Launching the #CPUOverload Project: Testing Every x86 Desktop Processor since 2010
by Dr. Ian Cutress on July 20, 2020 1:30 PM ESTGaming Tests: Chernobylite
Despite the advent of recent TV shows like Chernobyl, recreating the situation revolving around the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the concept of nuclear fallout and the town of Pripyat have been popular settings for a number of games – mostly first person shooters. Chernobylite is an indie title that plays on a science-fiction survival horror experience and uses a 3D-scanned recreation of the real Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. It involves challenging combat, a mix of free exploration with crafting and non-linear story telling. While still in early access, it is already picking up plenty of awards.
I picked up Chernobylite while still in early access, and was impressed by its ingame benchmark, showcasing complex building structure with plenty of trees and structures where aliasing becomes important. The in-game benchmark is an on-rails experience through the scenery, covering both indoor and outdoor scenes – it ends up being very CPU limited in the way it is designed. We have taken an offline version of Chernobylite to use in our tests, and we are testing the following settings combinations:
- 360p Low
- 1440p Low,
- 4K Low
- 1080p Max
For automation purposes, the game has no flags to initiate benchmark mode. We delete the movies from the install directory to speed up entering the game, and use timers and keypresses to start the benchmark mode. The game puts out a benchmark results file, however this only shows average frame rates, not frame times. In-game settings are controlled by copying pre-arranged .ini files into the relevant location. We do as many runs within 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination, and then take averages.
| AnandTech | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
| Average FPS |  |
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All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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Smell This - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
;- )
Oxford Guy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
"If there’s a CPU, old or new, you want to see tested, then please drop a comment below."• i7-3820. This one is especially interesting because it had roughly the same number of transistors as Piledriver on roughly the same node (Intel 32nm vs. GF 32 nm).
• 5775C
• 5675C (which outperformed and matched the 5775C in some games due to thermal throttling)
• 5775C with TDP bypassed or increased if this is possible, to avoid the aforementioned throttling
• I would really really like you to add Deserts of Kharak to your games test suite. It is the only game I know of that showed Piledriver beating Intel's chips. That unusual performance suggests that it was possible to get more performance out of Piledriver if developers targeted that CPU for optimization and/or the game's engine somehow simply suited it particularly.
• 8320E or 8370E at 4.7 GHz (non-turbo) with 2133 CAS 9-11-10 RAM, the most optimal Piledriver setup. The 9590 was not the most performant of the FX line, likely because of the turbo. A straight overclock coupled with tuned RAM (not 1600 CAS 10 nonsense) makes a difference. 4.7 GHz is a realistic speed achievable by a large AIO or small loop. If you want air cooling only then drop to 4.5 Ghz but keep the fast RAM. The point of testing this is to see what people were able to get in the real world from the AMD alternative for all the years they had to wait for Zen. Since we were stuck with Piledriver as the most performant Intel alternative for so so many years it's worth including for historical context. The "E" models don't have to be used but their lower leakage makes higher clocks less stressful on cooling than a 9000 series. 4.7 GHz was obtainable on a cheap motherboard like the Gigabyte UD3P, with strong airflow to the VRM sink.
• VIA's highest-performance model. If it won't work with Windows 10 then run the tests on it with 8.1. The thing is, though... VIA released an update fairly recently that should make it compatible with Windows 10. I saw Youtube footage of it gaming, in fact, with a discrete card. It really would be a refreshing thing to see VIA included, even though it's such a bit player.
• Lynnfield at 3 GHz.
• i7-9700K, of course.
Oxford Guy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Regarding Deserts of Kharak... It may be that it took advantage of the extra cores. That would make it noteworthy also as an early example of a game that scaled to 8 threads.Oxford Guy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Also, the Chinese X86 CPU, the one based on Zen 1, would be very nice to have included.Oxford Guy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
VIA CPUs tested with games as recently as 2019 (there was another video of the quad core but I didn't find it today with a quick search):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPvKwqSMo-k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da0BkEW459E
The Zhaoxin KaiXian KX-U6880A would be nice to see included, not just the Chinese Zen 1 derivative.
Oxford Guy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
"due to thermal throttling"TDP throttling, to be more accurate. I suppose it could throttle due to current demand rather than temp.
axer1234 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
honestly i would love to know how different generation processor perform today especially higher core count. like prescott series pentium 4 athlon II phenomX6 core2 duo core2quad nehlam sandy bridge bulldozer etc with todays generation work loads and offeringin many scenario like word excel ppt photoshop it all works very well still in many offices
its just the new generation of application slowing it down for almost the same work etc
herefortheflops - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
@Dr. Cutress.,As someone that has been dealing with similar or greater product testing challenges and configuration complexity for the better part of a decade or so, I would like to commend you for your ambitious goals and efforts so far. Additionally, I could be of high value to your effort if you are willing to discuss. I have reviewed in-depth the bench database (as well as competing websites) and I have come to the conclusion the Anandtech bench data is of very limited usefulness at present--and would require some significant changes to the data being collected/reported and the way things have been done to this point. I do understand where the industry is going, the questions the readers are going to be asking of the data, and the major comparisons that will be attempted with the data. Unfortunately, much of your effort may easily become irrelevant unless you proceed with some extreme caution to provide data with more utility. I also know methods to accomplish the desired result while reducing the size and cost of the task at hand. Reply by e-mail if you are interested in talking.
Best,
-A potential contributor to your effort.
Bensam123 - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link
Despite how impressive this is, one thing that hasn't been tackled is still multiplayer performance and it vastly changes recommendations for CPUs (doesn't effect GPUs as much).It goes from recommending a 6 core chip hands down to trying to make a case for 4 core chips still in this day and age. I own a 3900x and 2800 and I can tell you hands down Modern Warfare will gobble 70% of that 12 core chip, sometimes a bit more, that's equivalent to maxing out a 8 core of the same series. That vastly changes recommendations and data points. It's not just Modern Warfare. Overwatch, Black Ops 3(same engine as MW), and recently Hyper Scape will will make use of those extra cores. I have a widget to monitor CPU utilization in the background and I can check Task Manager. If I had a better video card I'm positive it would've sucked down even more of those 12 cores (my GPU is running at 100% load according to MSI AB).
This is a huge deal and while I understand, I get it, it's hard to reliably reproduce the same results in a multiplayer environment because it changes so much and generally seen as taboo from a hardware benchmarking standpoint, it is vastly different then singleplayer workloads to the point at which it requires completely different recommendations. Given how many people are making expensive hardware choices specifically because they play multiplayer games, I would even say most tech reviews in this day and age are irrelevant for CPU recommendations outside of the casual single player gamer. GPU recommendations are still very much on par, CPU is not remotely.
I talk about this frequently on my stream and why I still recommended the 1600 AF even when it was sitting at $105-125, it's a steal if you play multiplayer games, while most people that either read benchmarking websites or run benchmarks themselves will start making a case for a 4c Intel. 6 core is a must at the very least in this day and age.
Anandtech it's time to tread new ground and go into the uncharted area. Singleplayer results and multiplayer results are too different, you can't keep spinning the wheel and expect things to remain the same. You can verify this yourself just by running task manager in the background while playing one of the games I mentioned at the lowest settings regardless of being able to repeat those results exactly you'll see it's definitely a multi-core landscape for newer multiplayer games.
Not even touched on in the article.
Bensam123 - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link
70%, I have SMT off for clarification.