The Intel Comet Lake Core i9-10900K, i7-10700K, i5-10600K CPU Review: Skylake We Go Again
by Dr. Ian Cutress on May 20, 2020 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- Skylake
- 14nm
- Z490
- 10th Gen Core
- Comet Lake
CPU Performance: Simulation Tests
A number of our benchmarks fall into the category of simulations, whereby we are either trying to emulate the real world or re-create systems with systems. In this set of tests, we have a variety including molecular modelling, non-x86 video game console emulation, a simulation of the equivalent of a slug brain with neurons and synapses firing, and finally a popular video game that simulates the growth of a fictional land including historical events and important characters within that world.
NAMD ApoA1
One frequent request over the years has been for some form of molecular dynamics simulation. Molecular dynamics forms the basis of a lot of computational biology and chemistry when modeling specific molecules, enabling researchers to find low energy configurations or potential active binding sites, especially when looking at larger proteins. We’re using the NAMD software here, or Nanoscale Molecular Dynamics, often cited for its parallel efficiency. Unfortunately the version we’re using is limited to 64 threads on Windows, but we can still use it to analyze our processors. We’re simulating the ApoA1 protein for 10 minutes, and reporting back the ‘nanoseconds per day’ that our processor can simulate. Molecular dynamics is so complex that yes, you can spend a day simply calculating a nanosecond of molecular movement.
This is one of our new tests, so we will be filling in more data as we start regression testing for older CPUs.
Dolphin 5.0: Console Emulation
One of the popular requested tests in our suite is to do with console emulation. Being able to pick up a game from an older system and run it as expected depends on the overhead of the emulator: it takes a significantly more powerful x86 system to be able to accurately emulate an older non-x86 console, especially if code for that console was made to abuse certain physical bugs in the hardware.
For our test, we use the popular Dolphin emulation software, and run a compute project through it to determine how close to a standard console system our processors can emulate. In this test, a Nintendo Wii would take around 1050 seconds.
The latest version of Dolphin can be downloaded from https://dolphin-emu.org/
DigiCortex 1.20: Sea Slug Brain Simulation
This benchmark was originally designed for simulation and visualization of neuron and synapse activity, as is commonly found in the brain. The software comes with a variety of benchmark modes, and we take the small benchmark which runs a 32k neuron / 1.8B synapse simulation, equivalent to a Sea Slug.
Example of a 2.1B neuron simulation
We report the results as the ability to simulate the data as a fraction of real-time, so anything above a ‘one’ is suitable for real-time work. Out of the two modes, a ‘non-firing’ mode which is DRAM heavy and a ‘firing’ mode which has CPU work, we choose the latter. Despite this, the benchmark is still affected by DRAM speed a fair amount.
DigiCortex can be downloaded from http://www.digicortex.net/
The additional bandwidth of the HEDT platforms put them higher up the chart here - Digicortex always ends up as an odd mix of bottlenecks mostly around memory, but it can be localized internal bandwidth limited as well.
Dwarf Fortress
Another long standing request for our benchmark suite has been Dwarf Fortress, a popular management/roguelike indie video game, first launched in 2006. Emulating the ASCII interfaces of old, this title is a rather complex beast, which can generate environments subject to millennia of rule, famous faces, peasants, and key historical figures and events. The further you get into the game, depending on the size of the world, the slower it becomes.
DFMark is a benchmark built by vorsgren on the Bay12Forums that gives two different modes built on DFHack: world generation and embark. These tests can be configured, but range anywhere from 3 minutes to several hours. I’ve barely scratched the surface here, but after analyzing the test, we ended up going for three different world generation sizes.
This is another of our new tests.
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Ryan Smith - Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - link
To be sure, it's GTX 1080. IGP is the name of the setting.F123Nova - Saturday, May 23, 2020 - link
I am trying my best to be nice, but this article has the most dubious set of benchmarks I have seen, and the omission in the charts of Intel competition in certain charts where the competition is better makes me wonder why this article smells of a cash handout. Cant say for sure if this is another "Just buy it" piece, but it sure smells foul. I expected more from Anandtech...Ryan Smith - Tuesday, May 26, 2020 - link
Hi Nova,As has been the case for the past 23 years, we always strive to have accurate reporting, to the best of our abilities.
Given that we're in the process of rolling out some new benchmarks (such as the Crysis software render), we haven't yet had a chance to backfill in results for a number of processors. Unfortunately that's going to take some time. But in the meantime, was there any specific benchmark(s) you were concerned about? That might at least help us better prioritize what to backfill first.
And to be sure, there's no cash handout. That's not how we operate. (Selling out for anything less than an incredibly comfortable retirement isn't very helpful for our future employment prospects)
tvdang7 - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
why couldnt AT use a 3800x instead of a 3700x.pcgpus - Friday, July 10, 2020 - link
Nice review. 10600K might be a new king in games (for fair price).If you want to compare this article with other services You have to go on this link:
https://warmbit.blogspot.com/2020/06/intel-core-10...
There are results from 9 services from 32 games!
After page load please pick up your language from google translate (right side of page).
pcgpus - Friday, July 10, 2020 - link
Nice review. 10900K is the new king in games!If you want to compare this article with other services You have to go on this link:
https://warmbit.blogspot.com/2020/06/intel-core-i9...
There are results from 9 services from 35 games!
After page load please pick up your language from google translate (right side of page).
Meteor2 - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
A new microarchitecture doesn’t require a new process. When PAO immediately went south, I don’t understand why Intel didn’t just implement a new microarchitecture on 14 nm. Surely Ice Lake hasn’t taken four years to develop?Meteor2 - Wednesday, July 15, 2020 - link
*Sunny Cove. God Intel’s code-names are dumbmiss5tability - Saturday, August 8, 2020 - link
i just discovered this INTEL SCAM, now i dont freaking understand how those 10 gen cpu works i wanna buy i3 10300 and what im reading this is not 65W chip? what is real f@#%$@ power draw for those cpusdamian101 - Monday, August 10, 2020 - link
As far as I know Intel never used a single bidirectional ring bus on CPUs with more than 10 cores.On Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs with 12 and more (15) cores, Intel used three unidirectional ring buses. There were also no Sandy Bridge CPUs with more than 10 cores, and Intel used two bidirectional ring buses connected with buffered switches for their high core count Haswell CPUs.