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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vasily - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
You might want to check out Phoronix Test Suite and openbenchmarking.org.https://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/
https://openbenchmarking.org/
colinisation - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
would love to see the following processors added5775C (overclocked to 4Ghz) - just purely to see what impact the eDRAM has on workloads
4770K
7600K
Phenom II X4
Highest Bulldozer core
VIA's highest performance x86 core
faizoff - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
What a gargantuan project this is going to be. And I cannot wait, oddly enough I've been using the bench tool the past few weeks to get a sense of how much difference an upgrade for me would make.I am probably one of the many (or few) people that have still held on to their i5 2500k and this is one of the places I can select that CPU and compare the benchmarks with newer releases.
This project looks to be an amazing read once all done and will be especially looking forward to those segments "how well does x CPU run today?"
Alim345 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Are you going to make benchmark scripts available? They should be useful for individual comparisons, since many users might have overclocked CPUs which were more common in 2010-2015.brantron - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Just to fill out the starting set:7700K needs a common AMD counterpart, i.e. Ryzen 2600
Sandy or Ivy Bridge i7
Haswell i7
That would also make for a good article, as it should be possible to overclock any of those to ~4.5 GHz for a more apples to apples comparison.
StormyParis - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Thank you for that. My main question is not "what should I buy" because that's always very well covered, and on a fixed budget there's never much choice anyway, but "should I upgrade *now* which is only worth it when last time's amount of money gets you at least 2x performance. I'ive got a 7yo Core i5... I'll look into it !eastcoast_pete - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Ian, thanks for this!One aspect I've wondered about for a while is whether you could include performance/Watt in your tests and comparisons going forward? I know that's usually done for server CPUs, but I also find it of interest for desktop and laptop CPUs.
thebigteam - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
I think I have the below list of Intel CPUs available if needed, likely with working mobos too. Would be very happy to clean out the closet and get these to you guys :) Likely some 2009/2010 Athlons as wellE8400
i3 530
i3 540
i5 760
i5 2500
i5 4670K
inighthawki - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Thank you so much for changing your gaming benchmark methodology. I tend to play my games at 1440p on lowest settings for maximum framerates, which is far more often than not CPU bound. It was always so annoying seeing the benchmarks be GPU bound when I'm trying to see how much a new CPU helps.Smell This - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link
Chicken(lol)
With AM3, AM2+ and AM2 processors, AM3+ processors broke backwards-compatibility.
A mobo like the MSI 790FX K9A2 Platinum transitioned nearly 250 processors from S754-939, to AM2-AM3, beginning with the single-core Athlon 64 3000+ 'Orleans' up to the PhII x6 DDR3 Thubans.
These were the progeny of the K8 or 'Hammer' projects. A Real Man would never leave them behind ...
https://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-MSI/K9A2_Platinum_%...