A Broadwell Retrospective Review in 2020: Is eDRAM Still Worth It?
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 2, 2020 11:00 AM ESTGaming Tests: World of Tanks
Albeit different to most of the other commonly played MMO or massively multiplayer online games, World of Tanks is set in the mid-20th century and allows players to take control of a range of military based armored vehicles. World of Tanks (WoT) is developed and published by Wargaming who are based in Belarus, with the game’s soundtrack being primarily composed by Belarusian composer Sergey Khmelevsky. The game offers multiple entry points including a free-to-play element as well as allowing players to pay a fee to open up more features. One of the most interesting things about this tank based MMO is that it achieved eSports status when it debuted at the World Cyber Games back in 2012.
World of Tanks enCore is a demo application for its new graphics engine penned by the Wargaming development team. Over time the new core engine has been implemented into the full game upgrading the games visuals with key elements such as improved water, flora, shadows, lighting as well as other objects such as buildings. The World of Tanks enCore demo app not only offers up insight into the impending game engine changes, but allows users to check system performance to see if the new engine runs optimally on their system. There is technically a Ray Tracing version of the enCore benchmark now available, however because it can’t be deployed standalone without the installer, we decided against using it. If that gets fixed, then we can look into it.
The benchmark tool comes with a number of presets:
- 768p Minimum, 1080p Standard, 1080p Max, 4K Max (not a preset)
The odd one out is the 4K Max preset, because the benchmark doesn’t automatically have a 4K option – to get this we edit the acceptable resolutions ini file, and then we can select 4K. The benchmark outputs its own results file, with frame times, making it very easy to parse the data needed for average and percentiles.
| AnandTech | Low Res Low Qual |
Medium Res Low Qual |
High Res Low Qual |
Medium Res Max Qual |
| Average FPS |  |
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| 95th Percentile |  |
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WoT always appears to be a good test of CPU gaming, however only in the lowest resolutions are the Broadwell parts competitive. As we crank up the settings, the minimum frame rates are more indicative of Broadwell positioning.
For our Integrated Tests, we run the first settings.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
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bernstein - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
GDDR6 would be ideally suited as an L4 CPU cache... it has >500GB/s throughput and relatively low cost...e36Jeff - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
Sure, if you build a 256-bit bus and somehow cram 8 GDDR6 chips onto the CPU package. You'd also be losing 30-40W of TDP to that.This is an application that HBM2 would be much better for. You can easily cram up to 4GB into the package with a much lower TDP impact and still get your 500+GB/s throughput. The biggest issue for this is going to be the impact of having to add in another memory controller and the associated die space and power that it eats up.
FreckledTrout - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
This is also how I see it playing out. Certainly by the time Intel/AMD switch to using GAAFET maybe before. You just need a couple die shrinks that bring densities up and power down.bernstein - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
scratch that, GDDR6 has much too high latency...stanleyipkiss - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
The 5775C was ahead of its time. Don't know why they didn't go down that rabbit hole (of increasing the size with each gen)hecksagon - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
Adding an extra 84mm2 of die area is a recipe for margin erosion, especially when the benefit is situational.CrispySilicon - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
Well, I use a 5775C for my main home PC (using it now) and it's more than that. Broadwell was designed for low power. It doesn't run well over 4Ghz and it's not made to.My rig idles at about 800mhz, clocks up to 4ghz on all cores, 2ghz on the edram, and 2ghz on DDR3L (overclocked 1866 hyperx fury), yes, 3L, becuase THAT'S where the magic happens. Low power performance.
I've also used TridentX 2400CL10 modules in it, not worth the higher voltage.
I'm going to upgrade finally next year. CXL and DDR5 will finally retire this diamond in the rough.
Retest with nothing in the BIOS changed except the eDRAM multiplier to 20 and see what happens.
Notmyusualid - Wednesday, November 4, 2020 - link
I usually run my Broadwell at 4.4GHz 24/7. However I have a failed bios battery so using the m/b default 4.0GHz overclock settings today. I don't let mine idle at low speeds, its High Performance mode only & I only boot the Desktop for gaming, or Software Define Radio. Both of which want GHz.Memory is Vengeance LED 3200MHz (CL15 & only stable at 3000MHz, XMP is not stable either), and 32GB is currently installed.
Given;
C:\Windows\System32>winsat mem
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: System memory performance assessment ''
> Run Time 00:00:05.45
> Memory Performance 54386.55 MB/s
> Total Run Time 00:00:06.65
I think that is why my Broadwell missed out on any eDRAM - it wasn't necessary.
Dolphin runs about 35x seconds, as I remember it.
6950X running cool in 2020...
MrCommunistGen - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
HA. Epic timing. Just starting to read this now, but I recently built a system with a Broadwell-based Xeon E3 chip I got for cheap on eBay. Mostly just because I wanted to play with a chip that had eDRAM and the price of entry for an i5 or i7 has remained pretty high.This will be a very interesting read!
alufan - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
News all day as long as its about Intel so it seems on here said it before and have seen nothing since to change my mind