The Intel Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X CPU Review Part 1: Workstation
by Ian Cutress on September 25, 2017 3:01 AM ESTBenchmarking Performance: CPU Legacy Tests
Our legacy tests represent benchmarks that were once at the height of their time. Some of these are industry standard synthetics, and we have data going back over 10 years. All of the data here has been rerun on Windows 10, and we plan to go back several generations of components to see how performance has evolved.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
3D Particle Movement v1
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. This is the original version, written in the style of a typical non-computer science student coding up an algorithm for their theoretical problem, and comes without any non-obvious optimizations not already performed by the compiler, such as false sharing.
CineBench 11.5 and 10
Cinebench is a widely known benchmarking tool for measuring performance relative to MAXON's animation software Cinema 4D. Cinebench has been optimized over a decade and focuses on purely CPU horsepower, meaning if there is a discrepancy in pure throughput characteristics, Cinebench is likely to show that discrepancy. Arguably other software doesn't make use of all the tools available, so the real world relevance might purely be academic, but given our large database of data for Cinebench it seems difficult to ignore a small five minute test. We run the modern version 15 in this test, as well as the older 11.5 and 10 due to our back data.
x264 HD 3.0
Similarly, the x264 HD 3.0 package we use here is also kept for historic regressional data. The latest version is 5.0.1, and encodes a 1080p video clip into a high quality x264 file. Version 3.0 only performs the same test on a 720p file, and in most circumstances the software performance hits its limit on high end processors, but still works well for mainstream and low-end. Also, this version only takes a few minutes, whereas the latest can take over 90 minutes to run.
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Notmyusualid - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
@ vladxTry telling that to the fanbios here...
For some of us, price is not the main consideration.
HStewart - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I have a big issue with latest performance results - especially dealing with multi-core performance. What is most important is single core performance - this primary because real applications and not benchmark application use the primary thread more that secondary threads. Yes the secondary threads do help in calculations and such - but most important especially in graphical application is using the primary thread. Plus quality is important - I not sure AMD is going to last in this world - because they seem to have a very limited focus.HStewart - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Especially GeekBench - I don't trust it all - realistically can an ARM processor beat huge Xeon processor. Give me break - lets be realistic.Krysto - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Intel is failing hard at competing, if it can only release chips that cost twice as much as AMD's for only a slight improvement in performance.vladx - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
On the contrary, these chips will sell very well since they aren't geared towards "prosumers" but big businesses where every minute wasted could mean thousands $$ lost.willis936 - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
That performance ler dollar page is amazing. I could look at graphs like that comparing all types of compinents and configurations against different workloads all day.Judas_g0at - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I didn't see anything about temp and thermals. For 2k, does Intel give you crappy thermal compound, or solder?Spunjji - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Spoiler alert: I hope you like cleaning toothpaste off your $1999 CPU.shabby - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Lol platform pcie lanes, good one intel, how many does threadripper have in this case?DanNeely - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
TR has 60 platform PCIe3 lanes, 68 total if you count the 8 half speed PCIe2 lanes on the x399 chipset.