The Intel Broadwell-E Review: Core i7-6950X, i7-6900K, i7-6850K and i7-6800K Tested
by Ian Cutress on May 31, 2016 2:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Enterprise
- Prosumer
- X99
- 14nm
- Broadwell-E
- HEDT
Office Performance: Extreme Editions
The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern during environments with a variable threaded workload. There is also an added issue of the motherboard remaining consistent, depending on how the motherboard manufacturer wants to add in their own boosting technologies over the ones that Intel would prefer they used. In order to remain consistent, we implement an OS-level unique high-performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Dolphin Benchmark: link
Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53 minutes.
WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
3D Particle Movement
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
Agisoft Photoscan – 2D to 3D Image Manipulation: link
Agisoft Photoscan creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.
HandBrake v0.9.9: link
For HandBrake, we take two videos (a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short) and convert them to x264 format in an MP4 container. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.
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chrisso - Friday, June 17, 2016 - link
The athlon xp chips and most of the pentium 3 equivalents beat the snot out of intel chips for quite a while actually. One of my mates was gobsmacked when I ran lost coast at 56 fps using a 3000+ I bought used from ebay for £28.A 3 gig pentium 4 could manage about 40.
lunchbox4k - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
The Athlon 64 (K8) and part of the Athlon (K7) was designed by Jim Keller, guess who designed ZEN?solomonshv - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
when AMD was better than intel, i stuck with intel because i was in high school and couldn't afford the an AMD processor. the cheapest San Diego class CPU was north of $300 and AMD was charging $1000 for the FX 57. i ended up getting a Pentium 4 630. overclocked it from 3GHz to 4.4GHz and was happy as can be.hoohoo - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Wait and see still seems like the best approach given the price of these CPUs.lunchbox4k - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
You can always do that, unless you always pay for the top chip, with technology wanting to double in performance every year for the same cost, some SOCs will be pennies in the near future.bronan - Tuesday, November 15, 2016 - link
I find that really the wrong approach, yes the piledriver suffered from the weird decision with the cache and that made it crinch instead of perform well. But they are still very well running cpu's which cost about a fraction of the insane high prices intel tends to give the endless just a bit high clockspeed and new socket models. All keep saying that they are such a big step forward while i see only a little step in reality and yes the insane slow build in gpu sucks so bad its not even worth using on anything. The big problem is that intel makes the non gpu version locked and lowers the clock on that too. While i am 1000% certain those would be the best and greatest overclockers.The silly gpu is forced on everybody, but i bet nobody ever use that crap.
JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Just FYI, a Darwin award is awarded to those who accidentally, involuntarily, and often stupidly remove themselves from the gene pool, permanently. While this (often) involves a lack of forethought which leads to the person's own death, accidents resulting in the person becoming permanently infertile also count.Someone could voluntarily and knowingly remove themselves from the gene pool, but because there is forethought to this action, I've never heard of a Darwin award for this.
I don't believe buying an overpriced processor equates to removing oneself from the gene pool.
Azethoth - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
It is even worse. Being able to afford this because you have so much money the cost does not even register means you are actually up for whatever the inverse darwin is. Statistically the wealth makes you live longer and healthier. You are not working 24/7 and you can certainly eat better and working out with a hot personal trainer and having wonderful vacations wherever you feel like going on the planet.cswor - Wednesday, June 8, 2016 - link
Or mommy and daddy have money.ddferrari - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Someone is trying way too hard to sound smart and condescending...