Benchmarking 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.

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

SunSpider 1.0.2: link

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.

Web: SunSpider on Chrome 56

Mozilla Kraken 1.1: link

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.

Web: Mozilla Kraken 1.1 on Chrome 56

Google Octane 2.0: link

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.

Web: Google Octane 2.0 on Chrome 56

WebXPRT 2015: link

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.

Web: WebXPRT 15 on Chrome 56

Benchmarking Performance: CPU Rendering Tests Benchmarking Performance: CPU Encoding Tests
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  • Ian Cutress - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    AMD doesn't use the R3 / R5 / R7 nomenclature - that's for graphics.
  • Gothmoth - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    i don´t care about gaming or heating my house with a cpu..... so ryzen makes more sense for me. :)

    x299 was such a disappointment.
  • MrCommunistGen - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Ian, first off, thanks for the benchmark numbers! I look forward to seeing the rest once they are completed.

    As far as data is concerned, is there a chance that the DigiCortex results have the wrong numbers next to a couple CPUs?

    I'm specifically looking at the i3 7100 being the fastest Intel CPU at 0.63, compared to the rest of the offerings clustering together at 0.37-0.38. To me it looks like the 0.63 should be the i5 7400 and the 7100 should be with the other dual cores.

    On another note, it looks like the RoTR Geothermal Valley scene really HATES AMD's HyperThreading - at least on Nvidia hardware/drivers. At first I thought there might be another set of numbers transposed somewhere since the Ryzen 3 CPUs perform SO MUCH better than the 1500X. But I looked back at the 1600X review and the numbers seem consistent -- bad performance on HyperThreaded AMD on a GTX 1080. Prophet's Tomb seems to behave better. Just shows how much architecture and software optimizations for said architecture can either oppose or compliment each other.

    As for small typos, there's also a couple spots where the 1200 is referred to as "1200X". There was another one I found during my initial read that I can't find now that I'm commenting.
  • MrCommunistGen - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Not the typo I was looking for, but I just noticed that the intro/description for Civ6 looks like it has a typo I've missed in previous articles:
    "...but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fifth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master."

    "it a game" should probably be "is a game"

    Not a criticism, just trying to help out where I can. :)
  • MrCommunistGen - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Gah... brain fart this morning. Please read my references to AMD "HyperThreading" as "SMT"... smh
  • Ian Cutress - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    i3 7100 should be 0.363x on DigiCortex. I've corrected three 7100 results today in our database from my personal master copy. I think I'll have to go through them all and double check.

    RoTR Geothermal on 1080p with a GTX 1080 really loves quad cores without hyperthreading, AMD or Intel. I'm not sure what it is with that test on that benchmark - in our KBL-X review, all the i5s got top results by a good margin. I think it's been optimized specifically for quad-core, or there's something iffy in the game code/drivers.

    Appreciate the typo point outs for sure. These things are always last minute and you can never have too many eyes on it. :)
  • DanGer1 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    The review is lacking, especially the value charts. Ryzens come with a cooler, their motherboards cost less and they are overclock-able. Adjusting the cost for the motherboard and the cooler changes the value charts significantly in R3's favor. Overclocking on stock air makes makes performance and value a no contest in favor of the R3s.
  • MajGenRelativity - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Intel's processors also come with a cooler.
  • wallysb01 - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    Basic 1511 boards that would go into i3/Pentium builds are really not much more, if at all, than the lower end AM4 boards. Plus, the Intel stuff has an iGPU and if you're buying a low end desktop, you probably don't care a lot about heavily multithreaded workloads. So, I'd actually argue the i3/Pentiums are getting under sold in the value charts.

    Its kinda funny how the landscape has switched, in that Intel might actually be the better low-end, value winner, while AMD is the best mid/mid-high end value winner.
  • Gothmoth - Thursday, July 27, 2017 - link

    +1 for overclocking.
    the tested intel cpus are sure not k models.

    as for intel having internal GPU.. i never used them not even on my cheapest system builds.

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