The Intel Kaby Lake-X i7 7740X and i5 7640X Review: The New Single-Threaded Champion, OC to 5GHz
by Ian Cutress on July 24, 2017 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Kaby Lake
- X299
- Basin Falls
- Kaby Lake-X
- i7-7740X
- i5-7640X
Benchmarking Performance: CPU Office Tests
The office programs we use for benchmarking aren't specific programs per-se, but industry standard tests that hold weight with professionals. The goal of these tests is to use an array of software and techniques that a typical office user might encounter, such as video conferencing, document editing, architectural modeling, and so on and so forth.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Chromium Compile (v56)
Our new compilation test uses Windows 10 Pro, VS Community 2015.3 with the Win10 SDK to compile a nightly build of Chromium. We've fixed the test for a build in late March 2017, and we run a fresh full compile in our test. Compilation is the typical example given of a variable threaded workload - some of the compile and linking is linear, whereas other parts are multithreaded.
Our Chrome Compile test is a mix of load, but also loves L3 cache. We've seen before that the L3 victim cache on AMD can be a defecit here, but even then the Core i5 cannot overcome the 3:1 thread deficit to the Ryzen 5 CPUs. The Core i7-7740X hits the nail on the head for threads and single thread performance, although users that play in this space would look straight to the Core i7-7800X, and likely decide that +16.5% better performance is worth the +18.2% extra cost.
PCMark8: link
Despite originally coming out in 2008/2009, Futuremark has maintained PCMark8 to remain relevant in 2017. On the scale of complicated tasks, PCMark focuses more on the low-to-mid range of professional workloads, making it a good indicator for what people consider 'office' work. We run the benchmark from the commandline in 'conventional' mode, meaning C++ over OpenCL, to remove the graphics card from the equation and focus purely on the CPU. PCMark8 offers Home, Work and Creative workloads, with some software tests shared and others unique to each benchmark set.
SYSmark 2014 SE: link
SYSmark is developed by Bapco, a consortium of industry CPU companies. The goal of SYSmark is to take stripped down versions of popular software, such as Photoshop and Onenote, and measure how long it takes to process certain tasks within that software. The end result is a score for each of the three segments (Office, Media, Data) as well as an overall score. Here a reference system (Core i3-6100, 4GB DDR3, 256GB SSD, Integrated HD 530 graphics) is used to provide a baseline score of 1000 in each test.
A note on context for these numbers. AMD left Bapco in the last two years, due to differences of opinion on how the benchmarking suites were chosen and AMD believed the tests are angled towards Intel processors and had optimizations to show bigger differences than what AMD felt was present. The following benchmarks are provided as data, but the conflict of opinion between the two companies on the validity of the benchmark is provided as context for the following numbers.
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MTEK - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Random amusement: Sandy Bridge got 1st place in the Shadow of Mordor bench w/ a GTX 1060.shabby - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
That's funny and sad at the same time unfortunately.mapesdhs - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
S'why I love my 5GHz 2700K (daily system). And the other one (gaming PC). And the third (benchmarking rig), the two I've sold to companies, another built for a friend, another set aside to sell, another on a shelf awaiting setup... :D 5GHz every time. M4E, TRUE, one fan, 5 mins, done.GeorgeH - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Those decreased overclocking performance numbers aren't just red flags, they're blinding red flashing lights with the power of a thousand suns.Seriously, that should have been the entire article - this platform is a disaster if it loses performance under sustained load. That's not hyperbole, it's cold hard truth. Sustained load is part of what HEDT is about, and with X299 you're spending more money for significantly less performance?
I sincerely hope you're going to get to the bottom of this and not just shrug and let it slide away as a mystery. Hopefully it's just platform immaturity that gets ironed out, but at the present time I have absolutely no clue how you could recommend X299 in any way. Significantly less sustained performance is a do not pass go, do not collect $200, turn the car around, oh hell no, all caps showstopper.
deathBOB - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
But they're big AVX workloads. We know heat and power get a bit crazy with the AVX, and at some point we should just step back and realize that overclocking may not be appropriate for these workloads.GeorgeH - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
But other AVX workloads didn't have the issue.Until we know exactly what is going on and what will be required to fix it, I can't comprehend how anyone can regard X299, at least with the quad core CPUs, as anything but "Nope". Maybe a BIOS update will help, or tuning the overclock, but maybe it'll require new motherboard revisions or delidding the CPU. I'm sure it'll get fixed/understood at some point, but for now recommending this platform is really hard to accept as a good idea.
MrSpadge - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
> But other AVX workloads didn't have the issue.Using a few of those instructions is different from hammering the CPU with them. Not sure what this software does, but this could easily explain it.
Icehawk - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
I do a lot of Handbrake encoding to HEVC which will peg all cores on my O/C'd 3770, it uses AVX but obviously a much older version with less functionality, and I can have it going indefinitely without issue.I've looked at the 7800\7820 as an upgrade but if they cannot sustain performance with a reasonable cooling setup then there is no point. The KBL-X parts don't offer enough of a performance improvement to be worth the cost of the X299 mobo which also seem to be having teething problems.
Future proofing is laughable, let's say you bought a 7740x today with the thought of upgrading in two years to a higher core count proc - how likely is it that your motherboard and the new proc will have the same pinout? History says it ain't happening at Camp Intel.
At this point I'm giving a hard pass to this generation of Intel products and hope that v2 will fix these issues. By then AMD may have come close enough in ST performance where I would consider them again, I really want the best ST & MT performance I can get in the $350 CPU zone which has traditionally been the top i7. AMD's MT performance almost tempts me to just build an encoding box.
I loved my Athlon back in the day, anyone remember Golden Fingers? :D
mapesdhs - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Golden Fingers... I had to look that up, blimey! :DDrKlahn - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
I recently went from a 4.6GHz 3770K to a 1700X @ 4GHz at home. I play some older games that don't thread well (WoW being one of them). The Ryzen is at least as fast or faster in those workloads. Run Handbrake or Sony Movie Studio and the Ryzen is MUCH faster. We use built 6 core 5820K stations at work for some users and have recently added Ryzen 1600 stations due to the tremendous cost savings. We have yet to run into any tangible difference between the two platforms.Intel does have a lead in ST, but tests like these emphasize it to the point it seems like a bigger advantage than it is in reality. The only time I could see the premium worth it is if you have a task that needs ST the majority of the time (or a program is simply very poorly optimized for Ryzen). Otherwise AMD is offering an extraordinary value and as you point out AM4 will at least be supported for 2 more spins.