Updated Smartphone & GPU Bench DBs Live!
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 24, 2011 12:08 AM EST- Posted in
- Site Updates
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- GPUs
We've been running our public performance database tool, Bench, for a few years now. Bench allows you to have direct access to the performance data we use in our reviews, segmented according to product category. Today we have five major product categories in Bench: CPU, GPU, Smartphone, Mobile and SSDs.
CPU Bench is the longest running without significant changes. You can actually compare Intel's most recently released Sandy Bridge E CPU to an old Core 2 Duo E6550 from four years ago in a number of tests using the tool.
GPU Bench has always posed a more significant challenge. Drivers and test platforms change very frequently, which often precludes us from keeping a running tally of benchmarks similar to what we do on the CPU side. We used our Radeon HD 7970 review as the kicking off point for our brand new PCIe 3.0 testbed for GPUs going forward - a platform we hope to keep in place for at least the next 12 months. While all of this data is already in the 7970 review, if you want to do any head to head comparisons between GPUs you can now do so using our updated GPU Bench 2012 database. The previous version of the database (GPU Bench 2011) is still available.
Similarly, we've finally updated our Smartphone Bench database. Smartphone Bench 2011 features all of the tests and test data we've been using in our most recent smartphone reviews (e.g. Droid RAZR). We opted against calling it Smartphone Bench 2012 because we plan on updating some of the benchmarks in the new year (e.g. you may have seen one of our new battery life tests in our Eee Pad Transformer Prime Follow-up).
We are in the preliminary stages of planning AnandTech's site refresh for 2012, including updates to Bench. If you have any suggestions you'd like to see implemented, please feel free to leave them as comments here. We already have a number of ideas of things we're trying to implement, but your opinions are the most important here so I'm always eager to listen if you're willing to share.
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lemonadesoda - Sunday, December 25, 2011 - link
It is great you have included some of the older generation devices, such as ATi 3xxx series and nV 2xx series. It makes the database much more useful. However, for the older devices, and their comparison to current products, it would be useful to include comparatives of what are the "most popular" cards, and not just the high end cards. That way the database becomes a useful comparison for real-world upgrades for real-world people and their real-world budgets, e.g. when someone goes from a e.g. 3850 to 6770 or GTX260 to GTX 560 Ti.I know it takes significant time to build that database... and you can't put every card under the sun there. But add an extra card for each generation reflecting the "popular choice" rather than just the high-end of that generation.
imaheadcase - Sunday, December 25, 2011 - link
Why did you leave out SLI benchmarks to compare?Ryan Smith - Sunday, December 25, 2011 - link
We will be adding more video cards and configurations - including SLI and CF - over the coming weeks. The current cards in Bench are only those we had time to run for our 7970 review, hence the limited selection.AkshayWalvekar - Sunday, December 25, 2011 - link
Hey guys still the GTX 560 (non ti) version is missing.Its quite un convenient as there are many budget users who keep asking about a 6870 vs GTX 560. And its not available here.
venomblade - Sunday, December 25, 2011 - link
Why're older gpu's like the HD 3870 in the 2012 list?Ryan Smith - Monday, December 26, 2011 - link
There are still people using them (as evidenced by some of the other comments here) and they provide a good reference point to measuring GPU performance gains over the last few years. Plus they're rather easy to add since only half our suite is DX10, so it doesn't take much time (relative to DX11 cards) to collect the data.rastamanphan - Sunday, December 25, 2011 - link
Anand,Thanks for the head start on the 2012 Bench! Even more thanks for including the 8800GT! Yes, I'm still rocking it and it's managing to hold its own on a Starcraft 2 and BF3 (med settings). Good to see that a four year old piece of tech is still working strong.
p.s Happy Holidays
~Rasta
bgelfand - Sunday, December 25, 2011 - link
Any phone, Smartphone or not, is first a communications device - a device for transmitting and receiving information, speech, text, and multimedia messages. The only catagories in your database that remotely address the primary function of the phone are battery life and Wi-Fi speed. All the other catagories seem related to gaming in one form or another.Much hard work has gone into collecting the data, but it is useless for evaluating a phone.
just4U - Sunday, December 25, 2011 - link
What I'd like to see is lower end and higher end cards all bunched together... For someone upgrading it's always nice to see such comparisons to gauge if a cheaper newer card is going to be better then what is currently in an older system.Driver updates and such may be pertinent on competing current hardware but for older stuff.. your just using it as a gauge so it's less relevant overall.
dj christian - Sunday, December 25, 2011 - link
I know some benches are synthetic which is great for everyone and makes it easy to do a comparison however those custom benches you make, it would be great if you explain how excecute them because making direct comparisons to the Anand benches would useless otherwise.Generally speaking of the CPU-bench that is.
And who uses 3dsmax9 for benchmarking. I don't know if you use samples in it but it's a pain to make a simple comparison nonetheless. The Windows Media Encoder 9 is an another example, how do you benchmark it? Cinebench is a perfect example for a good synthetic benchmark.
/edit And i love to have the classic Anandtech theme from 2000. Yes i used the waybackmachine. Good old memories.