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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michael2k - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
Zen doesn't exist, yet, so cannot compete at all.When Zen does exist, however, AMD would literally win a Darwin Award if they offer more than a 10% discount for parts that perform similarly.
In other words, if Zen is capable of powering a 10 core part that offers 90% of the 6950X performance, expect it to cost $1,550. If it offers 110% of the performance, expect it to cost $1,725.
Spunjji - Wednesday, June 1, 2016 - link
There's a small fault in your logic, which is that if they priced it like Intel are here they would sell as few of them as Intel clearly expect to, and thus struggle to make the market share gains that they badly need.I'd expect a competitive product to cost something more like $1000 (at which price they would still be making PHENOMENAL margins) and force a price-drop from Intel. They're not going to give anything away for free, but they absolutely stand to benefit from being less obscenely liberal with their margins than Intel.
This is assuming they execute on time and as promised, which is, well, not very AMD of late.
cswor - Wednesday, June 8, 2016 - link
I agree. In their underdog position, they need to undercut and can still probably make a nice profit on a chip priced to sell larger volumes, assuming it performs and they can manufacture it.Azix - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
AMD might not have the luxury of not going for the jugular. If the yields aren't great maybe their prices will be that high. They won't gain market share/mind share with high prices though.just4U - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
They won't be that high. AMD has only been able to price their higher end consumer processor at intel pricing "once" (to my knowledge) and it didn't stay there long.nandnandnand - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
How do we know that Zen is that close to Broadwell in IPC (and Skylake, since there is very little difference)? I'd love for it to be true, but AMD's Zen 8 cores need to solidly beat Intel's quad cores and do almost as well in single threaded performance.retrospooty - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
" Zen is supposed to be really, really close to Broadwell in IPC"- What has AMD done in the past decade that makes you believe that? I will believe it when its released and retail units (not engineering samples) are independently tested. Until then I don't believe anything AMD says.
Drumsticks - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
I'm not about to sing the praises of AMD completely yet, but I think there's reason to believe they're more focused than they've been in the last ten years. On top of that, Jim Keller was good way back when, he's proved he still has great ideas now with Apple, so there's hope that Zen could really impress. They still have to execute (something we know isn't a given for AMD) but we'll know all in a few months time.If the rumors were true about Vega in October (I doubt they are), they could have a pretty nice high publicity 1-2 punch. It's unlikely Vega will show up then, but I'd be pretty happy if it did.
retrospooty - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
I hear you, and I have heard that too... But all the same, AMD's PR is always far more active than their engineering teams leading up to launch. If it comes out and is as fast as they seems o think it will be and doesn't have any major heat or power issues (that cause the need to clock it lower than expected) it may be good... All the same, its best to wait until retail chips are released, prices set and units reviewed to decide.michael2k - Tuesday, May 31, 2016 - link
I am enthusiastic too, but if Zen really is that powerful I cannot imagine it selling at 30% of Intel prices. The more powerful the part, the higher the price will be, up to 90% of Intel's prices for similar performance.