrary to rumour). The biggest change revealed so far is the enlargement of the compute complex from 4 cores to 8 cores, all sharing a larger L3 cache ("32+ MB", likely to double to 64 MB, I think).

Hilgeman's slides did also show that EPYC 4 "Genoa" is in the definition phase (or was at the time of the presentation in September, at least), and will come with a new platform (SP5), with new memory support (likely DDR5).

Untitled2.png


What else do you think we will see with Zen 4? PCI-Express 5 support? Increased core-count? 4-way SMT? New packaging (interposer, 2.5D, 3D)? Integrated memory on package (HBM)?

Vote in the poll and share your thoughts! :)
 
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Exist50

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First, anybody with a brain knows those were approximations.
If so, those "approximations" are so wildly off base as to be useless. This isn't quibbling over a couple percent.
And aside from spinning drives which are not as common today, The rest is negligible.
They most certainly are not. CPUs are the most power-hungry single component in non-accelerator nodes, but that doesn't mean the rest is negligible. Also, plenty of HDDs are still being used.
 

Markfw

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If so, those "approximations" are so wildly off base as to be useless. This isn't quibbling over a couple percent.

They most certainly are not. CPUs are the most power-hungry single component in non-accelerator nodes, but that doesn't mean the rest is negligible. Also, plenty of HDDs are still being used.
OK, so you want to be anal. Here is a link: https://www.arcserve.com/blog/data-centers-what-are-costs-ownership

So the single biggest cost in a data center is electricity. Even if only half of that was CPUs, doubling that would add 10% to your data center cost. Oh and power, server and hvac equipment is number 2 at 24% (total). So lets estimate 16% for power and hvac. That would double. So then you are at 26% more cost by using servers that use twice the power for the CPUs. Even if these estimates are off, any financial person would have a fit with the increase in costs.

THIS IS THE POINT I AM TRYING TO MAKE. Genoa will save companies a lot of money on a daily basis.
 
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Yosar

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54 game comparison between the 7600X and 13600K.

7600X holds the slight advantage, even with faster memory for Intel and does it using less power.


That's why gaming tests in launch reviews should be totally ignored. Unless they have a really big number of games tested (and usually it's not true due to time constraints).
It's not a surprise it's actually the same what AMD said on their slides (5% faster than 12900K, and many reviews put 13 600K on the same level as 12 900K, and sometimes higher).
After all they had enough time to thoroughly benchmark both processors, not like most 'independent reviews'.

And some reviews were calling 13 600K best gaming CPU... Well king was dethroned quite quickly I suppose. Or maybe the emperor turned out naked.
There is nothing special in those results confirming that 13 600K is some monstrous gaming CPU (well unless much bigger power draw counts).
AMD didn't even need X3D Zen 4 processors.
I got a feeling it won't be pretty picture for Raptor Lake when Zen 4 X3D will launch if even Raptor Lake couldn't beat Zen 4 in gaming.
 

alexruiz

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Sep 21, 2001
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That's why gaming tests in launch reviews should be totally ignored. Unless they have a really big number of games tested (and usually it's not true due to time constraints).
It's not a surprise it's actually the same what AMD said on their slides (5% faster than 12900K, and many reviews put 13 600K on the same level as 12 900K, and sometimes higher).
After all they had enough time to thoroughly benchmark both processors, not like most 'independent reviews'.

And some reviews were calling 13 600K best gaming CPU... Well king was dethroned quite quickly I suppose. Or maybe the emperor turned out naked.
There is nothing special in those results confirming that 13 600K is some monstrous gaming CPU (well unless much bigger power draw counts).
AMD didn't even need X3D Zen 4 processors.
I got a feeling it won't be pretty picture for Raptor Lake when Zen 4 X3D will launch if even Raptor Lake couldn't beat Zen 4 in gaming.

You are spot on!
Zen 4 is already better at gaming than RPL.
The 13900k puts a tougher fight, but the rest down the product stack lose to their Zen 4 counterparts

I want to add that while several reviews put the 13600k ahead, a few of them put Zen 4 on top.
The biggest difference here is that in addition to the number of games tested, many of the "reviewers" don't have a clue on how to setup a Zen 4 system
In absolute numbers, there is little variance in the RPL results among all the reviewers. A more mature platform with more consistent results.
However, the numbers for Zen 4 are all over the place. While a few outlets (tech spot in particular) were able to configure their Zen4 machine properly and show them leading the pack, most places did not know how to set up Ryzen 7000 systems.
The numbers obtained by the incompetent reviewers for Zen 4 are much lower than the outlets who did configure the systems properly.
 

