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 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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watzupken - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
I don't know how you define as "best" for review graph. The point is that we are seeing new 6 cores solution from Intel, so very logically, people will be trying to compare apples with apples, i.e. 6 core solutions from both camps. So omitting the results from 1600 actually looks more than meets the eye to me, especially when you folks previously did a R5 1600X review.Ian Cutress - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
I'm adding the R5 1600 data. It'll take 10-15 minutes, it's not a quick process. brbwatzupken - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Thank you Ian. Please do add the data for R5 1600/X. From what I read elsewhere, it appears there is good competition between the Core i5 and R5 1600/X series.Ian Cutress - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
OK, should be added. You might have to CTRL+F5 to clear the cache to see the updated versions.WinterCharm - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Thanks Ian!It really is the most logical and fair comparison.
WinterCharm - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
You really should have chosen SIMILARLY priced chips (So, 1700 / 1600 / 1600X) because it would have shown "here's the performance you get per dollar" which ultimately is what matters.Ian Cutress - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
My ultimate goal is to have a graph widget that lets you select which CPU you want to focus on, and it automatically pulls in several around that price point as well as some of the same family. I'm not that skilled, thoughError415 - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Performane per dollar doesn't matter, out right performance matters. SMH, only a fool buys the second best cpu when the best is only a few dollars more.zuber - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
You basically just said "performance per dollar doesn't matter, only a fool ignores performance per dollar".sonny73n - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
+1