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: SPECwpc v2.1
Anyone can run wPrime (why would you?) or Geekbench, but more often than not these pre-built synthetic tests are not representative of any user’s workload. This applies even more to professional environments or prosumer workloads, where time is money: if someone interested in hardware cannot pinpoint exactly how the new hardware is going to benefit them, that is $20 of billable time down the drain.
One of the difficulties of a benchmark reviewer is finding relevant benchmarks for the audience at hand. I’ve discussed what AnandTech is and our audience to several high profile software vendors who are in the business of supplying professional grade, critical programs that top technology companies use to produce the next $700 smartphone. These engineers are our readers, and it only seems best that we benchmark something that can assist them in accelerating our workflow. Unfortunately, the almost blanket response from these ISVs is negative, even if the request is for a limited software license in exchange for repeated discussion of the software on AnandTech (and third party benchmark data to assist their customers in hardware purchasing). My last discussions with two major ISVs led to a ‘interesting but we don’t see the value’ response and a ‘we’re doing our own in-house thing’ response respectively. No-one wants to know. Unless you work at one of these companies and want to get in touch.
The fall-back position in this case is to call on SPEC for their Workstation benchmark series. SPECwpc has existed in one form or another for several years, using pre-compiled binaries for a mix of medical, oil-and-gas, engineering, visualization and system level benchmarks. There are over 30 benchmarks, some running multiple copies to keep all the cores busy, and repeated runs offer very good consistency. A full run can take over six hours, making a sizeable increase to even our CPU workflow.
We’re reporting almost all of the subset scores in our benchmarking. Some tests require a GPU, and so we maintain the same RX 460 graphics card on each processor we test, along with the same screen resolution and driver. Ideally we would use professional graphics cards, like AMD’s FirePro range or NVIDIA’s Quadro range, however we currently use four identical RX 460 cards to keep the benchmarks on our test beds continually flowing, and sourcing four of the same pro card on long-term loan is actually fairly difficult.
Because SPECwpc takes so long and is fairly new, we only have results for a few processors so far. This should expand as we continue using this test. We’re likely to limit this test to HEDT processors and above, along with one or two mainstream processors (i7-K, Ryzen 7). For this review, out of the two Intel processors in the title, we only had time to run it on the Core i9-7980XE.
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CrazyHawk - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
"Intel also launched Xeon-W processors in the last couple of weeks."Just where can one purchase these mythical Xeon-W processors? There hasn't been a single peep about them since the "launch" week. I've only heard of two motherboards that will support them. They seem to be total vaporware. On Intel's own site, it says they were "Launched" in 3Q2017. Intel had better hurry up, 3Q will be up in 4 days!
samer1970 - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
I dont understand why intel disables ECC on their i9 CPU , they are losing low budget workstation buyers who will 100% choose AMD threadripper over intel i9..Even if they are doing this to protect their xeons chips ,they can enable non buffered ECC and not allow Registered ECC on the i9 problem solved. unbuffered ECC has Size limitation and people who want more RAM will go for xeons.
Remember that their i3 has ECC support , but only the i3 ...
intel , you are stupid.
vladx - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Newsflash, these chips don't target "low budget workstation buyers". Golden rule is always: "If you can't afford it, you're not the target customer.".samer1970 - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Thats not a Golden Rule anymore with the Threadripper chips around . it is called "Stupid rule" ...They are allowing AMD to steal the low budget workstation buyers by not offering them an alternative to choose from.
vladx - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
The "low budget workstation buyers" as you call them are a really insignificant percentage of an already really small piece of the huge pie of Intel customers.samer1970 - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
who told you so ? Most engineering students at universities need one , and Art Students who render alot as well. all these people will buy threadripper CPU and avoid intel , for intel xeon are 50% more expensive .andI dont cae about the percentage in intel Pie ... hundreds of thousands student enter uiviersites around the world each year . Low percentage or not they are alot ...
how much do you think a low budget workstation costs ? they start from $3000 ... and with xeon Pricing , it will be very difficult to add alot of RAM and a good workstation card and fast SSD .
esi - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
What's the explanation for some of the low scores of the 7980XE on the SPECwpc benchmarks? Particularly Poisson, where the 6950X is 3.5X higher.ZeDestructor - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Most likely cache-relatedesi - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Maybe. But one that really makes no sense is the Dolphin 5.0 render test. How can the 7980XE take nearly twice as long as the 7960X?esi - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
So I ran the Poisson benchmark on by 6950X. It uses all 10 cores (20 h/w threads), but can be configured to run in different ways: you can set the number of s/w threads per process. It then creates enough processes to ensure there's one s/w thread per h/w thread. Changing the s/w threads per processes significantly effects the result:20 - 1.34
10 - 2.5
5 - 3.31
4 - 3.47
2 - 3.67
1 - 0.19
Each process only uses about 2.5MB of RAM. So the 1-thread per process probably has a low result as this will result in more RAM usage than L3 cache, whereas the others should all fit in.
Would be interesting to see what was used for the 7980/7960. Perhaps the unusual number of cores resulted in a less than optimal process/thread mapping.