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 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 modeling, 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 compile 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.
For our compile test, it would appear that the extra memory width afforded by the quad-channel memory of Skylake-X can have a direct benefit in compile performance.
PCMark 10
PCMark 10 is the 2017 update to the family favorite, PCMark 8. PCMark 8 has been part of our test bed since the latest update in Q1. For the most part it runs well, although for some processors it doesn’t recognize, some tests will not complete, leading to holes in our benchmark data (there’s also an odd directory quirk in one test that causes issues). The newest version, PCMark 10, is the answer.
The new test is adapted for more 2016/2017 workflows. With the advent of office applications that perform deeper compute tasks, or the wave of online gamers and streamers, the idea behind PCMark 10 is to give a better ‘single number’ result that can provide a comparable metric between systems. Single metrics never tell the whole story, so we’re glad that Futuremark provides a very detailed breakdown of what goes on.
Ganesh’s article on PCMark 10 goes into more detail than I will here, but the ‘Extended Benchmark’ runs through four different sets of tests: Essential, Productivity, Creation and Gaming. Each of these have sub-test results as well, including startup performance, web performance, video conferencing, photo/video editing, spreadsheets, rendering, and physics, which you can find in Bench.
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.
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mapesdhs - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
Any idea what that optimisation is? Seems odd that adding extra pure cores would harm performance, as opposed to adding HT which some games don't play nice with. Otherwise, are you saying that for this test, if it was present, the i3 8100 would come out on top? Blimey.Ian Cutress - Saturday, October 7, 2017 - link
They're either doing something to align certain CPU tasks for AVX, or it's bypassing code. You'd have to ask the developers on that.mapesdhs - Monday, October 9, 2017 - link
I doubt they'd explain what's happening, might be proprietory code or something.WickedMONK3Y - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
You have the spec of the i7 8700K slightly wrong. It has a base frequency of 3.7GHz not 3.8GHz.https://ark.intel.com/products/126684/Intel-Core-i...
Ian Cutress - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Mistake on our part. I was using our previous news post as my source and that had a Typo. This review (and that news) should be updated now.Slomo4shO - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Ian, this is probably your worst review to date. Lackluster choice of CPUs, mid-grade GPU, and lack of direct competition in the product stack... Why would you not use a GTX 1080 Ti or Titan XP?Ian Cutress - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
All the CPUs we've ever tested are in Bench. Plenty of other data in there: the goal was to not put 30+ CPUs into every graph.Our benchmark database includes over 40 CPUs tested on the GTX 1080, which is the most powerful GPU I could get a set of so I can do parallel testing across several systems. If that wasn't enough (a full test per CPU takes 5 hours per GPU), the minute I get better GPUs I would have to start retesting every CPU. At the exclusion of other content. Our benchmark suite was updated in early Q2, and we're sticking with that set of GPUs (GTX 1080/1060/R9 Fury/RX 480) for a good while for that reason.
Note I had three days to do this review.
crimson117 - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
Good job! More people need to know about the bench...Slomo4shO - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
To be fair the R5 1600 was added to the benches after the fact. In addition, your othwr reviews tend to be much more detailed and data driven with relevant products and multiple GPUs.Why would I read your review if you expect me to dig through your benchmark to obtain relivant data?
I can understand and appreciate the time crunch but it is a poor excuse for some of the decisions made in this review.
Take it with a grain of salt, this was not your best work.
mapesdhs - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
Ooohhh the effort of examing the data in Bench! :D First world problems. Sheesh...Run your own tests then, see how you get on with having a life. It's insanely time consuming.