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 Rendering Tests
Rendering tests are a long-time favorite of reviewers and benchmarkers, as the code used by rendering packages is usually highly optimized to squeeze every little bit of performance out. Sometimes rendering programs end up being heavily memory dependent as well - when you have that many threads flying about with a ton of data, having low latency memory can be key to everything. Here we take a few of the usual rendering packages under Windows 10, as well as a few new interesting benchmarks.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Corona 1.3: link
Corona is a standalone package designed to assist software like 3ds Max and Maya with photorealism via ray tracing. It's simple - shoot rays, get pixels. OK, it's more complicated than that, but the benchmark renders a fixed scene six times and offers results in terms of time and rays per second. The official benchmark tables list user submitted results in terms of time, however I feel rays per second is a better metric (in general, scores where higher is better seem to be easier to explain anyway). Corona likes to pile on the threads, so the results end up being very staggered based on thread count.
Blender 2.78: link
For a render that has been around for what seems like ages, Blender is still a highly popular tool. We managed to wrap up a standard workload into the February 5 nightly build of Blender and measure the time it takes to render the first frame of the scene. Being one of the bigger open source tools out there, it means both AMD and Intel work actively to help improve the codebase, for better or for worse on their own/each other's microarchitecture.
LuxMark v3.1: Link
As a synthetic, LuxMark might come across as somewhat arbitrary as a renderer, given that it's mainly used to test GPUs, but it does offer both an OpenCL and a standard C++ mode. In this instance, aside from seeing the comparison in each coding mode for cores and IPC, we also get to see the difference in performance moving from a C++ based code-stack to an OpenCL one with a CPU as the main host.
POV-Ray 3.7.1b4: link
Another regular benchmark in most suites, POV-Ray is another ray-tracer but has been around for many years. It just so happens that during the run up to AMD's Ryzen launch, the code base started to get active again with developers making changes to the code and pushing out updates. Our version and benchmarking started just before that was happening, but given time we will see where the POV-Ray code ends up and adjust in due course.
Cinebench R15: link
The latest version of CineBench has also become one of those 'used everywhere' benchmarks, particularly as an indicator of single thread performance. High IPC and high frequency gives performance in ST, whereas having good scaling and many cores is where the MT test wins out.
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tamalero - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Hey guys, question.. Toms and others have mentioned that they HAD to put watercooling to keep this thing stable.Did the same happened to your sample? Wouldnt that increase the "cost of ownership" even more than the intel counterpart?
I mean, the mobo, the ram, the watercooling kit and then the hefty processor?
samer1970 - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
Water cooling is for overclocking only ... you will be okay using 170 watt TDP rated air cooler if you dont oc.0ldman79 - Wednesday, September 27, 2017 - link
I'm going to grab another cup-o-coffee and read it again, but the performance per dollar, AMD costs about half as much as Intel for several comparable models, how does Intel have better performance per dollar on so many of those graphs?Admittedly my kids are driving me nuts and I've been reading this for two days now trying to finish...
silvertooth82 - Thursday, September 28, 2017 - link
if this is all true... let's say thanks to AMD for poking IntelAnnonymousCoward - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
Very nice review. So compared to a 6700K/7700K, the 18-core beast is marginally slower in single-thread, and only 2-3x faster in multi-thread.I found the time difference when opening the big PDF to be the most interesting chart. 65W Ryzens take a noticable extra second.
Exceeding the published TDP sounds like lawsuit territory.
nufear - Monday, October 2, 2017 - link
Price for Intel Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960XMy opinion, I can not justify to spend extra $700~1k on these processors. The performances weren't that significant.
rwnrwnn7 - Wednesday, October 4, 2017 - link
AVX-512 - What software work with him?for what it used today?
rwnrwnn7 - Wednesday, October 4, 2017 - link
AVX-512 - What software work with him?for what it used today?
DoDidDont - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link
Would have been nice to see the Xeon Gold 6154 in the test. 18 cores / 36 threads and apparently an all core turbo of 3.7Ghz, plus the advantage of adding a second one on a dual socket Mobo.Planning a pair of 6154's on either an Asus WS C621E or a Supermicro X11DPG-QT and Quad GPU set up.
My 5 year old dual E5-2687w system scores 2298 in Cinebench R15, which has served me well and paid for itself countless times over, but having dual 6154's will bring a huge smile to the face for V-ray production rendering.
My alternative is to build two systems on the i9-7980XE, one for content creation, single CPU, single GPU, and the other as a GPU workhorse for V-ray RT, and Iray, single CPU, Quad GPU+ to call on when needed.
So the comparison would have been nice for the various tests performed.
sharath.naik - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
Isn't there supposed to be part 2!!!