DrMrLordX

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The biggest difference here is that in addition to the number of games tested, many of the "reviewers" don't have a clue on how to setup a Zen 4 system

That's part of it. Also some of the launch day 13900k reviews had 4090s while the 7950X launch day reviews used 3090Tis, and somehow the 7950X et al. showed lower numbers with the 4090 . . . ? Something was very wrong.

You're still going to get some people strutting around here claiming Raptor Lake is 11-30% faster in games, it's faster in applications (?!?!), etc. It's a bit tiresome.
 

Carfax83

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You are spot on!
Zen 4 is already better at gaming than RPL.
The 13900k puts a tougher fight, but the rest down the product stack lose to their Zen 4 counterparts

Hold your horses. That BFV benchmark he did obviously has something wrong with it as it doesn't make sense. There is no way on God's green Earth that the 7600x is 36% faster than the 13600K in BF5 and then 6% slower in BF 2042.

Steve should have thrown out that result as it's not possible. Those kinds of extreme outliers are obviously incorrect. I would say the same for Horizon Zero Dawn and some of the others. It might be a problem with the efficiency cores getting in the way, but there is no way the 7600x leads by such a huge margin in those games.

And just looking at the game selection, the 13600K is more dominant in CPU demanding games. Call of Duty MW2 MP performs better on the 13600K compared to the single player game as the MP is more CPU demanding. Raptor Lake has a stronger core than Zen 4 in terms of raw CPU power.

I usually like HWU, but no one else is coming out with these weird results and publishing them.
 
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eek2121

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And I wouldn't be surprised if some people end up getting fired 1-2nd quarter next year when businesses get hit with a 20-30% electricity increase in the US. If they haven't seen their electrical cost go up, they're either not looking or it hasn't filtered to them yet. Not as bad as EU, however its coming.

From what I gather, infrastructure in the US is quite different from the EU. For starters, nearly all the electricity in my area comes from hydroelectric, nuclear, and solar. Only a small amount comes from fossil fuels. Depending on where you are in the US, energy generation may range from renewables to nuclear, natural gas, and even coal. Also, the U.S. does not rely on other countries for natural gas or coal.

FWIW My electricity cost hasn't risen by a dime in at least 3 years (the oldest bill I could find). I pay $0.11/kw after all the fees and stuff.
 

Kaluan

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Hold your horses. That BFV benchmark he did obviously has something wrong with it as it doesn't make sense. There is no way on God's green Earth that the 7600x is 36% faster than the 13600K in BF5 and then 6% slower in BF 2042.

Steve should have thrown out that result as it's not possible. Those kinds of extreme outliers are obviously incorrect. I would say the same for Horizon Zero Dawn and some of the others. It might be a problem with the efficiency cores getting in the way, but there is no way the 7600x leads by such a huge margin in those games.

And just looking at the game selection, the 13600K is more dominant in CPU demanding games. Call of Duty MW2 MP performs better on the 13600K compared to the single player game as the MP is more CPU demanding. Raptor Lake has a stronger core than Zen 4 in terms of raw CPU power.

I usually like HWU, but no one else is coming out with these weird results and publishing them.
Holy cherry picking 😂
As if a 1/54th outlier would change the outcome that much (HU already covered it anyway).

Edit: BFV and BF2042 may use the same family of engines, but they're not the same are they? Codemaster's F1 and DIRT games also use the same family of engines between them, that doesn't mean we don't see wild variance in results between AMD, Intel and nVidia GPUs and CPUs. This is a non-argument.

What's next? Factorio and MMOs are banned in V-Cache testing? E-Sports titles banned on AMD testing?

TPU just did a E-core on v off big round-up, and Raptor Lake performs virtually the same in games in both situations.

And if those "arguments" fail, guess you'll just rant on how if you use $400+ 7600MT kits, 13600K would be faster or something😊

While ignoring that the kit they did the 13600K 54 game tests on would make the 7600X even faster in the first place 😁

Screenshot_20221113-135119.png
 
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Thunder 57

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He said if you take out BF5 the 7600X s still 4% faster overall. It's at 9:55 in the video.

So you prefer the reviews where they cherry pick the titles to show Intel as superior? Got it

Holy cherry picking 😂
As if a 1/54th outlier would change the outcome that much (HU already covered it anyway).

What's next? Factorio and MMOs are banned in V-Cache testing? E-Sports titles banned on AMD testing?

TPU just did a E-core on v off big round-up, and Raptor Lake performs virtually the same in games in both situations.

