Benchmarking Performance: CPU Office Tests

The office programs we use for benchmarking aren't specific programs per-se, but industry standard tests that hold weight with professionals. The goal of these tests is to use an array of software and techniques that a typical office user might encounter, such as video conferencing, document editing, architectural modeling, and so on and so forth.

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

Chromium Compile (v56)

Our new compilation test uses Windows 10 Pro, VS Community 2015.3 with the Win10 SDK to compile a nightly build of Chromium. We've fixed the test for a build in late March 2017, and we run a fresh full compile in our test. Compilation is the typical example given of a variable threaded workload - some of the compile and linking is linear, whereas other parts are multithreaded.

Office: Chromium Compile (v56)

PCMark8: link

Despite originally coming out in 2008/2009, Futuremark has maintained PCMark8 to remain relevant in 2017. On the scale of complicated tasks, PCMark focuses more on the low-to-mid range of professional workloads, making it a good indicator for what people consider 'office' work. We run the benchmark from the commandline in 'conventional' mode, meaning C++ over OpenCL, to remove the graphics card from the equation and focus purely on the CPU. PCMark8 offers Home, Work and Creative workloads, with some software tests shared and others unique to each benchmark set.

Office: PCMark8 Creative (non-OpenCL)

Office: PCMark8 Home (non-OpenCL)

Office: PCMark8 Work (non-OpenCL)

SYSmark 2014 SE: link

SYSmark is developed by Bapco, a consortium of industry CPU companies. The goal of SYSmark is to take stripped down versions of popular software, such as Photoshop and Onenote, and measure how long it takes to process certain tasks within that software. The end result is a score for each of the three segments (Office, Media, Data) as well as an overall score. Here a reference system (Core i3-6100, 4GB DDR3, 256GB SSD, Integrated HD 530 graphics) is used to provide a baseline score of 1000 in each test.

A note on context for these numbers. AMD left Bapco in the last two years, due to differences of opinion on how the benchmarking suites were chosen and AMD believed the tests are angled towards Intel processors and had optimizations to show bigger differences than what AMD felt was present. The following benchmarks are provided as data, but the conflict of opinion between the two companies on the validity of the benchmark is provided as context for the following numbers.

Office: SYSMark 2014 SE (Overall)

Benchmarking Performance: CPU Encoding Tests Benchmarking Performance: CPU Legacy Tests
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  • Ian Cutress - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    lol yup, just saw it. Should be 889, not 89.
  • T1beriu - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Congrats on getting the review out on day one!

    Blender 2.78 chart has wrong result number for 1300X.

    http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph11658/8919...
  • Ian Cutress - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    We always get CPU reviews out on day one... ;)
    Blender is fixed.
  • T1beriu - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Another chart that needs a little bit of edit - "Title" at the bottom.

    http://images.anandtech.com/doci/11658/combined_cp...
  • jjj - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    For value,in the real world mixed or lightly threaded should have more weigh, especially in the lower end where low core count and lower clocks can be a limitation.
    For power, when comparing diff numbers of cores , the system power is important too- lets say you can have a dual core system at 60W vs a quad at 70W peak. Even if the dual core is more efficient, at the system level the quad wins.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Performance is nice and price is good IF you have a dGPU. For entry-level gaming/HTPC builds, that Intel IGP is more valuable than most people think, especially given the amount of media decode/encode power it has. All you need is i3 and you can be watching Netflix 4K or UHD Blu-ray and then switch to playing 1080p 60fps Rocket League. You can do the latter with R3 if you buy a dGPU, but sadly there's no current way to do Netflix or UHD Blu-ray without Intel SGX.
  • MajGenRelativity - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    I think that's why AMD also picked this time to release Bristol Ridge
  • mczak - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Yes, imho these cpus are only mildly interesting.
    In this cpu performance segment, chances are pretty high that a integrated gpu would be good enough. (Sure there's always someone who has a need for high cpu / low gpu, or low cpu / high gpu performance, but I don't think that's the norm.)
    So, if a integrated gpu is good enough, with factoring in the cost of an additional gpu amd can't compete on price here. The really interesting competition from AMD in this lower end market has to come from Raven Ridge APUs.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    In the wise words of Peter Klavin, "Totes McGotes."
  • T1beriu - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Done! Thanks.

    When should I come back for the full review?

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