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
Grand Theft Auto
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data.
There are no presets for the graphics options on GTA, allowing the user to adjust options such as population density and distance scaling on sliders, but others such as texture/shadow/shader/water quality from Low to Very High. Other options include MSAA, soft shadows, post effects, shadow resolution and extended draw distance options. There is a handy option at the top which shows how much video memory the options are expected to consume, with obvious repercussions if a user requests more video memory than is present on the card (although there’s no obvious indication if you have a low end GPU with lots of GPU memory, like an R7 240 4GB).
To that end, we run the benchmark at 1920x1080 using an average of Very High on the settings, and also at 4K using High on most of them. We take the average results of four runs, reporting frame rate 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.
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
Grand Theft Auto Conclusions
Looking through the data, there seems to be a difference when looking at the results with an AMD GPU and an NVIDIA GPU. With the GTX 1080, there's a mix of AMD and Intel results there, but Intel takes a beating in the Time Under analysis at 1080p. The GTX 1060 is a mix at 1080p, but Intel takes the lead at 4K. When an AMD GPU is paired to the processor, all flags fly Intel.
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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.