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
Rise of the Tomb Raider
One of the newest games in the gaming benchmark suite is Rise of the Tomb Raider (RoTR), developed by Crystal Dynamics, and the sequel to the popular Tomb Raider which was loved for its automated benchmark mode. But don’t let that fool you: the benchmark mode in RoTR is very much different this time around.
Visually, the previous Tomb Raider pushed realism to the limits with features such as TressFX, and the new RoTR goes one stage further when it comes to graphics fidelity. This leads to an interesting set of requirements in hardware: some sections of the game are typically GPU limited, whereas others with a lot of long-range physics can be CPU limited, depending on how the driver can translate the DirectX 12 workload.
Where the old game had one benchmark scene, the new game has three different scenes with different requirements: Geothermal Valley (1-Valley), Prophet’s Tomb (2-Prophet) and Spine of the Mountain (3-Mountain) - and we test all three. These are three scenes designed to be taken from the game, but it has been noted that scenes like 2-Prophet shown in the benchmark can be the most CPU limited elements of that entire level, and the scene shown is only a small portion of that level. Because of this, we report the results for each scene on each graphics card separately.
Graphics options for RoTR are similar to other games in this type, offering some presets or allowing the user to configure texture quality, anisotropic filter levels, shadow quality, soft shadows, occlusion, depth of field, tessellation, reflections, foliage, bloom, and features like PureHair which updates on TressFX in the previous game.
Again, we test at 1920x1080 and 4K using our native 4K displays. At 1080p we run the High preset, while at 4K we use the Medium preset which still takes a sizable hit in frame rate.
It is worth noting that RoTR is a little different to our other benchmarks in that it keeps its graphics settings in the registry rather than a standard ini file, and unlike the previous TR game the benchmark cannot be called from the command-line. Nonetheless we scripted around these issues to automate the benchmark four times and parse the results. From the frame time data, we report the averages, 99th percentiles, and our time under analysis.
For all our results, we show the average frame rate at 1080p first. Mouse over the other graphs underneath to see 99th percentile frame rates and 'Time Under' graphs, as well as results for other resolutions. All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
#1 Geothermal Valley
MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Performance
1080p
4K
ASUS GTX 1060 Strix 6GB Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire R9 Fury 4GB Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire RX 480 8GB Performance
1080p
4K
RoTR: Geothermal Valley Conclusions
If we were testing a single GTX 1080 at 1080p, you might think that the graph looks a little odd. All the quad-core, non HT processors (so, the Core i5s) get the best frame rates and percentiles on this specific test on this specific hardware by a good margin. The rest of the tests do not mirror that result though, with the results ping-ponging between Intel and AMD depending on the resolution and the graphics card.
#2 Prophet's Tomb
MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Performance
1080p
4K
ASUS GTX 1060 Strix 6GB Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire R9 Fury 4GB Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire RX 480 8GB Performance
1080p
4K
RoTR: Prophet's Tomb Conclusions
For Prophet's Tomb, we again see the Core i5s pull a win at 1080p using the GTX 1080, but the rest of the tests are a mix of results, some siding with AMD and others for Intel. There is the odd outlier in the Time Under analysis, which may warrant further inspection.
#3 Spine of the Mountain
MSI GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Performance
1080p
4K
ASUS GTX 1060 Strix 6GB Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire R9 Fury 4GB Performance
1080p
4K
Sapphire RX 480 8GB Performance
1080p
4K
RoTR: Spine of the Mountain Conclusions
Core i5, we're assigning you to run at 1080p with a GTX 1080. That's an order. The rest of you, stand easy.
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iwod - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Intel has 10nm and 7nm by 2020 / 2021. Core Count is basically a solved problem, limited only by price.What we need is a substantial breakthrough in single thread performance. May be there are new material that could bring us 10+Ghz. But those aren't even on the 5 years roadmap.
mapesdhs - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
That's more down to better sw tech, which alas lags way behind. It needs skills that are largely not taught in current educational establishments.wolfemane - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Under Handbrake testing, just above the first graph you state:"Low Quality/Resolution H264: He we transcode a 640x266 H264 rip of a 2 hour film, and change the encoding from Main profile to High profile, using the very-fast preset."
I think you mean to say "HERE we transcode..."
Great article overall. Thank you!
Ian Cutress - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Thanks, corrected :)wolfemane - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
I wish your team would finally add in an edit button to comments! :)On the last graph ENCODING: Handbrake HEVC (4k) you don't list the 1800x, but it is present in the previous two graphs @ LQ and HQ. Was there an issue with the 1800x preventing 4k testing? Quite interested in it's results if you have them.
Ian Cutress - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
When I first did the HEVC testing for the Ryzen 7 review, there was a slight issue in it running and halfway through I had to change the script because the automation sometimes dropped a result (like the 1800X which I didn't notice until I was 2-3 CPUs down the line). I need to put the 1800X back on anyway for AGESA 1006, which will be in an upcoming article.IanHagen - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
One thing that caught my eye for a while is how compile tests using GCC or clang show much better results on Ryzen compared to using Microsoft's VS compiler. Phoronix tests clearly shows that. Thus, I cannot really believe yet on Ian's recurring explanation of Ryzen suffering from its victim L3 cache. After all, the 1800X beats the 7700K by a sizable margin when compiling the Linux kernel.Isn't Ryzen relatively poor performance compiling Chromium due to idiosyncrasies of the VS compiler?
Ian Cutress - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
The VS compiler seems to love L3 cache, then. The 1800X does have 2x threads and 2x cores over the 7700K, accounting for the difference. We saw a -17% drop going from SKL-S with its fully inclusive L3 to SKL-SP with a victim L3, clock for clock.Chromium was the best candidate for a scripted, consistent compile workflow I could roll into our new suite (and runs on Windows). Always open for suggestions that come with an ELI5.
ddriver - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
So we are married to chromium, because it only compiles with msvc on windows?Or maybe because it is a shitty implementation that for some reason stacks well with intel's offerings?
Pardon my ignorance, I've only been a multi-platform software developer for 8 years, but people who compile stuff a lot usually don't compile chromium all day.
I'd say go GCC or Clang, because those are quality community drive open source compilers that target a variety of platforms, unlike msvc. I mean if you really want to illustrate the usefulness of CPUs for software developers, which at this point is rather doubtful...
Ian Cutress - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Again, find me something I can rope into my benchmark suite with an ELI5 guide and I try and find time to look into it. The Chromium test took the best part of 2-3 days to get in a position where it was scripted and repeatable and fit with our workflow - any other options I examined weren't even close. I'm not a computer programmer by day either, hence the ELI5 - just years old knowledge of using Commodore BASIC, batch files, and some C/C++/CUDA in VS.