Intel Haswell-EP Xeon 14 Core Review: E5-2695 V3 and E5-2697 V3
by Ian Cutress on November 20, 2014 10:00 AM ESTGaming Benchmarks
While the last thought on the minds of most Xeon users is related to gaming, we frequently get requests to test gaming performance on Xeons. As a result we strap the Xeon to a regular consumer level motherboard that can support them and add in one or two GPUs to see how they perform and if more cores makes a difference over the drop in frequency. Unfortunately due to the orientation of the PCIe slots on the 2P board, we were unable to test the dual E5-2697 v3 configuration.
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. We test at 1920x1080 on Ultra graphical settings.
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Notice zero results from Tomb Raider from our new CPUs? This benchmark does not seem to like any arrangement above 12 cores per socket, and refuses to run.
Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is a benchmarking wet dream – a highly complex benchmark that can bring the toughest setup and high resolutions down into single figures. Having an extreme SSAO setting can do that, but at the right settings Sleeping Dogs is highly playable and enjoyable. We run the basic benchmark program laid out in the Adrenaline benchmark tool, and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Battlefield 4
The EA/DICE series that has taken countless hours of my life away is back for another iteration, using the Frostbite 3 engine. AMD is also piling its resources into BF4 with the new Mantle API for developers, designed to cut the time required for the CPU to dispatch commands to the graphical sub-system. For our test we use the in-game benchmarking tools and record the frame time for the first ~70 seconds of the Tashgar single player mission, which is an on-rails generation of and rendering of objects and textures. We test at 1920x1080 at Ultra settings.
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mapesdhs - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Small point for C-ray: the benchmark home page URL is at my sgidepot site, not
on the Blinkenlights site, because the latter is just a mirror (and it's down atm,
hence why it should not be used as the home URL for any of my pages, ie. I have
no control over the Blinkenlights site).
Ian.
cynic783 - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
What is going on at Anand. Why are they doing desktop tests on a server?What happened to the server benchmarks, e.g. SQL, VM, etc.
WGAF about browser and gaming benchmarks on a datacenter server? Seriously.
romrunning - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
I agree. No database benchmarks and especially no VM benchmarks make this a sad review.This is especially egregious when you add in useless web browsing tests. No one who is looking at this class of processor is really worried about web browsing on it.
deontologist - Friday, November 21, 2014 - link
Looks like when Anand left he took half the intellect away from the team ... This is a piss poor review ... Where are my separate idle/load power usage data? Why are you guys benching games? Ffs this site has gone done the tubes with slow reviews and on top of that useless reviews. Anand must be so proud of you kids.androticus - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
Don't you people have editors? I understand not all authors are native English speakers, but sheesh at least get someone to edit before publication.linuxnizer - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
Sever class CPU but many many gaming and video benchmarks!!!! Seriously ?!!No enterprise class tests!
Like DB tests / VM tests / Java EE tests / web tests with thousands of hits per second.
HollyDOL - Saturday, November 22, 2014 - link
I have to agree... as a server cpu review those benchmarks are kind of useless.Anybody here who would buy $4000 cpu to play games (...most of which epically suck at utilizing 4 cores properly)? For gaming that cpu has to suck anyway since it's not it's purpose.
It's seriously missing server usage tests... web hosting, heavy db and vm, ldap, sap, encryption etc. etc. - it was said here many times over.
Jurgen_modeling - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link
Dear Ian,Thank you very much for posting this 14-core review. Could you please confirm that the 2697 v3 even under full (100%), continuous load (e.g. over >6 h) has a steady-state frequency of 3.1 GHz and does not clock down to 2.6 GHz as suggested by the base frequency of the processor?
I noticed that in your 12-core review, the same thing happened with base frequencies being below the steady-state frequencies.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8679/intel-haswellep...
The same thing seems to have happened here for the 10-core CPUs.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8584/intel-xeon-e5-2...
Even the 18-core model seems to have a base clock frequency of around 2.6 GHz and not 2.3 as suggested by the processor label.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8730/intel-haswellep...
If possible, I would love to see a 2-D version of the two frequency response profiles which you published on the last site of this 14-core review. 3D is much harder to read out data.
Thank you & Kind regards
Juergen
Jurgen_modeling - Sunday, November 23, 2014 - link
Another comment re gaming benchmarks and Xeon v3: These just hurt my heart. The 2P and 4P Xeon server market is already only relevant for a very specific market of people. If anyone buys a Xeon v3 server and plans to game on this CPU, I don't think any review can save such a high-end Xeon-gaming enthusiast. (-:Cheers, Juergen
daxomni - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link
Why isn't anyone from the staff responding to the glaring omissions and repeated complaints? What's the point of having a comments section if the staff couldn't care less what the readers are actually looking for in a server review? This article reads like something you'd do during garbage time on a Friday afternoon for a weekend release, not as a core review of expensive hardware on a strict schedule.