The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9 7900X, i7 7820X and i7 7800X Tested
by Ian Cutress on June 19, 2017 9:01 AM ESTBenchmarking Performance: CPU Rendering Tests
Rendering tests are a long-time favorite of reviewers and benchmarkers, as the code used by rendering packages is usually highly optimized to squeeze every little bit of performance out. Sometimes rendering programs end up being heavily memory dependent as well - when you have that many threads flying about with a ton of data, having low latency memory can be key to everything. Here we take a few of the usual rendering packages under Windows 10, as well as a few new interesting benchmarks.
Corona 1.3
Corona is a standalone package designed to assist software like 3ds Max and Maya with photorealism via ray tracing. It's simple - shoot rays, get pixels. OK, it's more complicated than that, but the benchmark renders a fixed scene six times and offers results in terms of time and rays per second. The official benchmark tables list user submitted results in terms of time, however I feel rays per second is a better metric (in general, scores where higher is better seem to be easier to explain anyway). Corona likes to pile on the threads, so the results end up being very staggered based on thread count.
Blender 2.78
For a render that has been around for what seems like ages, Blender is still a highly popular tool. We managed to wrap up a standard workload into the February 5 nightly build of Blender and measure the time it takes to render the first frame of the scene. Being one of the bigger open source tools out there, it means both AMD and Intel work actively to help improve the codebase, for better or for worse on their own/each other's microarchitecture.
LuxMark
As a synthetic, LuxMark might come across as somewhat arbitrary as a renderer, given that it's mainly used to test GPUs, but it does offer both an OpenCL and a standard C++ mode. In this instance, aside from seeing the comparison in each coding mode for cores and IPC, we also get to see the difference in performance moving from a C++ based code-stack to an OpenCL one with a CPU as the main host.
POV-Ray 3.7b3
Another regular benchmark in most suites, POV-Ray is another ray-tracer but has been around for many years. It just so happens that during the run up to AMD's Ryzen launch, the code base started to get active again with developers making changes to the code and pushing out updates. Our version and benchmarking started just before that was happening, but given time we will see where the POV-Ray code ends up and adjust in due course.
Cinebench R15
The latest version of CineBench has also become one of those 'used everywhere' benchmarks, particularly as an indicator of single thread performance. High IPC and high frequency gives performance in ST, whereas having good scaling and many cores is where the MT test wins out.
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Soheil - Sunday, June 25, 2017 - link
Anyone knows why 1600X better than 1800X?OddFriendship8989 - Thursday, June 29, 2017 - link
I'm late here as usual but why are you not comparing against the 7700k and 7600k? I get that these are HEDT chips, but it's worth comparing against the high end mainstream especially when the 7800x and 7700k are priced similarly that someone MIGHT consider jumping over.I hate to say it but this is the typical stuff you guys used to do, and I know it takes more time to put together more CPUs, but logical comparisons MUST be made and these charts show a bit of laziness.
ashlol - Friday, June 30, 2017 - link
can we have the GPU tests pleaseOxford Guy - Saturday, July 1, 2017 - link
"The discussion on whether Intel should be offering a standard goopy TIM or the indium-tin solder that they used to (and AMD uses) is one I’ve run on AnandTech before, but there’s a really good guide from Roman Hartung, who overclocks by the name der8auer. I’m trying to get him to agree to post it on AnandTech with SKL-X updates so we can discuss it here, but it really is some nice research. You can find the guide over at http://overclocking.guide."If you have a point to make then make it. After all, you said you've already "run" this discussion before. Tell us why polymer TIM is a better choice than solder (preferably without citing cracks from liquid nitrogen cooling).
ashlol - Monday, July 3, 2017 - link
Anyway both are bad since you have to delid it to achieve good cooling. I have delidded a 4770k and a 6700k and put liquid metal TIM between the die and the IHS and they both run 15°C cooler at 4.6-4.7GHz@60°C with custom loop. And from seeing the temperature under overclock I will have to delid those skylake-x too.parlinone - Tuesday, July 4, 2017 - link
What I find most shocking is a $329 Ryzen 1700 outperforms a $389 7800X at Cinebench...for less than half the power.The performance to power ratio translates to 239% in AMD's advantage. That's unprecedented, and I never imagined to see that day.
dwade123 - Thursday, July 6, 2017 - link
Only in Cinebench and AES is where Ryzen look good. 7800x beats the 1800x in everything else in this review. Ryzen is too inconsistent in both productivity and gaming. It is priced accordingly to that and not out of good faith from AMD. This is also the reason why Coffee Lake will only top out at 6 cores. because it can consistently beat the best Ryzen model.IGTrading - Friday, July 14, 2017 - link
I absolutely disagree with the conclusion. The correct conclusion can only drawn when comparin apples to apples. Oh, if you want to be objective and compare apples to oranges, you can't just take into considerantion today's benchmark results and price. Have we forgotten about the days we REVIEWERS were complaining about the high power consumption of Pentium 4 and Pentium D ?! What about the FX 8350 ?! Is power consumption not an objective metric anymore?! What about platform price ?! What about price/performance?! Why do some people get suddenly blinded by marketing money?! Conclusion: i-7900X is the highest performance the home power user can get today if money for the CPU , mobo and subsequent power consumption are not an issue. Comparing apples to apples or core for core, the i7820X clearly shows Intel's anxiety with Zen. The i7820X consumes 40% more than the AMD 1800X and costs 20% more while its motherboard is 200% the price. So paying all these heaps of money, CORE for CORE the Intel 7820X is a bit faster in some benchmarks, as it should be considering the power consumption and price you pay, EQUAL in a few benchmarks and SLOWER in a few other benchmarks. Would you pay the serious extra money for this ?! And put up with the 40% higher power consumption and heat generation ?! Come ooooon ...azulon1 - Sunday, July 16, 2017 - link
Wow how exactly is this fair that Intel gets a pass for gaming, because there were problems with the problem with the platform. If I remember Rison also had a problem with gaming. But it didn’t stop you guys then did it. don’t group me into AMD fanboy, But why such a bais?Soheil - Saturday, July 29, 2017 - link
no one answer to me? why 1600X better than 1700 and 1700X and some time better than 1800X?what about 1600? is good like as 1600X for gaming or not?