Agisoft Metashape Performance: Intel Core 10th Gen vs AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen

Introduction

Intel has just launched its next generation of consumer desktop processor: the 10th Gen Intel Core family. Historically, this product line from Intel has offered fantastic clock speeds with moderate core counts, but recently Intel has been steadily increasing the number of cores included in these CPUs. There are quite a number of chips launching today, but to gauge what potential this series have we are going to look at the very top-end Core i9 10900K, Core i7 10700K, and Core i5 10600K models.

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For this article, we are looking at how the new Intel 10th Gen Core processors compare to other currently-available models and the preceding 9th-gen Core series. The focus is on photogrammetry processing in Agisoft Metashape, for which we have developed internal benchmarks here in our lab. More info about those tools and how we use them are available in the Test Methodology section.

If you would prefer to skip over our test setup and various benchmark results, feel free to jump straight to the Conclusion.

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Test Setup

Listed below are the specifications of the systems we will be using for our testing:

A Note about Power Limits

One thing that our product development team found in their testing, prior to this round of benchmarks in our lab, was that the pre-launch motherboards we received from Gigabyte (and some other manufacturers) were not defaulting to Intel's specified power limits in the BIOS settings. This is something we've seen in past launches as well, but now that Intel is being more aggressive about adding cores and pushing clock speeds higher we are seeing much higher power draw (and therefore temperatures) than we expect from a processor rated at 125W. In this generation, it has gotten to the point that temps can spike quickly – often getting as high as 100C in a matter of seconds under heavy loads. Because of this, we decided to manually set the PL1 and PL2 power limits in the BIOS. Following Intel's specifications, we used a value of 125W for the PL1 (long term) setting on all three Intel 10th Gen Core CPUs we tested, along with the following PL2 (short term) limits:

Core i9 10900K: 250W
Core i7 10700K: 229W
Core i5 10600K: 182W

Setting these power limits ensures that our Noctua NH-U12S is more than enough to keep these CPUs properly cooled and lines up with our philosophy about prioritizing stability and reliability over raw performance in our workstations. Please note, however, that not all reviewers share this perspective – and some may not even be aware of the issues at all! If you see variances between our benchmark results and those on other websites, different BIOS settings and default behaviors may well be the reason.

Test Methodology

For benchmarking photogrammetry applications we now have four image sets that we own the rights to, covering both smaller and larger size Model and Map projects. All of these image sets are available in our public Metashape benchmarks, split up to allow quick or extended tests, which you can download and run if you want to compare your system's performance to what we measured for this article.

• Rock Model – 36 photos at 20 megapixels each
• School Map – 51 photos at 18 megapixels each
• School Model – 439 photos at 18 megapixels each
• Park Map – 792 photos at 18 megapixels each

Benchmark Results

There are a lot of processors in this round-up, so we are color-coding the results to make them easier to sift through:

• Light blue with glow = New 10th Gen Intel Core CPUs
• Light blue = Previous-generation Intel consumer CPUs (9th Gen Core)
• Dark blue = Intel HEDT CPUs (Core X 10th Gen)
• Light red = AMD consumer CPUs (Ryzen 3rd Gen)
• Dark red = AMD HEDT CPUs (Threadripper 3rd Gen)

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For those who want to dig into the weeds of how these CPUs performed in different processing steps, here is a full table of the results:

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Analysis & Conclusion

Intel's new mainstream processors have improved on performance in Metashape compared to the previous generation, but the gains are not very large. The Core i9 10900K ranges between 1-5% faster than its i9 9900K predecessor and came in with the top result in three of our four image sets (with a close second in the one place it didn't win). That is impressive, but probably not enough of a gain to warrant a whole new system if you are already running on a 9th Gen Intel Core or 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processor.

It is also worth mentioning that running multiple instances of Metashape on a single computer is an option for some workflows, and doing so will utilize hardware differently. Check out our article on that topic if you think it might be applicable to your situation.

Is the Intel Core 10th Gen or AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen better in Agisoft Metashape?

For processing image sets in Agisoft Metashape, Intel's new Core i9 10900K is faster than any of AMD's Ryzen processors in three of our four tests. The one benchmark where an AMD chip did beat it was only by 2%, and that particular Ryzen 9 3950X is quite a bit more expensive. Similarly, the Core i7 10700K outpaces the Ryzen models around its price point as well. Unfortunately, going down below 8 cores – to the Core i5 10600K – hurts performance in Metashape enough that it doesn't make sense for the small cost savings.

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Our Labs team is available to provide in-depth hardware recommendations based on your workflow.