Benchmarking Performance: CPU Rendering Tests

Rendering tests are a long-time favorite of reviewers and benchmarkers, as the code used by rendering packages is usually highly optimized to squeeze every little bit of performance out. Sometimes rendering programs end up being heavily memory dependent as well - when you have that many threads flying about with a ton of data, having low latency memory can be key to everything. Here we take a few of the usual rendering packages under Windows 10, as well as a few new interesting benchmarks.

Corona 1.3

Corona is a standalone package designed to assist software like 3ds Max and Maya with photorealism via ray tracing. It's simple - shoot rays, get pixels. OK, it's more complicated than that, but the benchmark renders a fixed scene six times and offers results in terms of time and rays per second. The official benchmark tables list user submitted results in terms of time, however I feel rays per second is a better metric (in general, scores where higher is better seem to be easier to explain anyway). Corona likes to pile on the threads, so the results end up being very staggered based on thread count.

Rendering: Corona Photorealism

Blender 2.78

For a render that has been around for what seems like ages, Blender is still a highly popular tool. We managed to wrap up a standard workload into the February 5 nightly build of Blender and measure the time it takes to render the first frame of the scene. Being one of the bigger open source tools out there, it means both AMD and Intel work actively to help improve the codebase, for better or for worse on their own/each other's microarchitecture.

Rendering: Blender 2.78

LuxMark

As a synthetic, LuxMark might come across as somewhat arbitrary as a renderer, given that it's mainly used to test GPUs, but it does offer both an OpenCL and a standard C++ mode. In this instance, aside from seeing the comparison in each coding mode for cores and IPC, we also get to see the difference in performance moving from a C++ based code-stack to an OpenCL one with a CPU as the main host. 

Rendering: LuxMark CPU C++Rendering: LuxMark CPU OpenCL

POV-Ray 3.7

Another regular benchmark in most suites, POV-Ray is another ray-tracer but has been around for many years. It just so happens that during the run up to AMD's Ryzen launch, the code base started to get active again with developers making changes to the code and pushing out updates. Our version and benchmarking started just before that was happening, but given time we will see where the POV-Ray code ends up and adjust in due course.

Rendering: POV-Ray 3.7

Cinebench R15

The latest version of CineBench has also become one of those 'used everywhere' benchmarks, particularly as an indicator of single thread performance. High IPC and high frequency gives performance in ST, whereas having good scaling and many cores is where the MT test wins out. 

Rendering: CineBench 15 SingleThreaded

Rendering: CineBench 15 MultiThreaded

 

Benchmarking Performance: CPU System Tests Benchmarking Performance: CPU Web Tests
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  • ABR - Sunday, March 5, 2017 - link

    Are there any examples of games at 1080p where this actually matters? (I.e., not a drop from 132 to 108 fps, but from 65 to 53 or 42 to 34?)
  • ABR - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link

    I mean at 1080p. (Edit, edit...)
  • 0ldman79 - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link

    That's my thought as well.

    Seriously, it isn't like we're talking unplayable, it is still ridiculous gaming levels. It is almost guaranteed to be a scheduler problem in Windows judging by the performance deficit compared to other applications. If it isn't, it is still running very, very well.

    Hell, I can play practically anything I can think of on my FX 6300, I don't really *need* a better CPU right now, I'm just really, really tempted and looking for excuses (I can't encode at the same speed in software as my Nvidia encoder, damn, I need to upgrade...)
  • Outlander_04 - Monday, March 6, 2017 - link

    Do you think anyone building a computer with a $500 US chip is going to just be spending $120 on a 1080p monitor?
    More likely they will be building it for higher resolutions
  • Notmyusualid - Tuesday, March 7, 2017 - link

    I've seen it happen...
  • mdriftmeyer - Tuesday, March 7, 2017 - link

    Who gives a crap if you've seen it happen. Your experience is an anomaly relative to the totality of statistical data.
  • Notmyusualid - Wednesday, March 8, 2017 - link

    Or somebody was just happy with their existing screen?

    I can actually point to two friends with 1080 screens, both lovely water cooled rigs, one is determined to keep his high-freq 1080 screen, and the other one just doesn't care. So facts is facts son.

    I guess it is YOU that gives that crap afterall.
  • Zaggulor - Thursday, March 9, 2017 - link

    Statistical data suggests that people don't actually often get a new display when they change a GPU and quite often that same display will be moved to a new rig too.

    Average upgrade times for components are:

    CPU: ~4.5 years
    GPU: ~2.5 years
    Display: ~7 years

    These days you can also use any unused GPU resources for downsampling even if your CPU can't push any more frames. Both GPU vendors have build in support for it (VSR/DSR).
  • hyno111 - Wednesday, March 8, 2017 - link

    Or a $200 1080p/144Hz/Freesync monitor.
  • Marburg U - Sunday, March 5, 2017 - link

    I guess it's time to retire my Core 2 Quad.

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