The Intel Core i3-7350K (60W) Review: Almost a Core i7-2600K
by Ian Cutress on February 3, 2017 8:00 AM ESTProfessional Performance: Windows
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.
Here we report the overall time to complete the test – sub-test results can be found in Bench.
Photoscan is a mix of single and multi-threaded segments, but overall the extra cores in the i5/i7 beat the Core i3, but not by much.
Cinebench R15
Cinebench is a benchmark based around Cinema 4D, and is fairly well known among enthusiasts for stressing the CPU for a provided workload. Results are given as a score, where higher is better.
All the Kaby Lake processors seem to do well in CB15 single threaded performance, given that all the K-processors can reach 4.2 GHz or higher one way or another. Nonetheless, the age of the Core i7-2600K is showing here.
Turning the tables with actual cores, and the Core i7-2600K gets a significant leg up here. The Core i5 also sits above the Core i3.
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.
For video conversion, having small frames puts all three CPUs in a similar spot. But ramp up the frame size and we see the Kaby Lake i5 pull ahead due to IPC and instructions. The Core i3 has enough oomph to match the extra threads on the Core i7-2600K though.
Hybrid x265
Hybrid is a new benchmark, where we take a 4K 1500 frame video and convert it into an x265 format without audio. Results are given in frames per second.
With a different video conversion tool and render, the extra cores and threads of the Core i7 is more than enough to give it a 30% advantage over the Core i3-7350K. It makes me wonder if another +30% frequency would help the Core i3.
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BillBear - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
For consumers who intend to purchase a discrete GPU card, it's interesting to see it confirmed that Intel could include four additional CPU cores in instead of the unnecessary (for you) integrated GPU within pretty much the exact same die size.It wouldn't cost them more to manufacture than an i7. They just want to be able to charge more money by forcing you into a different price range of product if you need many cores.
For instance: Intel’s new 10-core Core i7 Extreme Edition costs a whopping $1,723
http://www.geek.com/tech/intels-new-10-core-core-i...
fanofanand - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment. Intel has a vested interest in pushing people like you into the HEDT platform which is far more profitable. If you have a powerful dGPU then you are not "mainstream" by Intel's thinking. Based on the number of computers that have no dGPU maybe they are right.BillBear - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
You're just defending price gouging now.fanofanand - Sunday, February 5, 2017 - link
I am not defending anything, I am neither an Intel shareowner nor have they seen a penny of mine in a decade. I am saying that what they are doing makes business sense even if it doesn't suit you as well as you'd like.BillBear - Sunday, February 5, 2017 - link
For someone who frequently responds to other people's posts with silly BS like "This post brought to you by CompanyName" why are you suddenly defending price gouging on Intel's part?Price gouging makes business sense for any company. Tacking on an additional thousand dollars per part? Not really defensible.
block2 - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
The CPU I want is one that costs me the least electricity for the 95% of the time when I'm on Facebook and surfing, yet supports Photoshop well. I bought a gold rated seasonic PSU a couple years ago and my overall power usage is very low (40w?). Really, a low end i3 ought to suffice for me. I'm still using a 2.8ghz AMD phenom II with the CPU throttling enabled (800mhz).Scipio Africanus - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Have you considered one of the Intel T suffix cores? They don't get a lot of coverage but give you the newest architecture with a very low TDP. The current Kaby Lake T cores are 35w TDP.The newest review i could find was for Haswell T cores:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8774/intel-haswell-l...
Scipio Africanus - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
It takes Intel 6 years to post 25% increase in single threaded performance? Yeesh. Competiton (read: Ryzen) can't come fast enough. My Sandy Bridge Dell Precision is staying put for a bit more.StrangerGuy - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
And AMD did what exactly during the same 6 years? Sheesh.silverblue - Saturday, February 4, 2017 - link
Well, they've transformed a power-hungry server architecture into something that the majority of users could use in a mobile device without complaining about power or performance. I'm also pretty sure that if they had commissioned Zen even before Bulldozer's release, we still wouldn't have seen anything until recently. I'm not going to defend them for Bulldozer, but it was either trash it and work on a replacement with no money coming in or at least try to fix its problems with power, L1 and decoder, and redesign the FPU. A 25%+ IPC boost from Bulldozer to Excavator, despite the loss of L3, would have been much better received had Bulldozer been better to begin with. That's what AMD have been doing.