Adobe Premiere Pro: AMD Ryzen 9000 Series vs Intel Core 14th Gen

Introduction

AMD recently launched its new Ryzen 9000 Series processors, which are a fairly minor refresh to its existing Ryzen 7000 processors. Utilizing the same AM5 socket and compatible with existing X670 motherboards, Ryzen 9000 is based on AMD’s new Zen 5 CPU architecture, which promises increased IPC (Instructions Per Clock), improved efficiency, and better memory support.

In this article, we will examine how these new processors perform specifically in Adobe Premiere Pro. In the past, Intel has held a slight lead in Premiere Pro, largely due to their Quick Sync technology which provides additional hardware decoding capabilities for HEVC codecs compared to AMD or NVIDIA GPUs. However, since the last time we tested Premiere Pro with consumer CPUs (Adobe Premiere Pro: Intel Core 14th Gen vs AMD Ryzen 7000) there has been a major update to Premiere Pro, going from version 23 to 24. We don’t expect there to be any surprises with this newer version, but combined with AMD’s improvements to Ryzen 9000, it may be enough for AMD to take the lead in some workflows.

We will also note that since that previous article, we have updated our Premiere Pro benchmark from version 0.98-beta to 1.0. However, that contained no changes to the tests themselves – only an adjustment to the scoring coefficient so that our full release “1.0” benchmark results would not be accidentally compared to any of the earlier beta versions. Because of this, the scores are not directly comparable, but the relative performance should be the same (baring shifts from driver, BIOS, and application updates)

Because we will be examining so many CPUs, we will divide our analysis into Intel vs. AMD (AMD Ryzen 9000 vs. Intel Core 14th Gen) and performance versus the previous generation (AMD Ryzen 9000 vs. AMD Ryzen 7000).

If you want to read more about the new AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs and what distinguishes them from the previous generation, we recommend checking out our main AMD Ryzen 9000 Series Content Creation Review article. That post includes more detailed information on the CPU specifications and MSRP and an overview of testing results for various other applications, including Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, After Effects, Unreal Engine, Cinema 4D, Blender, and V-Ray.

Raw Benchmark Data

We design our benchmarks to cover many workflows and tasks to provide a balanced look at the application and its hardware interactions. However, many users have more specialized workflows. Recognizing this, we like to provide individual results for benchmarks as well. If a specific area comprises most of your work, examining those results will give a more accurate understanding of the performance disparities between components.

AMD Ryzen 9000 vs Intel Core 14th Gen for Adobe Premiere Pro

If you look at our previous consumer-level Premiere Pro CPU article (Adobe Premiere Pro: Intel Core 14th Gen vs AMD Ryzen 7000), the launch of Ryzen 9000 doesn’t change the AMD vs. Intel story very much. This suggests that there wasn’t much of a performance improvement with the new Ryzen 9000 CPUs, although we will get more into that in the next section.

Comparing Intel and AMD CPU models directly is a bit tough since they do not have models with matching MSRP. However, the closest equivalents are:

• AMD Ryzen 9 9950X ($650) vs. Intel Core i9 14900K ($590)
• AMD Ryzen 9 9900X ($500) vs. Intel Core i9 14900K ($590)
• AMD Ryzen 7 9700X ($360) vs. Intel Core i7 14700K ($410)
• AMD Ryzen 5 9600X ($280) vs. Intel Core i5 14600K ($320)

We do want to point out that in these comparisons, AMD is a bit less expensive than Intel in terms of price, other than the 9950X vs 14900K. They also have a lower power draw, meaning less heat output and noise. Because of that, if things are close, AMD actually has the advantage.

Starting at the bottom of the stack, the AMD Ryzen 5 9600X overall performs well compared to the Intel Core i5 14600K, with about a 10% performance lead. However, the 14600K is faster in some workloads, namely when working with LongGOP codecs like H.264 and HEVC where the 14600K scored 10% higher than the 9600X. Unfortunately for AMD, that is also the most likely type of workflow used at this budget level, where screen recordings and phone footage are common. Very few at this level will be working with RAW codecs or heavy enough intraframe workflows where performance is a concern. Because of this, in spite of AMD having the higher overall score, the Intel Core i5 14600K is most likely the better option for most users.

