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 Office Tests
The office programs we use for benchmarking aren't specific programs per-se, but industry standard tests that hold weight with professionals. The goal of these tests is to use an array of software and techniques that a typical office user might encounter, such as video conferencing, document editing, architectural modelling, and so on and so forth.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Chromium Compile (v56)
Our new compilation test uses Windows 10 Pro, VS Community 2015.3 with the Win10 SDK to combile a nightly build of Chromium. We've fixed the test for a build in late March 2017, and we run a fresh full compile in our test. Compilation is the typical example given of a variable threaded workload - some of the compile and linking is linear, whereas other parts are multithreaded.
PCMark8: link
Despite originally coming out in 2008/2009, Futuremark has maintained PCMark8 to remain relevant in 2017. On the scale of complicated tasks, PCMark focuses more on the low-to-mid range of professional workloads, making it a good indicator for what people consider 'office' work. We run the benchmark from the commandline in 'conventional' mode, meaning C++ over OpenCL, to remove the graphics card from the equation and focus purely on the CPU. PCMark8 offers Home, Work and Creative workloads, with some software tests shared and others unique to each benchmark set.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
152 Comments
View All Comments
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?