The Intel Core i9-9980XE CPU Review: Refresh Until it Hertz
by Ian Cutress on November 13, 2018 9:00 AM ESTHEDT Performance: Rendering Tests
Rendering is often a key target for processor workloads, lending itself to a professional environment. It comes in different formats as well, from 3D rendering through rasterization, such as games, or by ray tracing, and invokes the ability of the software to manage meshes, textures, collisions, aliasing, physics (in animations), and discarding unnecessary work. Most renderers offer CPU code paths, while a few use GPUs and select environments use FPGAs or dedicated ASICs. For big studios however, CPUs are still the hardware of choice.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Corona 1.3: Performance Render
An advanced performance based renderer for software such as 3ds Max and Cinema 4D, the Corona benchmark renders a generated scene as a standard under its 1.3 software version. Normally the GUI implementation of the benchmark shows the scene being built, and allows the user to upload the result as a ‘time to complete’.
We got in contact with the developer who gave us a command line version of the benchmark that does a direct output of results. Rather than reporting time, we report the average number of rays per second across six runs, as the performance scaling of a result per unit time is typically visually easier to understand.
The Corona benchmark website can be found at https://corona-renderer.com/benchmark
Corona sees improvement in line with the frequency gain, however the higher core count AMD parts win out here.
Blender 2.79b: 3D Creation Suite
A high profile rendering tool, Blender is open-source allowing for massive amounts of configurability, and is used by a number of high-profile animation studios worldwide. The organization recently released a Blender benchmark package, a couple of weeks after we had narrowed our Blender test for our new suite, however their test can take over an hour. For our results, we run one of the sub-tests in that suite through the command line - a standard ‘bmw27’ scene in CPU only mode, and measure the time to complete the render.
Blender can be downloaded at https://www.blender.org/download/
Similarly with Blender as to Corona: the new Intel Core i9-9980XE performs better than the previous generation 7980XE, but sits behind the higher core count AMD parts.
LuxMark v3.1: LuxRender via Different Code Paths
As stated at the top, there are many different ways to process rendering data: CPU, GPU, Accelerator, and others. On top of that, there are many frameworks and APIs in which to program, depending on how the software will be used. LuxMark, a benchmark developed using the LuxRender engine, offers several different scenes and APIs. *It has been mentioned that LuxMark, since the Spectre/Meltdown patches, is not a great representation of the LuxRender engine. We still use the test as a good example of different code path projections.
In our test, we run the simple ‘Ball’ scene on both the C++ and OpenCL code paths, but in CPU mode. This scene starts with a rough render and slowly improves the quality over two minutes, giving a final result in what is essentially an average ‘kilorays per second’.
Our test here seems to put processors into buckets of performance. In this case, the Core i9-9980XE goes up a bucket.
POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing
The Persistence of Vision ray tracing engine is another well-known benchmarking tool, which was in a state of relative hibernation until AMD released its Zen processors, to which suddenly both Intel and AMD were submitting code to the main branch of the open source project. For our test, we use the built-in benchmark for all-cores, called from the command line.
POV-Ray can be downloaded from http://www.povray.org/
POV-Ray is as expected: a performance improvement, but behind the higher core count AMD parts.
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zeromus - Wednesday, November 14, 2018 - link
@linuxgeek, logged in for the first time in 10 years or more just to laugh with you for having cracked the case with your explanation there at the end!HStewart - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
I have IBM Thinkpad 530 with NVidia Quadro - in software development unless into graphics you don't even need more than integrated - even more for average business person - unless you are serious into gaming or high end graphics you don't need highend GPU. Even gaming as long as you are not into latest games - lower end graphics will do.pandemonium - Wednesday, November 14, 2018 - link
"Even gaming as long as you are not into latest games - lower end graphics will do."This HEAVILY depends on your output resolution, as every single review for the last decade has clearly made evident.
Samus - Wednesday, November 14, 2018 - link
Don't call it an IBM Thinkpad. It's disgraceful to associate IBM with the bastardization Lenovo has done to their nameplate.imaheadcase - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
Uhh yah but no one WILL do it on mobility. Makes no sense.TEAMSWITCHER - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
You see .. there you are TOTALLY WRONG. Supporting the iPad is a MAJOR REQUIREMENT as specified by our customers.Augmented reality has HUGE IMPLICATIONS for our industry. Try as you may ... you can't hold up that 18 core desktop behemoth (RGB lighting does not defy gravity) to see how that new Pottery Barn sofa will look in your family room. I think what you are suffering from is a historical perspective on computing which the ACTUAL WORLD has moved away from.
scienceomatica - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
@TEAMSWITCHER - I think your comments are an unbalanced result between fantasy and ideals. I think you're pretty superficially, even childishly looking at the use of technology and communicating with the objective world. Of course, a certain aspect of things can be done on a mobile device, but by its very essence it is just a mobile device, therefore, as a casual, temporary solution. It will never be able to match the raw power of "static" desktop computers.working in a laboratory for physical analysis, numerous simulations of supersymmetric breakdowns of material identities, or transposition of spatial-temporal continuum, it would be ridiculous to imagine doing on a mobile device.There are many things I would not even mention.HStewart - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
For videos - as long as you AVX 2 (256bit) you are ok.SanX - Wednesday, November 14, 2018 - link
AMD needs to beat Intel with AVX to be considered seriously for scientific apps (3D particle movement test)PeachNCream - Tuesday, November 13, 2018 - link
All seven of our local development teams have long since switched from desktops to laptops. That conversion was a done deal back in the days of Windows Vista and Dell Latitude D630s and 830s. Now we live in a BYOD (bring your own device) world where the company will pay up to a certain amount (varies between $1,100 and $1,400 depending on funding from upper echelons of the corporation) and employees are free to purchase the computer hardware they want for their work. There are no desktop PCs currently and in the past four years, only one person purchased a desktop in the form of a NUC. The reality is that desktop computers are for the most part a thing of the past with a few instances remaining on the desks of home users that play video games on custom-built boxes as the primary remaining market segment. Why else would Intel swing overclocking as a feature of a HEDT chip if there was a valid business market for these things?