The Intel Broadwell-E Review: Core i7-6950X, i7-6900K, i7-6850K and i7-6800K Tested
by Ian Cutress on May 31, 2016 2:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Enterprise
- Prosumer
- X99
- 14nm
- Broadwell-E
- HEDT
Office Performance: Extreme Editions
The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern during environments with a variable threaded workload. There is also an added issue of the motherboard remaining consistent, depending on how the motherboard manufacturer wants to add in their own boosting technologies over the ones that Intel would prefer they used. In order to remain consistent, we implement an OS-level unique high-performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Dolphin Benchmark: link
Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53 minutes.
WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
3D Particle Movement
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
Agisoft Photoscan – 2D to 3D Image Manipulation: link
Agisoft Photoscan creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.
HandBrake v0.9.9: link
For HandBrake, we take two videos (a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short) and convert them to x264 format in an MP4 container. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.
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mapesdhs - Thursday, June 9, 2016 - link
By definition, professionals wouldn't use this kind of tech at all. Pro users don't oc. Pro users have a budget to afford XEON.The prosumer market though, solo professionals, those on a budget, these are the people for whom previous generations of SB-E/IB-E made some sense, but not anymore.
sleekblackroadster - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
This is the opposite of generating enthusiasm, Intel.jjj - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
This is what Intel means by more focus on certain segments and it will only get worse as the PC market fades away.damianrobertjones - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
No 6700k in the tests? :(damianrobertjones - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Clicks the next page... DAMMIT!PJ_ - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
It was in the GTA V benchmarks for examplePJ_ - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
And many moremedi03 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
AMD's CPUs aren't that bad for gaming (mostly because of multi-threading becoming a treand in games, thanks to consoles) as many people think:http://wccftech.com/fx-8370-i5-6400-gaming-compari...
josetesan - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
It will be great if , for next multi-threaded tests, Linux Kernel compilation times were added, as thay make great use of it, via the -J <threads> parameter.Some people use their computers to compile,and we benefit for multicores a lot. ( java, C, whatever ).
I can see the 6-core for $434 it a nice price, given Haswell i7-4770 has 4 cores and is similar priced.
Great review, indeed.
Tom Womack - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
It's not clear that the 6-core Broadwell is very much better than the 6-core Haswell, and it's likely that its existence makes the 6-core Haswell cheaper; so pick up a 5820K in the near term.