The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9 7900X, i7 7820X and i7 7800X Tested
by Ian Cutress on June 19, 2017 9:01 AM ESTBenchmarking Performance: CPU Web Tests
One of the issues when running web-based tests is the nature of modern browsers to automatically install updates. This means any sustained period of benchmarking will invariably fall foul of the 'it's updated beyond the state of comparison' rule, especially when browsers will update if you give them half a second to think about it. Despite this, we were able to find a series of commands to create an un-updatable version of Chrome 56 for our 2017 test suite. While this means we might not be on the bleeding edge of the latest browser, it makes the scores between CPUs comparable.
SunSpider 1.0.2
The oldest web-based benchmark in this portion of our test is SunSpider. This is a very basic javascript algorithm tool, and ends up being more a measure of IPC and latency than anything else, with most high-performance CPUs scoring around about the same. The basic test is looped 10 times and the average taken. We run the basic test 4 times.
Sunspider goes after peak frequency most of the time, althoguh there is some variation as it moves into basically becoming a legacy test.
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
Kraken is another Javascript based benchmark, using the same test harness as SunSpider, but focusing on more stringent real-world use cases and libraries, such as audio processing and image filters. Again, the basic test is looped ten times, and we run the basic test four times.
Kraken is more of an intense attack on JS, and still regularly sorts by IPC and frequency.
Google Octane 2.0
Along with Mozilla, as Google is a major browser developer, having peak JS performance is typically a critical asset when comparing against the other OS developers. In the same way that SunSpider is a very early JS benchmark, and Kraken is a bit newer, Octane aims to be more relevant to real workloads, especially in power constrained devices such as smartphones and tablets.
Octane seems to be an optimization target, and with the new Skylake-X it shows.
WebXPRT 2015
While the previous three benchmarks do calculations in the background and represent a score, WebXPRT is designed to be a better interpretation of visual workloads that a professional user might have, such as browser based applications, graphing, image editing, sort/analysis, scientific analysis and financial tools.
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halcyon - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
Thank you for the review. The AVX512 situation was a bit unclear. Which models have which AVX512 support of the now released chips (and the future, yet to be released chips). It would be interesting to see AVX512 specific article once the chips are out and we have (hopefully) some useful AVX512-optimized software (like encoding).For myself, decision is easy now to postpone, until ThreadRipper is out. The thermals are just out of whack and for my workloads, the price is not justified. Here's hoping Threadripper can deliver more for same price or less.
Bulat Ziganshin - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
all skl-x has avx-512 support. i9 cpus has double fma512 engines, but as i guess - that's only difference, i.e. remaining 512-bit commands (such as integer operations) will have the same throughput on i7 and i9but i may be wrong and it will be really very ibteresting to check throughput of all other operatins. probably Anand can't do that and we will need to wait until Agner Fog will reach these spus
halcyon - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
Thanks. Many questions remain: AVX512F vs AVX512BW, which are supported now, which in the future? What is the difference? How does it compare to Knights Landing? Are number of AVX units tied to number of cores? What is the speed differential in AVX512 loads? What is the oc limitation from AVX512 support? etc.nevcairiel - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
Those Knights Landing/Knights Mill specific AVX512 instructions are actually very specific to the work-loads you would see on such a specialized CPU. The instructions chosen for Skylake-X and future Cannon Lake more closely match what we already know from AVX/AVX2.For the "types" of AVX512, basically its split into several sub-instruction sets, all containing different instructions. AVX512 will always include F, because thats the basis for everything (instruction encoding, 512-bit registers, etc). BW/DQ include the basic instructions we know from AVX/AVX2, just for 512-bit registers. SKL-X supports all of F, CD, BW, DQ, VL.
Wikipedia on AVX-512 has some more info on the different feature sets of AVX-512:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVX-512
Its generally safe to just ignore the Knights Landing specific instructions. They are very specific to the workloads on those systems. The AVX-512 subset used for Xeon "Purley" and SKL-X is more inline with the AVX/AVX2 instructions we had before - just bigger.
For software, x264 for example already got some AVX512 optimizations over the recent weeks, it might be interesting to test how much that helps once all the launch dust settles.
halcyon - Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - link
Thank you very much!satai - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
Any idea, why is Intel so much better at Chrome compilation?IanHagen - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
I'd like to know that as well. Ryzen does particularly fine compiling the Linux Kernel, for example, as seen in: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&...tamalero - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
Optimizations?I still remember when Intel actively paid some software developers to block multicore and threading on AMD chips to boast about "more performance" during the athlon X2 days.
johnp_ - Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - link
It's just the enterprise parts. Kaby Lake S is behind Ryzen:http://www.anandtech.com/show/11244/the-amd-ryzen-...
Gothmoth - Monday, June 19, 2017 - link
if powerdraw and heat would not be so crazy i would buy the 8 core today.but more than the price these heat issues are a concern for me.. i like my systems to be quiet....