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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Gothmoth - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
well i did not notice as much bias and other stuff when anand was still here.Spunjji - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Seriously..? Ever read any of the Apple product reviews? :Dandrewaggb - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
lol, I was going to say that too. Anand had (in my opinion) a clear apple bias at the end and then went to work for them. That's not to say apple wasn't making good products or not doing interesting things - they were one of the few tech companies doing anything interesting.Notmyusualid - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
+1tipoo - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
I mean, imo he was pretty fair about them, he liked them and didn't say they were utter garbage because they tend not to make utter garbage. He did point out flaws fairly.flyingpants1 - Tuesday, September 26, 2017 - link
Yes that is the general consensus around here.Some of the podcasts with Anand and Brian Klug were embarrassing, they had a third guy but they would just talk over him. Brian was this really obnoxious guy who made fun of people who want removable batteries and microSD cards, he said "You got what you got!"
lmao... industry shills.. wants to save the companies 10 cents for a microSD slot, and force people to overpay for 12GB space plus data usage.. How are you supposed to shoot 4k video and keep a movie/TV database with that. 128gb microSD card is perfect. Meanwhile they add ridiculous nonsense like taptic engine and face scanning instead of making the battery a bit thicker
FreckledTrout - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I do because they know a disproportionate amount of their user base is tech savvy and run ad blockers with one click will en mass black block adds. Keep the adds clean and we leave the blockers off....we help each other but it is a give and take.damianrobertjones - Saturday, September 30, 2017 - link
Did you know that capitals can be your friend!ddriver - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Workstation without ECC... that's a bad joke right there. Or at best, some very casual workstation. But hey, if you like losing data, time and money - be my guest. Twice the memory channels, and usually all dims would be populated in a workstation scenario, that's plenty of ram to get faulty and ruin tons of potentially important data.Also, what ads? Haven't you heard of uBlock :)
"Explaining the Jump to Using HCC Silicon" - basically the only way for intel to avoid embarrassment. Which they did in a truly embarrassing way - by gutting the ECC support out of silicon that already has it.
AVX512 - all good, but it will take a lot of time before software catches up. Kudos to intel for doing the early pioneering for once.
At that price - thanks but no thanks. At that price point, you might as well skip TR and go EPYC. Performance advantages, where intel has them, are hardly worth the price premium. You also get more IO on top of not supporting a vile, greedy, anticompetitive monopoly that has held progress back for decades so it can milk it. But hey, as AT seems to hint it, you have got to buy intel not to be considered a poor peasant who can't afford it. I guess being dumb enough to not value your money is a good thing if it sends your money in intel's pocket.
nowayandnohow - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
"Haven't you heard of uBlock :)"Haven't you heard that this site isn't free to run, and some of us support anandtech by letting them display ads?