Going up a step to the Ryzen 7 9700X, Intel takes the overall lead with the Core i7 14700K scoring 13% higher overall. Once again, working with LongGOP is Intel’s strength, and for that, the 14700K is a massive 50% faster than AMD. Interestingly, while HEVC 4:2:2 10-bit (which only Intel has hardware decoding support for) is an area where Intel does very well, a big part of the 14700K’s lead comes from HEVC software encoding. Hardware encoding is more common these days, but software encoding is still used when you want the best possible quality per bitrate, and it is interesting to see that the 14700K does so well for that specific workload. In fact, it is even better than the 14900K, which is an odd result, but one that we verified multiple times.

Moving up to the Ryzen 9 models, Intel is again faster than AMD, with the Core i9 14900K taking about a 10% performance lead over the Ryzen 9 9900X overall. Again, a good chunk of that is from LongGOP (where the 14900K is 30% faster), but working with Intraframe codecs like ProRes and RAW codecs like RED is also faster with the 14900K.

At the top end, the Ryzen 9 9950X is also behind the Intel Core i9 14900K. AMD gains some ground here, but despite the 9950X costing more than the 14900K, Intel is about 7% faster overall. The difference for RAW codecs is within the margin of error, and Intel’s lead for intraframe codecs is small enough to not matter much (5%), but the higher performance for HEVC codecs, in particular, puts the 14900K firmly ahead of the 9950X.

AMD Ryzen 9000 vs AMD Ryzen 7000 for Adobe Premiere Pro

When comparing the new AMD Ryzen 9000 Series to the previous Ryzen 7000 Series, you need to be aware that AMD technically introduced a small price drop with the new CPUs. However, since AMD CPUs are often on sale, the new models will actually be a bit more expensive in most cases. That will likely even out over time as sales start to appear for the new models, but for now, Ryzen 9000 will likely have a small price premium over the older 7000 processors.

Rather than going through each model one by one, we are simply going to state that the gen-over-gen performance uplift is incredibly minor in Premiere Pro. Some specific tests showed some improvement, but overall, the difference between Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 9000 is within the margin of error for this type of real-world testing (about 3-5%).

Interestingly, this is a smaller generational improvement than what we saw in our Photoshop and After Effects articles. This makes some sense as those applications are more lightly threaded, which could help them take advantage of AMD’s IPC improvements. On the other hand, Premiere Pro is more moderately threaded and could be suffering from the TDP reduction on the 9900X, 9700X, and 9600X compared to the previous generation. However, the 9950X has the same TDP as the 7950X and also didn’t see any meaningful performance gains, so if that is a factor, it is only part of the story.

How Well Do the AMD Ryzen 9000 CPUs Perform in Premiere Pro?

Overall, AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 Series Processors do OK in Premiere Pro, but they are effectively identical to the previous generation Ryzen 7000 CPUs. Because of this, AMD makes up no ground against the competition, allowing Intel to maintain their lead in this segment.

The biggest thing holding AMD back is the fact that Intel processors with Quick Sync (used for hardware-accelerated decoding of H.264 and HEVC codecs) perform significantly better for the most common workflows at this budget level. A “proper” workflow when working with H.264/HEVC media from screen or phone recordings may be to transcode or use proxies, but it is incredibly common for users to work with this type of footage natively, and Intel is simply the better option for that. The exact difference varies based on the specific codec, task, and processor you are looking at, but Intel is, in general, 10-30% faster and can be close to 2x the performance in specific cases. Even for users that do utilize proxies, this performance difference is still a factor, as it means that an Intel Core CPU will be faster at creating those proxies in the first place.

Performance when working with RAW codecs can occasionally be important at the Core i9 and Ryzen 9 levels, but even there, AMD only achieves performance parity with Intel. If all you do is work with RAW media, then you could go either way, but unless you are working on high-end productions (in which case, you should be using AMD Threadripper or Threadripper Pro), you are also going to be regularly working with H.264/HEVC media as well – even if it is just for the occasional bit of stock, b-roll, or drone footage.

Every application uniquely utilizes hardware, so our results here don’t necessarily translate to any other application. Our focus in this article centers specifically on AMD Ryzen 9000 Series performance in Adobe Premiere Pro. However, we recommend checking out our AMD Ryzen 9000 Series Content Creation Review article, which includes a broad overview of results for several different applications. If you use other software packages, it also has links to our in-depth testing articles for content creation: Photoshop, DaVinci Resolve, After Effects, Unreal Engine, Cinema 4D, Blender, and V-Ray.

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