CPU 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 1.3 Benchmark

 

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.

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’.

LuxMark v3.1 C++

 

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 3.7.1 Benchmark

 

CPU Performance: System Tests CPU Performance: Encoding Tests
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  • Death666Angel - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link

    No. Official AMD support and motherboard manufacturer support are two different things. As stated in the article.
  • lmcd - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link

    I misread the paragraph below it, but in general it's weird for AMD to put out a diagram quite that misleading. The ASRock AB350 was ~$120 when I bought it and is ASRock supported for the 3900X -- surely a decent percentage of boards can support most Zen 2 processors barring power constraints for the 16 core if a cheap budget build can?
  • alufan - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link

    Not true the AM$ socket will support all Ryzen chips however not all features are available on all boards such as gen 4 as this is a specific development that was not available when the 1 series launched, also the limitation is on the power system of the board not in AMDs specs

    "CHIPSET FEATURES: Note that not all processors are supported on every chipset, and support may require a BIOS upgrade. See your motherboard manufacturer’s website for compatibility"

    I have a 3 series running in my A320 media pc in my lounge updated the bios and it works fine however i suspect if i tried a 3900 it would not have the power circuit to support it, the other issue is the bios chips in some of the older boards cannot store enough information to allow all the chips to be used, so strictly speaking the issue is with the board supplier.
  • trenzterra - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link

    I'm still stuck on the i5-6600K which I built back in 2016. Thought it would serve me well for many years to come given the state of Intel and AMD at that point in time, and that my previous i5-2400 lasted me a good number of years while still being competitive. Now barely four years later it's obsoleted by a 100 dollar CPU lol.
  • lmcd - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link

    It's far from obsolete, even if it's regularly beaten. I'm still using my Sandy-E processor when I'm unopposed to simultaneously running a space heater -- it's just a question of whether you need the latest and greatest.
  • watzupken - Sunday, May 10, 2020 - link

    Actually looking that the performance of these 4 cores chip, I can't wait to see an APU with it. Even the 4 core APU will be great for every day usage, without a graphic card. I just hope they give the 4 core version a decent graphic option, rather than a Vega 6.
  • TexasBard79 - Monday, May 11, 2020 - link

    A very good review, quite in line with the others. Ryzen 3 3300X is a nasty game-changer.
  • TheJian - Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - link

    Please stop running tests that appeal to less than 5% of your audience (and I think I'm being generous here). Crysis on cpu? Who cares? What does it prove I can do today? Dwarf fortress?? WTF? Quit wasting your time and ours. AI ETH tests? What for (farms do this now)? How many tests do you need that show NOTHING to any of us?

    People should get the point. You are irrelevant at some point if you keep posting crap nobody cares to read. Ask toms hardware :) Oh, wait, you guys are toms. ;)

    How about testing 20 games at 1080p where everyone plays. :) Is it too difficult to ask a few pros to make a script for photoshop/premier/AE to test under AMD/NV (cuda vs. OpenCL or whatever is faster on AMD)? It is almost like you guys seek benchmarks that nobody could possibly find useful IRL.

    "provide a good idea on how instruction streams are interpreted by different microarchitectures."
    Your PHD project tells me how these cpus will run in WHICH PRO APP? Why not just test a PRO APP IRL? Bah...fake news. Not sure why, AMD wins everything right now. Why hunt for fake tests that mean nothing? How many people use Agisoft instead of PhotoshopCC for $10 a month?

    Still ripping at crap modes nobody would actually use. Again tells us nothing about what we REALLY do usually. Only a retard uses FAST settings in handbrake for anything but a 15fps training vid.

    "We are currently in the middle of revisiting our CPU gaming benchmarks" and upgrading to 2080ti. Can't happen soon enough, please make sure you test games that sell over 1mil ON PC or don't bother. If the sell poorly or are poorly rated, there is no point in testing them. Test what people PLAY, at settings people really use. 720p low shows what to a person who will NEVER play below 1080p? Oh wait, I just described 99% of your audience, as I'm quite sure they haven't played 720p in ages. So much wasted testing. Stop testing 4k and test more 1080p/1440p (1440p still almost useless, wake me at 10%).

    "Some of these new benchmarks provide obvious talking points, others are just a bit of fun. Most of them are so new we’ve only run them on a few processors so far. It will be interesting to hear your feedback!"

    Please quit wasting your time. It feels like all your benchmarks are "for fun" as I'm not much smarter after coming here. Off to a site that tests a dozen games and some real world stuff some of us actually use (techpowerup for example...games galore, 10 REAL games tested). THIS is how you give a well rounded idea of a cpu/gpu perf. YOU TEST REAL STUFF, instead of your PHD crap or agisoft junk. People use adobe, and play games that SELL. This isn't complicated people.

    Might as well jump off the roof with your cpu and tell us how fast you hit the ground. Just a useless as your benchmarks. Are they benchmarks if nobody uses them? Or is it just more "fun" crap tests that tell us nothing useful? If you are NOT helping me make a more informed decision (useful info) about buying the reviewed product, you have failed. A good review is chock full of useful info related to how we actually use the product, not a bunch of crap nobody cares about or use IRL.

    https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fo...
    The devs make 3K a month from it. This is not exactly played by the world if it pulls down $35K a year. Why even bother testing this crap? Are we all going to go back to pixel crap graphics tomorrow? Heck now. Wake up. Those games (and the shite monitors we had then) are why I needed lasik...ROFL.
  • Spunjji - Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - link

    "Only a retard uses"
    And that's about where I realised you weren't really making a comment so much as farting into a piece of voice recognition software.
  • Meteor2 - Tuesday, August 4, 2020 - link

    I wonder if even one single person ever read that comment

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