The AnandTech Coffee Lake Review: Initial Numbers on the Core i7-8700K and Core i5-8400
by Ian Cutress on October 5, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Core i5
- Core i7
- Core i3
- 14nm
- Coffee Lake
- 14++
- Hex-Core
- Hyperthreading
Benchmarking 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.
With more threads on display, the Core i7-8700K gets ahead of the previous mainstream Core i7 parts. The frequency difference over the Skylake-X processor gives an extra +10% performance, but the 16-thread parts from AMD win out overall.
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.
Blender seems to separate very nicely into core counts, with six cores from Intel matching eight cores from AMD.
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.
CineBench R15 in single thread mode can take the Core i7-8700K by the horns and drag it to be the best performing chip ever tested.
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zuber - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
I disagree, he mentioned pretty much all the info you need to know about the CPU.The choice of GPU is hardly even relevant to CPU tests anymore. For gaming performance my 6 year old i7-2600K is neck and neck (or faster in some cases) than this new crop of CPUs.
mapesdhs - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
And if you do need more cores you can always move sideways to a very low cost SB-E or IB-EP. I built a 4.8GHz 2700K system for a friend two years ago, am upgrading it soon to a 3930K at the same clock, replacing the M4E mbd with an R4E, swapping the RAM kits (2x8GB for 4x4GB, both 2400MHz), total cost 200 UKP. 8) And the both mbds now have the option of booting from NVMe.Newer CPUs can have a distinct advantage for some types of 1080p gaming, but with newer GPUs the frame rates are usually so high it really doesn't matter. Move up the scale of resolution/complexity and quickly it becomes apparent there's plenty of life left in SB, etc. zuber, at what clock are you running your 2600K? Also note that P67/Z68 can benefit aswell from faster RAM if you're only using 1600 or less atm.
Itveryhotinhere - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Not yet have power consumption graph ?Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
It's there: https://www.anandtech.com/show/11859/the-anandtech...Itveryhotinhere - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
ThanksItveryhotinhere - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
That power consumption at full load already use boost or only at base clock ?Ian Cutress - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
All-core turbo, as always.SunnyNW - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Can you please tell me how you got to the +20% frequency for CPU B in the twitter poll?mkaibear - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
Yeah that doesn't make a lot of sense to me either.CPU A is the 8600K. Runs at a base of 3.6 and an all-core turbo of 4.1.
CPU B is the 8700. Runs at a base of 3.2 and an all-core turbo of 4.3.
That's either 11% slower (base) or about 5% faster (all-core turbo). Neither is 20%!
If you compare the base speed of the 8600K and the all-core turbo speed of the 8700 then you get about 19.4% which is close enough to 20% I suppose but that's not really a fair comparison?
sonny73n - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
Nice pointing that out. But there still were about 1,800 blind votes ;)