And if those "arguments" fail, guess you'll just rant on how if you use $400+ 7600MT kits, 13600K would be faster or something😊

While ignoring that the kit they did the 13600K 54 game tests on would make the 7600X even faster in the first place 😁

View attachment 71078

Just follow the post history. Quite easy to see who has an agenda. Yes, that goes for AMD as well.
 
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Think about it, a 5950x is beating a 13900K......
Honestly, I'm not surprised. It's a console port from a console with an AMD CPU. What more explanation is needed?

The non-conspiracy theory explanation: the devs wanted to maximize their game engine performance on all available cores so they built the engine from the ground up to scale with available cores. However, the only CPU they tested that engine was AMD and they made some assumptions in code based on available hardware. Now the game runs best on Zen architecture. For the PC port, they didn't bother or didn't want to go to the trouble of optimizing again for Intel CPUs. It worked fine in their estimation so that's how they shipped the game.

Personally, I think it's only fair to let AMD users have an unfair advantage for once. Almost every PC game out there is written for Intel first and AMD CPUs have to run those games with the strength of their architecture alone without the benefit of specific optimizations.

I would love to hear from game developers on these forums if they have ever bothered to read through AMD's CPU optimization manuals.
 
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Timorous

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I know, and he also said he would look into it more because it was anomalous. But it's not just BF5. HZD is also anomalous.

Whenever games show such a large swing you have to question why. It makes no sense. In his original comparison in October during the Raptor Lake launch, the 5950x is ahead of the 13900K with DDR5-6400!

Now if that doesn't raise flags, what will? The game is likely leaning on the E cores. No other explanation makes sense. It's too bad I don't own the game as I would run some tests on it.



HZDr.png






Don't be ridiculous. There's a thing called confirmation bias and another thing called critical thinking. You are displaying the former and I the latter. Think about it, a 5950x is beating a 13900K......

The thing is Hub have used a 4090. Other outlets that used Ampere cards got very different results but Igor who went with a 6950XT saw the 7700X 6% ahead of the 13600K on average.

Personally I think any tests using Ampere GPUs with the pre 522 driver are all out of date given the new driver and the 4000 series cards with the fixed drivers.
 
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Only on consoles do they specifically target the hardware at the lowest levels.
That's my point. When they were developing playstation exclusive games, they couldn't have known that one day Sony would turn around and ask them to release PC versions. So they basically "tied" the game code to AMD architecture (specific optimizations that give the best performance for multicore workloads).

But yes, in the case of ADL and RPL, it is quite possible that Windows 11 is scheduling critical game threads on the E-cores which may be causing the slowdown. It is also possible that the P-cores are getting dragged down by the latency of waiting for results from threads executing on E-cores. On AMD, all cores are equal in processing power so all the threads would get along fine. On ADL and RPL, the P-core threads are suffering due to slow execution of game code on E-core threads. This is my plausible theory.
 
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Carfax83

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That's my point. When they were developing playstation exclusive games, they couldn't have known that one day Sony would turn around and ask them to release PC versions. So they basically "tied" the game code to AMD architecture (specific optimizations that give the best performance for multicore workloads).

They would have to be completely incompetent to do such a thing and not change it for the PC port. The HZD port wasn't done by Guerilla Games, the game's developer who only developers for the PlayStation. It was offloaded to another developer that specializes in doing ports and presumably wouldn't make such an idiotic decision.

In fact, if they did such a thing, I doubt it would even run on non AMD hardware. That's obviously not the case though and the game runs on Intel as well, and at high framerates. And what about BF5? That game was handled by EA Dice who has been doing primary development for the PC platform for years.

But yes, in the case of ADL and RPL, it is quite possible that Windows 11 is scheduling critical game threads on the E-cores which may be causing the slowdown. It is also possible that the P-cores are getting dragged down by the latency of waiting for results from threads executing on E-cores. On AMD, all cores are equal in processing power so all the threads would get along fine. On ADL and RPL, the P-core threads are suffering due to slow execution of game code on E-core threads. This is my plausible theory.

Who knows what it is. All I know is that it needs further investigation. Things like this can affect AMD as well. When the shoe is on the other foot, I bet they won't have the same response that they've had in this thread to me making a stink about HWU's testing.
 

Carfax83

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I guess the next logical thing for them would be to investigate by turning off the E-cores. Will they do that? My twit account is blocked coz they think I'm some bot. Maybe you could tweet to HWU and ask them to investigate?

Well I would, if I had a twitter account :D I think I'll reach out to them in their YouTube comment section and hope it gains enough traction to warrant a response.
 
