The Intel Xeon W-3175X Review: 28 Unlocked Cores, $2999
by Ian Cutress on January 30, 2019 9:00 AM ESTGaming: Civilization 6 (DX12)
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civ series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer overflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, it a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Perhaps a more poignant benchmark would be during the late game, when in the older versions of Civilization it could take 20 minutes to cycle around the AI players before the human regained control. The new version of Civilization has an integrated ‘AI Benchmark’, although it is not currently part of our benchmark portfolio yet, due to technical reasons which we are trying to solve. Instead, we run the graphics test, which provides an example of a mid-game setup at our settings.
| AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
| Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
| Civilization VI | RTS | Oct 2016 |
DX12 | 1080p Ultra |
4K Ultra |
8K Ultra |
16K Low |
|
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
| Civilization VI | IGP |
| Average FPS |  |
| 95th Percentile |  |
We had issues running Civilization beyond IGP, we're looking into exactly why.
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Yorgos - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
it's not only program dependent, it's also scheduler dependent.It is found that the windows scheduler doesn't treat TR very well and throttles it down.(ref. L1T)
MattZN - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
Yup, in a nutshell. When Microsoft finally fixes that scheduler issue all of these sites will have to rerun their benchmarks. While it won't run away on performance, the results will start to look more like they should given the HW capabilities. Not a problem for me with Linux but its kinda amusing that Windows users are so beholden to bugs like these and even the professional reviewers get lost when there isn't a convenient UI button that explains what is going on.-Matt
mapesdhs - Saturday, February 2, 2019 - link
Is that the same issue as the one referring to running on core zero? I watched a video about it recently but I can't recall if it was L1T or elsewhere.jospoortvliet - Sunday, February 3, 2019 - link
it is that issue yes. blocking use of core is a work-around that kind'a works.jospoortvliet - Sunday, February 3, 2019 - link
(in some workloads, not all)Coolmike980 - Monday, February 4, 2019 - link
So here's my thing: Why can't we have good benchmarks? Nothing here on Linux, and nothing in a VM. I'd be willing to be good money I could take a 2990, run Linux, run 5 VM's of 6 cores each, run these benchmarks (the non-gpu dependent ones), and collectively beat the pants off of this CPU under any condition you want to run it. Also, this Civ 6 thing - the only benchmark that would be of any value would be the CPU one, and they've been claiming to want to make this work for 2 years now. Either get it working, or drop it altogether. Rant over. Thanks.FlanK3r - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
where is CinebenchR15 results? In testing methology is it, but in results I can not find it :)MattsMechanicalSSI - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
der8auer did a delid video, and a number of CB runs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aD9B-uu8At8 Also, Steve at GN has had a good look at it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N29jTOjBZrwMattZN - Wednesday, January 30, 2019 - link
@MattsMechanicalSSI Yup... both are very telling.I give the 3175X a pass on DDR connectivity (from the DerBauer video) since he's constantly having to socket and unsocket the chip, but I agree with him that there should be a carrier for a chip that large. Depending on the user to guess the proper pressure is a bad idea.
But, particularly the GN review around 16:00 or so where we see the 3175X pulling 672W at the wall (OC) for a tiny improvement in time over the 2990WX. Both AMD and Intel goose these CPUs, even at stock, but the Intel numbers are horrendous. They aren't even trying to keep wattages under control.
The game tests are more likely an issue with the windows scheduler (ala Wendel's work). And the fact that nobody in their right mind runs games on these CPUs.
The Xeon is certainly a faster CPU, but the price and the wattage cost kinda make it a non-starter. There's really no point to it, not even for professional work. Steve (GN) kinda thinks that there might be a use-case with Premier but... I don't really. At least not for the ~5 months or so before we get the next node on AMD (and ~11 months for Intel).
-Matt
mapesdhs - Saturday, February 2, 2019 - link
Cinebench is badly broken at this level of cores, it's not scaling properly anymore. See:https://www.servethehome.com/cinebench-r15-is-now-...