The Intel Core i3-7350K (60W) Review: Almost a Core i7-2600K
by Ian Cutress on February 3, 2017 8:00 AM ESTOffice Performance
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 ray traces 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.
The 7350K, with a high single thread frequency, easily surpasses the i5 and i7-2600K here. That being said, there's a slight difference to the Skylake i3, perhaps down to various generation specific code differences.
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.
WinRAR is more geared towards a variable threaded environment but also memory speed. The fact that the Core i5 is above the Core i3 shows that having actual cores helps, regardless of frequency - the additional hyperthreads for the Core i7-2600K also gives it the win, despite the memory frequency difference.
3D Particle Movement v2
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 the day. This is the second variant of this benchmark, fixing for false sharing in the first version, and lending itself to better multithreaded performance.
3DPMv2 is still new, so we don’t have too many results for it so far - but again this is another situation where having actual cores helps. This is typically when the threads are 'heavy', i.e. spill out into various caches and require more than 1/2 the cache shared within a core each. In the case of the Kaby Lake, this means that each core has 32KB of L1 - or 32KB per thread for the i5 but only 16KB per thread in the i3.
SYSMark 2014
Engineered by BAPco (to which Intel is a consortium member), this set of tests are designed to be an office/data/media/financial range of tests using common well-known CAD, image editing, web browsing and other tools to put out a score, where a score of 1000 is attributed to an old Core i3 using a mechanical harddrive. Here we report the overall score, however the test breakdowns can be found in Bench.
Because SYSMark is a variety of tests that rely on response and throughput, here is where the Core i3 comes into play over the i5 and i7-2600K. With the i5 it's about equal, but the years of IPC increases put the i7-2600K now behind the Kaby i3.
Web Benchmarks
On the lower end processors, general usability is a big factor of experience, especially as we move into the HTML5 era of web browsing. For our web benchmarks, we take well-known tests with Chrome as installed by SYSMark as a consistent browser.
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
Kraken favors high frequency and IPC, so the i3 takes a large lead over the i7-2600K for this sort of workload.
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Flunk - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link
Yeah, that is funny. I'm using a massively overpowered PSU myself. I have a 850W unit running a system with a moderately-overclocked i7-6700k and Geforce 1070. Had it left over from my previous massively overclocked i5-2500k and dual Radeon 7970s, even if it's aged badly (which it probably hasn't it's only a few years old) it should still be good for ages, especially as under-stressed as it now is.fanofanand - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Or you could just get Ryzen with the wraith cooler :)BrokenCrayons - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Perhaps when they're available for purchase I'll look into it. I'm interested in seeing what AMD does with mobile Ryzen, integrated graphics, and HBM for CPUs (unlikely) and how it changes laptop computing.fanofanand - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
The rumor mill has been churning and the consensus is that APU's will be available in 2018 with HBM. That will be a game changer for more than just mobile computing, but for small form factors as well. At least theoretically, experience tells me we should wait for reviews before deciding how profound the impact will be.Flunk - Monday, February 6, 2017 - link
The Wraith cooler is both marginal and loud compared to quality aftermarket coolers that cost as little as $35. Sure it's better than the last AMD stock cooler, but that's more a case of the last AMD stock cooler being total garbage.bananaforscale - Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - link
Hey, no dissing huge air coolers! :D (Yeah, I have one and it's so big it largely dictated the case selection. Does keep a hexcore Bulldozer at 52 degrees at 4 GHz tho.) There's also the niggle on Intel side that their enthusiast line has only made it to Broadwell-E, so that's what I'll be upgrading to. A huge upgrade in IPC (which probably won't rise much in the next years), more cores and lower power use per core. I figure I'll be upgrading next around 2025. :D I'm pondering whether I should go AIO liquid or custom...MonkeyPaw - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
More emphasis is going into the IGP.CaedenV - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
I doubt it is competition. I mean, lack of competition certainly explains the price per performance not coming down even though the manufacturing costs are getting cheaper, but I think that we have hit a performance wall.With every die shrink we can get more performance per watt... but the die is also more heat sensitive which kills stability for higher clocks. The idea that you can hit 5GHz on the new chips is nothing short of a miracle! But without a major increase in clock speed, then your performance is limited to the instruction sets and execution model... and that is much harder to change.
And that isn't hard to change because of competition. That is hard to change because PCs live and die by legacy applications. If I can't go back and play my 20 year old games every 3-4 years then I am going to get rather annoyed and not upgrade. If businesses can't run their 20 year old software every day, then they will get annoyed and not upgrade.
I think we are rather stuck with today's performance until we can get a new CPU architecture on the market that is as good as ARM on the minimum power consumption side, but as efficient as x86 on the performance per watt side... but whatever chip comes out will have to be able to emulate today's x86 technology fast enough to feel like it isn't a huge step backwards... and that is going to be hard to do!
xenol - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
Anandtech please do frame-time tests as well for games. Average frame rate is good and all, but if the processor causes dips in games that could lead to an unpleasant experience.Mr Perfect - Friday, February 3, 2017 - link
I would also be interested in seeing this.The site slips my mind, but somewhere tested multiple generations of i7s, i5s and i3s for minimum framerate and even the oldest i7s had a more consistent framerate then the newest i3s. It would be interesting to get AT's take on this.