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Kaluan

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I'm not saying the 7600x can't be faster than the 13600K in gaming. Don't get me wrong. What I'm saying is that HWU's benchmarks for HZD and BF5 are clearly anomalous and need further looking into.

It's just those two benchmarks that look to be off.

AMD uArch performs really good in title X or Y = ANOMALOUS! Must disregard result/investigate/tweak Intel uArch so it's "fair"!

Got it. lol

Where were you when Hardware Unboxed started benching The Riftbreaker (a game barely anyone knows or paid attention to) during Alder Lake's launch? A game OFFICIALLY optimized for Intel CPUs, by the developer's direct admission.

That's not anomalous, right? 🤣
 

Doug S

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And as I said before, you double the CPU wattage, and it costs you 6x. 2x cpu power, 2x cpu cooling, 2x cpu generator backup. And now with power at a premium, that 4x for power is like 16x. Things WILL change in the data centers, or people ARE going to get fired.


I've consulted on more than one datacenter design & build out. Those numbers are a complete fantasy, you have no clue what you are talking about.

Even if CPUs were responsible for 100% of a datacenter's power consumption, and storage, memory, networking, conversion overhead, etc. etc. used zero energy those numbers would be ridiculous.
 
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Kaluan

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I don't even know why you brought up the Riftbreaker as they are in no way comparable.

The Riftbreaker isn't displaying the same kind of performance gap that BF5 and HZD are displaying in the latest HWU review. This is the Riftbreaker benchmark from the 13900K review. Do you see anything weird?

The game seems well optimized for both Intel and AMD and is actually being bottlenecked by the RTX 4090 at 1080p as it's both CPU and GPU intensive.

Rift_1080p.png


Compared to HZD:

HZD_1080p.png
Were did I say The Riftbreaker was about today's CPU lineup? I specifically said during ADL launch window. Reading comprehension?

You know... this:
Rift.png

They (EXOR Studios) had a blog on Intel's website saying how they're optimizing for Intel (read: Golden Cove). The fact that Zen4 caught up in that game (kudos to AMD) has nothing to do with what I initially said.

Don't think you were white knight-ing for AMD back then, were you? You just took The Riftbreaker results as-is: A great result for Intel (optimizations aside).

And for crying out loud, Horizon ZD performed great on Ryzen 5000 as well, it was one of the arguably few games were Zen3 bested Golden Cove.

We even knew from the early Chinese QS/ES RTL v RPL gaming review that Zen4 will probably do very well vs Raptor Lake in that game. HU's results aren't exactly shocking. Especially w/ a 4090, were leads may grow vs w/ 3090Ti or 6900XT (notice how old results have 5950X = 12900K+fast DDR5, but in the ones w/ 4090, 5950X puls a bit ahead)

This is just ridiculous nitpicking TBH.
AMD-Ryzen-7-7700X-vs-Intel-Core-i7-13700K-Core-i5-13600K-Raptor-Lake-CPUs-_-Horizon-Zero-Dawn-...png
Screenshot_20221113-203813.png
Screenshot_20221113-202627.pngScreenshot_20221113-202504.png
 

fkoehler

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Last 20 years has been all with F500 big hitters at the top of the Med/Bio-tech.
TCO is always either tied with #1 or is #2 on any list as long as its fit for purpose.
No one thinks people are going to get fired for not replacing their infrastructure. However everyone has known for a good 6 months that power is going to go up significantly, with significant impact on TCO.
If you're not updating your standard model, or replacing EOL systems with an equivilent/cheaper AMD that also has a lower watts/btu for lower TCO, I think it will at least give you a painful ding on that performance review.
I used to do big CSR's, and a few times we had Cisco come out with new models that had a particular feature that was interesting enough that we re-did the CSR. Budgets are set out at the beginning of the year, however its not like you spend your entire budget on the first of the fiscal year.
Might have been a bit hyperbolic in my previous quote, however AMD being basically at least equivilent performance-wise, and power-wise sure seems like a reason for AMD's Server business to increase.

Not gonna happen, that's not how things are done in big corporations in my (rather substantial) experience. Capital spending for datacenter grade servers is budgeted yearly and typically part of a longer term multi year plan. They know well in advance which servers they will be replacing as they reach the end of their lifecycle and/or are fully depreciated, and know how much they have budgeted to spend on new ones. They can't just decide to replace servers early because of temporary changes in energy prices, and qualification of new platforms typically takes months so they aren't even close to considering Zen 4 when it has been out for what a week now (though many will have had test systems for a few months already)
 
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alexruiz

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Hold your horses. That BFV benchmark he did obviously has something wrong with it as it doesn't make sense. There is no way on God's green Earth that the 7600x is 36% faster than the 13600K in BF5 and then 6% slower in BF 2042.

