The Intel Xeon W-3175X Review: 28 Unlocked Cores, $2999
by Ian Cutress on January 30, 2019 9:00 AM ESTGaming: Ashes Classic (DX12)
Seen as the holy child of DirectX12, Ashes of the Singularity (AoTS, or just Ashes) has been the first title to actively go explore as many of the DirectX12 features as it possibly can. Stardock, the developer behind the Nitrous engine which powers the game, has ensured that the real-time strategy title takes advantage of multiple cores and multiple graphics cards, in as many configurations as possible.
As a real-time strategy title, Ashes is all about responsiveness during both wide open shots but also concentrated battles. With DirectX12 at the helm, the ability to implement more draw calls per second allows the engine to work with substantial unit depth and effects that other RTS titles had to rely on combined draw calls to achieve, making some combined unit structures ultimately very rigid.
Stardock clearly understand the importance of an in-game benchmark, ensuring that such a tool was available and capable from day one, especially with all the additional DX12 features used and being able to characterize how they affected the title for the developer was important. The in-game benchmark performs a four minute fixed seed battle environment with a variety of shots, and outputs a vast amount of data to analyze.
For our benchmark, we run Ashes Classic: an older version of the game before the Escalation update. The reason for this is that this is easier to automate, without a splash screen, but still has a strong visual fidelity to test.
AnandTech CPU Gaming 2019 Game List | ||||||||
Game | Genre | Release Date | API | IGP | Low | Med | High | |
Ashes: Classic | RTS | Mar 2016 |
DX12 | 720p Standard |
1080p Standard |
1440p Standard |
4K Standard |
Ashes has dropdown options for MSAA, Light Quality, Object Quality, Shading Samples, Shadow Quality, Textures, and separate options for the terrain. There are several presents, from Very Low to Extreme: we run our benchmarks at the above settings, and take the frame-time output for our average and percentile numbers.
[game list table]
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Ashes: Classic | IGP | Low | Medium | High |
Average FPS | ||||
95th Percentile |
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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-...