A Broadwell Retrospective Review in 2020: Is eDRAM Still Worth It?
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 2, 2020 11:00 AM ESTGaming Tests: Chernobylite
Despite the advent of recent TV shows like Chernobyl, recreating the situation revolving around the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the concept of nuclear fallout and the town of Pripyat have been popular settings for a number of games – mostly first person shooters. Chernobylite is an indie title that plays on a science-fiction survival horror experience and uses a 3D-scanned recreation of the real Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. It involves challenging combat, a mix of free exploration with crafting and non-linear story telling. While still in early access, it is already picking up plenty of awards.
I picked up Chernobylite while still in early access, and was impressed by its in-game benchmark, showcasing complex building structure with plenty of trees and structures where aliasing becomes important. The in-game benchmark is an on-rails experience through the scenery, covering both indoor and outdoor scenes – it ends up being very CPU limited in the way it is designed. We have taken an offline version of Chernobylite to use in our tests, and we are testing the following settings combinations:
- 360p Low, 1440p Low, 4K Low, 1080p Max
We do as many runs within 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination, and then take averages.
| AnandTech | Low Res Low Qual |
Medium Res Low Qual |
High Res Low Qual |
Medium Res Max Qual |
| Average FPS |  |
 |
 |
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The Broadwell CPUs remain high performers here as the frame rates get cranked up, with the Broadwell Core i7+i5 even matching the latest Comet Lake Core i5, even at 1080p Max settings.
For our Integrated Tests, we run the first and last combination of settings.
Integrated graphics shows how far AMD's basic options are ahead.
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Billy Tallis - Wednesday, November 4, 2020 - link
Ian already said he tests at JEDEC speeds, which includes the latency timings. Using modules that are capable of faster timings does not prevent running them at standard timings.Quantumz0d - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link
Don't even bother Ian with these people.Nictron - Wednesday, November 4, 2020 - link
I appreciate the review and context over a period of time. Having a baseline comparison is important and it is up to us the reader to determine the optimal environment we would like to invest in. As soon as we do the price starts to skyrocket and comparisons are difficult.Reviews like this also show that a well thought out ecosystem can deliver great value. Companies are here to make money and I appreciate reviewers that provide baseline compatible testing over time for us to make informed decisions.
Thank you and kind regards,
GeoffreyA - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link
Thanks, Ian. I thoroughly enjoyed the article and the historical perspective especially. And the technical detail: no other site can come close.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link
Ian, could you comment on the current state of the art of EDRAM? How fast can it be, how low can the latency go? Depending on those parameters and difficulty of manufacturing, there might be a number of uses that make sense.One where it could is to possibly allow Xe graphics to use cheaper and lower power LPDDR-4 or -5 RAM without taking a large performance hit vs. GDDR6. 128 or 256 MB EDRAM cache might just do that, and still keep costs lower. Pure speculation, of course.
DARK_BG - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link
Hi , what I'm wondering is where the 30% gap between the 5770C and 4790K in Games came from , compared to your original review and all other reviews out there of 5770C. Since I'm with a Z97 platform and 4.0GHz Xeon , moving to 4770k or 4790K doesn't make any sense given their second hand prices but 5770C on this review makes alot of sense.So is it the OS,the drivers , some BIOS settings or on the older reviews the systems were just GPU limited failing to explore the CPU performance?
jpnex - Friday, January 8, 2021 - link
Lol, no, the I7 5775c is just stronger than an i7 4790k, this is a known fact. Other benchmarks show the same thing. Old benchmarks don't show It because back then people didn't know that deactivating the iGPU would give a performance boost.DARK_BG - Wednesday, July 20, 2022 - link
I forgot back then to reply back , based on this review I've sourced 5775C (for a little less than 100$ this days going for 140-150$) coupled with Asus Z97 Pro and after some tweaking (CPU at 4.1GHz , eDRAM at 2000MHz and some other minor stuff that I already forgot) the difference compared to the Xeon 4.0GHz in games was mind blowing.Later I was able to source and 32GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 2400MHz CL10 just for fun to make it top spec config. :)It is a very capable machine but this days I'll swap it for Ryzen 5800X3D to get the final train on the fastest Windows 7 capable gaming system.Yeah i know it is OLD OS but everything I need runs flawessly for more than a decade with only reainstall 7 years ago due to an SSD failure. It is my only personal Intel System for the past 22 years since it was the for a first time the best price performance second hand platform for a moment , all the rest were AMD based and I keep them all in working condition.
BTW I was able to run Windows XP 64bit on the Z97 platform , I just need to swap the GTX 1070 for GTX 980/980 Ti to be fully functional everything else runs like a charm under XP i was able to hack the driver to install as an GTX 960 so I have a 2D hardware acceleration under XP on GTX 1070 since nvidia havent changed anything in regard to 2D compared to the previous generation
dew111 - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link
Rocket lake should have been the comet lake processor with eDRAM. Instead they'll be lucky to beat comet lake at all.erotomania - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link
Thanks, Ian. I enjoyed this article from a NUC8i7BEH that has 128MB of coffee-flavored eDRAM. Also, thanks Ganesh for the recent reminder that Bean > Frost.