Steve should have thrown out that result as it's not possible. Those kinds of extreme outliers are obviously incorrect. I would say the same for Horizon Zero Dawn and some of the others. It might be a problem with the efficiency cores getting in the way, but there is no way the 7600x leads by such a huge margin in those games.

And just looking at the game selection, the 13600K is more dominant in CPU demanding games. Call of Duty MW2 MP performs better on the 13600K compared to the single player game as the MP is more CPU demanding. Raptor Lake has a stronger core than Zen 4 in terms of raw CPU power.

I usually like HWU, but no one else is coming out with these weird results and publishing them.

I don't think you get it
As I wrote in several other posts "A lot of the so called reviewers don't have a clue on how to configure a Zen 4 system. The numbers for RPL have little variance among the reviewers, the numbers for Zen 4 have huge discrepancies among them all"
The numbers for RPL will not change that much, the numbers for Zen4 will keep getting better and better as more reviewers get the hang on how to tune the systems.

Techspot is probably the one that tuned the Zen4 system the best, and it is not even about exotic hardware or extenuating memory timings. Some very basic things have major impact:
- Latest UEFI. Always important, specially critical on as new platform. There is quite a jump in sustained performance from AGESA ComboAM5 1.0.0.1 to 1.0.0.3A with enhanced curve optimizer.
- Chipset drivers. Extremely overlooked, and I do not think any of the youtubers bother to install them, but these are also critical. The chipset drivers install Ryzen power plans which will keep the windows scheduler loading the faster cores as preferred cores. Don't install them and have windows bounce between cores and CCDs and tank performance.
- EXPO/ XMP: Even if the timings are not optimal, going from JEDEC DDR5-4800 CL48 to XMP DDR5-6000 CL36 will help a lot.
- Fresh windows install: Are they deploying all the systems from a single master image, or from an intel master and an AMD master? I can tell you that most youtubers will use a single master image, and more than likely that image was created on an intel system.

So, answer me these questions.
Your preferred outlets, those that are showing the results YOU like, how are they configuring the Zen4 systems?
What motherboard? What UEFI version?
Did they install AMD chipset drivers? If so, as they should, what version?
What windows version? What updates version? Fresh for AMD?
I can bet money that your preferred reviewers didn't bother to flash the latest UEFI, didn't bother to install chipset drivers, and no way they had a dedicated AMD windows master image.

On your last pointy, about RPL being a faster core, I don't know.
The 2MB L2 per core helped it a lot, it is also boosted very aggressively, but on pure raw core performance? I don't know
 

inf64

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Zen 4 is a 4 issue CPU, while Raptor Lake is a 6 issue CPU. Raptor Lake also has a bigger OoO window than Zen 4, 512 vs 320. Raptor Lake can also do 3x 256 bit loads per cycle vs 2 with Zen 4. These are just a few of the differences. I'm not saying that Zen 3 or Zen 4 is weak by any means, but Golden and Raptor Cove are just significantly wider with higher throughput.

All those beefed up resources for Raptor Cove, dare I say wasted, to get effectively the same IPC as Zen 4 (as per SPEC_1T tests). This goes to show that bruteforcing your design to cover inefficiencies elsewhere is not the best way to go ;). I'm impressed how AMD managed to get to the same IPC with their clever engineering, instead of spewing resources into ROB (60% difference!).

Raptor Lake is a good chip considering how intel was limited to the same process node, and its gaming performance is where it is due to it being monolithic (slightly faster than Zen4, on average). This will all be mitigated once Zen4 with Vcache launches, then intel will have to again one up AMD with Meteor Lake.
 
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The game itself may be bugged for all we know. How else do you explain how a 5950x beat a 13900K with DDR5?
The game versions could be different between the two reviews. Windows versions will likely be different. GPU is definitely much more powerful in the 13900K review. Last, but not the least, graphics drivers were tuned for the 4090 (probably to parallelize them more to keep the 4090 fed with data) and we all know that AMD CPUs are good at multicore workloads, especially when multitasking (Ganesh's 5800H review showed Zen 3's foreground thread suffered lower performance loss than Alder Lake when compute intensive background tasks were running).

While I think this situation warrants further investigation, I don't think this is the result of some "bug". This is how things will be going forward, unless HZD developers put in significant effort to re-tune their engine for Raptor Lake with a separate codepath or optimized executable.
 
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