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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mapesdhs - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Ok, you get a billion points for knowing Commodore BASIC. 8)IanHagen - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Dr. Ian, I would like to apologize for my poor choice of words. Reading it again, it sounds like I accused you of something which is not the case.I'm merely puzzled by how Ryzen performs poorly using msvc compared to other compilers. To be honest, your finds are very relevant to anyone using Visual Studio. But again, I find Microsoft's VS compilar to be a bit of an oddball.
A few weeks ago I was running my own tests to determine wether my Core i5 4690K was up to my compiling tasks. Since most of my professional job sits on top of programming languages with either short compile times or no compilation needed at all, I never bothered much about it. But recently I've been using C++ more and more during my game development hobby and compile times started to bother me. What I found puzzling is that after running a few test I couldn't manage to get any gains through parallelism, even after verifying that msvc was indeed spanning all 4 threads to compile files. Than I tried disabling two cores and clocking the thing higher and... it was faster! Not by a lot, but faster still. How could it be faster with a 50% decrease in the number of active cores and consequently threads doing compile jobs? I'm fully aware that linking is single threaded, but at least a few seconds should be gained with two extra cores, at least in theory. Today I had the chance to compile the same project on a Core i7 7700HQ and it was substantially slower than my Core i5 4690K even with clocks capped to 3.2 GHz. In fact, it was 33% slower than my Core i5 at stock speeds.
Anyhow… Dr. Ian’s findings are a very good to point out to those compiling C++ using msvc that Skylake-X is probably worth it over Ryzen. For my particular case, it would appear that Kaby Lake-X with the Core i7 7740X could even be the best choice, since my project somehow only scales nicely with clocks.
I just would like to see the wording pointing out that Skylake-X isn’t a better compiling core. It’s a better compiling core using msvc at this particular workload. On the GCC side of things, Ryzen is very competitive to it and a much better value in my humble opinion.
As for the suggestion, I’d say that since Windows is a requirement trying to script something to benchmark compile times using GCC would be daunting and unrealistic. Not a lot of people are using GCC to work on the Windows side of things. If Linux could be thrown into the equation, I’d suggest a project based on CMake. That would make it somewhat easy to write a simple script to setup, create a makefile and compile the project. Unfortunately, I can not readily think of any big name projects such as Chromium that fulfill that requirement without having to meddle with eventual dependency problems as the time goes by.
Kevin G - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
These chips edge out their LGA 1151 counter parts at stock with overclocking also carrying a slight razor edge over LGA 1151 overclocks. There are gains but ultimately these really don't seem worth it, especially in light of the fragmentation that this causes the X299 platform. Hard to place real figures on this but I'd wager that the platform confusion is going to cost Intel more than what they will gain with these chips. Intel should have kept these in the lab until they could offer something a bit more substantial.mapesdhs - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
I wonder if it would have been at least a tad better received if they hadn't cripplied the on-die gfx, etc.DanNeely - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
LGA2066 doesn't have video out pins because it was originally designed only for the bigger dies that don't include them; and even if Intel had some 'spare' pins it could use adding video out would only make already expensive mobos with a wide set of features that vary based on the CPU model even more expensive and more confusing. Unless they add a GPU to either future CPUs in the family (or IMO a bit more likely) a very basic one to a chipset variant (to remove the crappy one some server boards add for KVM support) keeping the IGP fully off in mainstream dies on the platform is the right call IMO.DrKlahn - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Great article, but the conclusion feels off:"The benefits in the benchmarks are clear against the nearest competition: these are the fastest CPUs to open a complex PDF, at the top for office work, and at the top for most web interactions by a noticeable amount."
In most cases you're talking about a second or less between the Intel and AMD systems. That will not be noticeable to the average office worker. You're much more likely to run into scenarios where the extra cores or threads will make an impact. I know in my own user base shaving a couple of seconds off opening a large PDF will pale in comparison to running complex reports with 2 (4 threads) extra cores for less money. I have nothing against Intel, but I struggle to see anything in here that makes their product worth the premium for an Office environment. The conclusion seems a stretch to me.
mapesdhs - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Indeed, and for those dealing with office work it makes more sense to emphasise investment where it makes the biggest difference to productivity, which for PCs is having an SSD (ie. don't buy a cheap grunge box for office work), but more generally dear god just make sure employees have a damn good chair to sit on and a decent IPS display that'll be kind to their eyes. Plus/minus 1s opening a PDF is a nothingburger compared to good ergonomics for office productivity.DrKlahn - Tuesday, July 25, 2017 - link
Yeah an SSD is by far the best bang for the buck. From a CPU standpoint there are more use cases for Ryzen 1600 than there is the i5/i7 options we have from HP/Dell. Even the Ryzen 1500 series would probably be sufficient and allow even more per unit savings to put into other areas that would benefit folks more.JimmiG - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
The 7740X runs at a just over 2% higher clock speed than the 7700X. It can overclock maybe 4% higher than the 7700X. You'd really have to be a special kind of stupid to pay hundreds more for an X299 mobo just for those gains that are nearly within the margin of error.It doesn't make sense as a "stepping stone" onto HEDT either, because you're much better off simply buying a real HEDT right away. You'll pay a lot more in total if you first get the 7740X and then the 7820X for example.
mapesdhs - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
Intel seems to think there's a market for people who buy a HEDT platform but can't afford a relevant CPU, but would upgrade later. Highly unlikely such a market exists. By the time such a theoretical user would be in a position to upgrade, more than likely they'd want a better platform anyway, given how fast the tech is changing.