Agisoft Metashape 1.6.5: AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Performance

Introduction

AMD's latest mainstream processor family, the Ryzen 5000 Series, has launched with direct upgrades to several (but not all) of their most popular Ryzen 3rd Gen chips. These new models cover from 6 to 16 cores, and utilize the updated Zen 3 microarchitecture which brings substantial improvements to instructions per clock (IPC). Even though core counts and cache sizes are not increasing, the overall performance of these new CPUs is dramatically faster than both previous generations and competing processor designs.

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For this article, we are looking at how the new AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processors compare to a host of other currently-available models: AMD's previous Ryzen 3000 Series, their high-end desktop (HEDT) Threadrippers, and both Intel's mainstream Core and HEDT Core X lines. 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 is available in the Test Methodology section.

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Test Setup

Listed below are the specifications of the systems we used for our testing:

*Pre-launch BIOS only has AGESA 1.0.8, but AMD says AGESA 1.1.0 should come soon – which may further improve performance

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 under the Creative Commons BY-ND license in our public Metashape benchmarks, split up to allow quick or extended testing, 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

Please note that these benchmarks require the scripting support found in Metashape Professional, and will not run properly on the Standard version. If you don't have a license, you can get a 30-day trial from Agisoft which should work.

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 red with glow = New AMD Ryzen 5000 Series processors
• Light red (without glow) = Older AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen models
• Dark red = AMD HEDT Threadripper 3rd Gen CPUs
• Light blue = Intel mainstream Core 10th Gen processors
• Dark blue = Intel HEDT Core X 10000 Series CPUs

Results are listed from fastest to slowest (top to bottom), and split up by image set.

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Analysis

Metashape favors different CPUs depending on whether you are working with a model or a map. High core count processors never do well in this application, but processing maps in particular performs best on moderate core counts (8 to 10 seems to be a sweet spot) with high clock speeds. AMD's Ryzen 7 5800X with 8 cores lands on top in both of our map image set tests, beating out the other new Ryzen processors and Intel's Core i9 10900K, which had been our go-to recommendation for Metashape until now.

When working on models, instead, more cores appear to be somewhat beneficial. The Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X (with 16 and 12 cores, respectively) either match or beat out their smaller 8-core sibling.

In all of the image sets, though, these new Ryzen 5000 Series processors perform quite well and averaged 15-20% better performance than the older 3000 Series. They also outstrip AMD's Threadripper and Intel's Core X models, though that is nothing new for Metashape.

Are AMD’s Ryzen 5000 Series Processors Good for Metashape?

Yes, AMD's new Ryzen 7 5800X in particular is now our top-performing processor for working with maps in Metashape. The Ryzen 9 5950X and 5900X are slightly faster for dealing with complex models, rather than maps, and the only competing CPU we have tested that is in the same ballpark as these is Intel's Core i9 10900K. Any of those four processors would be an excellent choice for photogrammetry in Metashape.

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