The Intel Xeon W Review: W-2195, W-2155, W-2123, W-2104 and W-2102 Tested
by Ian Cutress & Joe Shields on July 30, 2018 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Xeon
- Workstation
- ECC
- Skylake-SP
- Skylake-X
- Xeon-W
- Xeon Scalable
Benchmarking 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.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Corona 1.3: link
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.
Corona is very multi-threaded, so we expect most of the chips to push their legs on this one. The difference between the W-2195 and the Core i9-7980XE is much more as we expect for a fully MT test, with the W-2155 trading blows with the TR 1920X and the lower quad-core SKUs bringing up the rear.
Blender 2.78: link
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.
Blender is a very threaded test, but not completely, as we can see with the W-2195 still trailing even the Core i9-7960X. The W-2104 is pushing against the Core i5-6600K, despite the lower frequency, due to the quad-channel memory in play.
LuxMark v3.1: Link
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 3.7.1b4
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: link
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.
Cinebench is a 'classic' benchmark, despite being four generations behind the Cinema4D software at this point. The W-2195 goes toe-to-toe in the multithreaded test against the TR 1950X, but easily wins against it in the single threaded test. The W-2195 also beats the i9-7980XE in ST, but loses in MT.
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0ldman79 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Agreed.I imagine there will be several situations where the 6 core 12 thread i7 will outperform the i9 9700.
If the cache increase is enough that may not happen, but I'm not betting on it making up enough of a difference.
Icehawk - Friday, August 3, 2018 - link
The 8086 is functionally equivalent to the 8700, they trade blows in a pretty tight grouping so I don’t mind that they used it’s scores.mode_13h - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Their pricing is nuts! These can only make sense if you're desperate for PCIe lanes or lots of cores (and, for some reason, don't want AMD).I have an older E5 Xeon and wanted to replace it with a W-series, but I can't justify this pricing (or the performance hit taken on the lower-core-count models, relative to desktop/E-series chips). I will have to opt for either an E-series Xeon or a Ryzen. At this rate, I see myself going for a 7 nm Ryzen, actually.
I think AMD is smart for using narrow AVX units. > 256-bit doesn't really make sense for much that wouldn't be better-served by a GPU. AVX-512 was a strategic misstep for Intel, and they're just going to have to live with it.
mode_13h - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
Oh, and let's not forget the IHS TIM issue.I'm not in the market for > 8 cores, but those who are will be disappointed by the rate of thermal throttling, due to this being their first (recent) workstation/HEDT chip with a non-soldered IHS.
0ldman79 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
I missed that.The IHS is using TIM even on the Xeon now?
That was honestly the one big reason I was looking at the Xeon. That's just a poor business decision. Xeon carries a price premium, they could at least guarantee the heat conductivity is going to be enough to keep it running cool and smoothly for the life of the chip.
mode_13h - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
I don't know this for a fact, but their Xeons are normally just binned HEDT processors without the special features fused off. So, I assume it's the same crappy TIM under that IHS.Comparing thermal performance @ the same clock for 10+ core models vs the i9's would easily show whether this is true.
HStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
"I think AMD is smart for using narrow AVX units. > 256-bit doesn't really make sense for much that wouldn't be better-served by a GPU. AVX-512 was a strategic misstep for Intel, and they're just going to have to live with it."AMD's AVX 2 is only 1/2 of Intel AVX 2 - that sound like they are using dual 128 bits instead 256 bits
Also keep in mind Intel CPU also have AVX 2 support your statement makes no sense.
HStewart - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/ryzens-halved...bill.rookard - Monday, July 30, 2018 - link
The thing is - and this is somewhat critical for a workstation based board, you're NOT really going to be using it for single threaded tasks. You'll be using software which has for the most part SHOULD be multi-threaded. Considering that the Threadripper is a 16c/32t CPU in the gen1, and running for a street price of about $800ish, and the gen2 is going to be a 32c/64t beastie of a CPU at a price of $1500ish, why would you spend $2500 on a 18c/36t Intel CPU?You could just as easily do some research to find people who have indeed put together some TR/ECC combos, and put a complete AMD system for the price of an Intel CPU alone.
mode_13h - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
That's nuts, dude. For software development, I want lotsa cores for parallel builds. When recompiling only a few files, I want fast single-thread perf.The reality is that there are still lots of places in day-to-day computing where single-thread perf matters. I don't know how you can possibly believe you accurately represent the needs of all workstation users, but you don't.