Pix4D 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 Pix4D, 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 Pix4D 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 – 82 photos at 20 megapixels each
• School Map – 51 photos at 18 megapixels each
• School Model – 278 photos at 18 megapixels each
• Park Map – 810 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

In Pix4D, the new 10th Gen Intel Core processors are faster than AMD's Ryzen models at similar price points. The top-end Core i9 10900K rivals or beats the more expensive Ryzen 9 3950X in three of our four tests, though it doesn't keep up as well on larger projects.

However, both of those families of processors fall behind AMD's higher core count Threadripper models in most of our benchmark tests. Particularly when working with maps these chips perform the best, with the 32-core Threadripper 3970X being the fastest CPU on average in Pix4D – and the more affordable 24-core TR 3960X not far behind. Intel's Core X series isn't competitive here, unfortunately.

Is the Intel Core 10th Gen or AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen better in Pix4D?

Intel's new 10th Gen Core processors, especially the Core i9 10900K and i7 10700K, are faster per dollar than AMD's Ryzen 3rd Gen chips in Pix4D. However, that statement is somewhat misleading because there is a more expensive Ryzen model that outperforms them, and even higher-end processors which outpace both the Core and Ryzen lines. For the best performance in Pix4D, the AMD Threadripper 3970X and 3960X are clear winners.

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