CPU Benchmarks: Synthetic

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

Dwarf Fortress 0.44.12: Link

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 as it has to simulate more famous people, more world events, and the natural way that humanoid creatures take over an environment. Like some kind of virus.

For our test we’re using DFMark. 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. After analyzing the test, we ended up going for three different world generation sizes:

  • Small, a 65x65 world with 250 years, 10 civilizations and 4 megabeasts
  • Medium, a 127x127 world with 550 years, 10 civilizations and 4 megabeasts
  • Large, a 257x257 world with 550 years, 40 civilizations and 10 megabeasts

(3-2a) Dwarf Fortress 0.44.12 World Gen 65x65, 250 Yr(3-2b) Dwarf Fortress 0.44.12 World Gen 129x129, 550 Yr(3-2c) Dwarf Fortress 0.44.12 World Gen 257x257, 550 Yr

 

Dolphin v5.0 Emulation: Link

Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that ray traces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in seconds, where the Wii itself scores 1051 seconds.

(3-3) Dolphin 5.0 Render Test

 

3D Particle Movement v2.1: AVX2/AVX512

This is the latest version of this benchmark designed to simulate semi-optimized scientific algorithms taken directly from my doctorate thesis. This involves randomly moving particles in a 3D space using a set of algorithms that define random movement. For v2.1, we also have a fully optimized AVX2/AVX512 version, which uses intrinsics to get the best performance out of the software.

(2-2) 3D Particle Movement v2.1 (Peak AVX)

Tiger Lake wins here as it has an AVX512 unit.

y-Cruncher 0.78.9506: www.numberworld.org/y-cruncher

If you ask anyone what sort of computer holds the world record for calculating the most digits of pi, I can guarantee that a good portion of those answers might point to some colossus super computer built into a mountain by a super-villain. Fortunately nothing could be further from the truth – the computer with the record is a quad socket Ivy Bridge server with 300 TB of storage. The software that was run to get that was y-cruncher.

(2-4) yCruncher 0.78.9506 MT (2.5b Pi)

This is another AVX-512 test.

Linux OpenSSL Speed: SHA256

One of our readers reached out in early 2020 and stated that he was interested in looking at OpenSSL hashing rates in Linux. Luckily OpenSSL in Linux has a function called ‘speed’ that allows the user to determine how fast the system is for any given hashing algorithm, as well as signing and verifying messages.

(8-3c) Linux OpenSSL Speed sha256 8K Block (1T)(8-4c) Linux OpenSSL Speed sha256 8K Block (nT)

 

CPU Benchmarks: Real World Conclusion: New Paradigms Needed
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  • CrispySilicon - Wednesday, December 16, 2020 - link

    Poor Broadwell. Give it the latest DDR3 and some XMP love, sheesh. Even my 5775C htpc has some damn 1866 ddr3l in it.
  • alufan - Wednesday, December 16, 2020 - link

    will this be repeated when the new APUs come out?
    Ditto others comments re the 720p which is probably a APU sweet spot
  • lightningz71 - Wednesday, December 16, 2020 - link

    I have to agree with other posters; neglecting to include test results for these APUs with overclocked RAM severely reduces the utility of this review. Given the lengths that people will have to go to to acquire these processors, they must have a use case that requires maximum performance of the iGPU, and will more than likely overclock their RAM. For me,if I was sourcing one of these, it would be going into a tiny ITX case with no room for a discreet video card, and would be overclocking my ram to it's limits. Not having at least DDR4-4000 with tight timings does a disservice. And, I would be fine with all the competing desktop APUs having overclocked RAM as well.
  • 29a - Thursday, December 17, 2020 - link

    Ian claims that not enabling XMP is the more realistic scenario because he thinks that the majority of people who build their own PCs wont go into the BIOS and enable XMP, seriously.
  • lmcd - Friday, December 18, 2020 - link

    I haven't on any of my builds until this year and I guarantee most of my friends fell into the same boat. Most build guides don't focus on RAM speed so it's not as common of knowledge.
  • 29a - Friday, December 18, 2020 - link

    Then you and your friends don't know how to properly build a computer.
  • robbro9 - Wednesday, December 16, 2020 - link

    I was really surprised at how well the 2400G/3400G has held up to these newer apus. I was thinking they would be left further behind, but they remain very competitive. Guess it shows that APU wise, AMD has not advanced a whole lot the last few years either.

    Hoping the next gen zen3 bring a big graphics boost to the table as well. With the mid/low end games I typically play, that would mean no more graphics card purchases for me (unless I wanted a mid life cycle refresh or some such)...
  • TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, December 16, 2020 - link

    A big part is memory bandwidth. While AMD has improved its not like we have 5000mhz DDR4 feeding these chips. AMD's focus has also been more on efficiency of the GPU as opposed to outright performance.
  • GeoffreyA - Thursday, December 17, 2020 - link

    Was surprised myself how well they've held up. Looking forward to seeing Cezanne in action.
  • Cloakstar - Wednesday, December 16, 2020 - link

    Try 4 sticks RAM in Bank + Channel Interleave mode. AMD APU gaming performance goes up by 1/3, leaving only 3 of the IGP tests under 30FPS on the 4750G.

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