Adobe After Effects: AMD Ryzen 7000 Series vs Intel Core 12th Gen

Introduction

Earlier this month, AMD announced their new Ryzen 7000 Series desktop processors along with the LGA socket AM5 platform. These processors are marketed as having substantially better performance for content creation applications in part due to their "Zen 4" architecture, as well as support for new technologies like DDR5 memory.

In After Effects, we expect these new CPUs to do very well since AMD has advertised up to a 13% IPC (Instructions Per Clock) performance improvement over the previous generation, which should translate very well into real-world performance gains when paired with the high core count found on the Ryzen processors. In addition, we found that DDR5 gave a decent boost to the Intel Core 12th Gen CPUs, so we also expect to see a similar benefit for the AMD Ryzen 7000 processors.

Over the last few years, AMD and Intel have been trading places as the fastest option for After Effects as each released new products. Intel is currently holding a slight lead overall with their Core 12th Gen processors, but there are certain workflows that the Ryzen 5000 series are able to give a sizable performance advantage. With the Ryzen 7000 Series processors, however, AMD has a decent chance of taking the top spot across the board.

In this article, we will be using our PugetBench for After Effects 0.95 benchmark paired with After Effects 22.4 (versions 22.5 and 22.6 both have benchmark-breaking bugs) to examine the performance of the new AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs. As a comparison, we will be including the previous generation AMD Ryzen 5000 Series, as well as their primary competition – the Intel Core 12th Gen processors. While we are including most of the primary models from each of these product lines, note that we are skipping the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D which features AMD's 3D V-Cache Technology. We have looked at this model in past articles, and found that for content creation, it is either on par or slower than the normal Ryzen 7 5800X model.

If you want to read more about the new AMD Ryzen 7000 Series and what sets them apart from the previous generation, we recommend checking out our main AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors Content Creation Review article. That post includes more detailed information on the CPU specifications, testing results for a range of other applications including Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Lightroom Classic, and Unreal Engine; as well as all the test setup details for both the hardware and software used in our testing.

Raw Benchmark Data

While our benchmark presents various scores based on the performance of each test, we also like to provide individual results for you to examine. If there is a specific task that is a hindrance to your workflow, examining the raw results for that task is going to be much more applicable than the scores that our benchmark calculated.

Feel free to skip to the next sections for our analysis of these results to get a wider view of how each configuration performs.

AMD Ryzen 7000 vs Intel Core 12th Gen for After Effects

To start off our analysis, we wanted to look at how the new Ryzen 7000 series compares to the Intel Core 12th Gen processors. The MSRP pricing for Intel and AMD don't exactly match, but in most cases, the comparisons we are making in the chart above are looking at CPUs that have an MSRP within $40 of each other. We have a full breakdown of the MSRP of each of these CPUs in our main AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors Content Creation Review article if you want to get into the specifics.

Before you skip this section because of how boring the above chart looks, know that there are actually a few interesting things to cover.

In an overall sense, the new Ryzen 7000 Series processors perform almost identical to their Intel Core 12th Gen counterparts, making either brand a solid choice. Every comparison is within just a few percent, which makes these two product families about as neck-in-neck as possible.

However, things get a bit more interesting if we look at the "Multi-Core Score" (chart #2). This score is based on performance in highly complex projects where the multi-frame rendering (MFR) feature makes a greater impact. This feature helps After Effects to take advantage of higher core count CPUs, and for the Ryzen 9 7950X in particular, allows AMD to take a massive 40% performance lead over the Intel Core i9 12900KS. The Ryzen 9 7900X also showed a decent gain over Intel, although it is a much tamer 8% faster than the Core i9 12900K.

To put this into perspective, our recent testing of the workstation-class AMD Threadripper PRO 5000 Series gave the TR PRO CPUs a Multi-Core Score between 267-317 points, compared to the Ryzen 7950X which scored 278 points. Threadripper PRO processors have up to 4x the number of cores as Ryzen, along with some additional platform features like support for more than 128GB RAM, which makes it very impressive that the Ryzen 7950X performs about on par with Threadripper PRO at a fraction of the cost.

Unfortunately, this massive performance lead over Intel doesn't filter through the whole product stack. MFR fares well with higher CPU core counts, and besides the 7950X, AMD doesn't actually have a significant core advantage over Intel. That means that at most price points, you are likely going to have a hard time telling the difference between an AMD Ryzen 7000 and an Intel Core 12th Gen processor. The big exception of course being the Ryzen 7950X – but even then, you will likely only notice the difference in extremely heavy projects.

AMD Ryzen 7000 vs AMD Ryzen 5000 for After Effects

In the previous section, we saw that the new AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors perform almost identically to Intel's 12th Gen models in most cases, but what it doesn't show is just how much of an improvement that is for AMD over the previous generation. Spoiler: AMD put in some work with the Ryzen 7000 processors.

As you can see in the chart above, AMD made huge strides with the 7000 Series, showing overall around 25-30% higher performance in After Effects compared to the Ryzen 5000 Series. And if you work with especially heavy compositions, the new Ryzen 7000 series can be as much as 50% faster than the previous generation!

No matter how you slice it, this is a massive performance gain over a single generation, and the main reason why AMD was able to either catch up to or surpass, Intel across the board.

How well do the AMD Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs perform in After Effects?

Overall, the new AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors do very well in After Effects, showing anywhere from a 25% to 50% performance gain over the previous generation. Unfortunately, even this impressive improvement only allows the Ryzen 7000 Series to be roughly on par with the Intel Core 12th Gen CPUs in terms of general After Effects performance.

The single major caveat here is the Ryzen 9 7950X, which for highly complex projects can be a massive 40% faster than the Intel Core i9 12900KS. In fact, this is fast enough to put it in a similar performance category as AMD's Threadripper PRO line! Ryzen may not have the RAM capacity of Threadripper PRO, but if you just occasionally have extra heavy projects and can work around the 128GB RAM limit found on consumer CPUs, this makes the Ryzen 9 7950X a very strong choice for After Effects users that can't quite justify spending the money to jump up to Threadripper PRO.

For most users, you are likely not going to be able to notice much of a performance difference between the AMD Ryzen 7000 and the Intel Core 12th Gen processors. We definitely give AMD the lead at the top end with the 7950X (and the 7900X to a lesser degree) due to its significantly higher Multi-Core Score, but whether that will matter for you depends highly on the type of projects you work on.

However, it is worth pointing out that Intel is expected to launch their new Core 13th Gen processors sometime later this year, with some sites like Tom's Hardware speculating that they could launch as early as October. We won't know how those upcoming Intel processors will perform until they are released, but given the short timeframe we are likely dealing with, it may be worth holding off on purchasing a Ryzen 7000 (or an Intel Core 12th Gen) processor for a little bit if you can. Considering how close the AMD Ryzen 7000 and Intel 12th Gen processors often are for After Effects, it may end up that Intel will be able to make a strong comeback with their upcoming 13th Gen processors.

Update 9/27/2022: Intel has officially announced that the 13th Gen CPUs will be available in October.

Keep in mind that the benchmark results in this article are strictly for Lightroom Classic and that performance will vary widely in different applications. If your workflow includes other software packages, we highly recommend checking out our AMD Ryzen 7000 Series Processors Content Creation Review article which includes results and links to in-depth testing for a range of other applications including Premiere Pro, Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, and Unreal Engine.