The Intel Haswell Refresh Review: Core i7-4790, i5-4690 and i3-4360 Tested
by Ian Cutress on May 11, 2014 3:01 AM ESTSynthetic IGP Benchmarks
OpenCL – CompuBench: link
CompuBench is an OpenCL and RenderScript benchmark designed by Kishonti for both CPUs and any GPGPU capable device. While it offers almost two dozen tests, we select the more real-world tests in terms of fluid simulation and image analysis benchmarks and test on the CPU and IGP respectively. The CPU results are earlier in the review, and the IGP results are below.
CompuBench responds well to actual cores, but not so much to threads, given by the close scores of the i5 and i7 CPUs. AMD still wins here.
Unity – Graphic Scene 720p: link
As part of my IGP testing I went searching for a couple of new Unity based benchmarks to help decipher the line between the desktop graphics solutions and those that are not so great. First up is a graphical humdinger, implementing a complex scene with lighting effects (including fluid simulation, shadows, SSAO, Bloom). We run the benchmark at 720p with the highest graphical settings, reporting the average FPS.
The HD 4600 seems relatively CPU agnostic for complex graphics in Unity. More GPU power seems needed.
Unity – Draw Calls: link
Next up is a benchmark limited by draw calls rather than rendering complexity. The scene generates simple Nintendo Gamecube polygons that fall due to gravity and bounce around until stationary. The scene continuously spews out these polygons until three consecutive frames fall under a 20 FPS average. We run the benchmark at 720p at simple graphic settings to minimize the graphical complexity, take the number of consoles that spawn from each run and average over several runs.
3DMark
The synthetic tools from Futuremark have been on the benchmarking landscape for over a decade, with each generation designed to tackle new problems as either the CPUs or GPUs become too powerful. Here we test 3DMark 06, 3DMark 11 (Performance) and the latest 3DMark.
For CPU limited testing, such as Cloud Gate, the Intel i7 pulls ahead with the i5 quickly in tow. For the others, AMD has the lead.
Tessmark
The latest version of TessMark is designed to focus on tessellation via OpenGL 4. We run the latest version of the benchmark using the high resolution map set at maximum tessellation while 1080p full screen, reporting the average FPS.
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AndrewJacksonZA - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
If you didn't clarify "Human limited" and "CPU limited" I would've understood them the other way around:"Human limited" has the human being as the slowest part of the system with a very fast CPU.
"CPU limited" has the CPU as the slowest part of the system.
Harry Lloyd - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Testing performance of these CPUs is completely pointless. The only interesting thing about them is power consumption and thermals.geok1ng - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
The benchmarks of the Xeon 2687 v2 8c/16Ht imply that the upcoming Extrem Edition haswell-E CPU will be a landslide. 5960X can't come soon enough.Antronman - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
If the 5960x will be as bad as the 4960x, the 5930k can't come soon enough either.milkMADE - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
too bad the only sku with 8-cores to give it that landslide are the EE $1000 5960xgeok1ng - Tuesday, May 13, 2014 - link
a xeon 1680 v2 , single socket 8c/16ht costs $1887, and afetr 6 months we still do not know if it is unlocked like the 6cores 1650/1660. So $1000 for a 5960x is not outlandishChrispy_ - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Looking at the Z97 vs H97, why are small businesses not allowed to use SRT?Such dumb.
Antronman - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
How many fucks I give: 0.StrangerGuy - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Intel can spam a million SKUs left and right while pretending it's relevant like 10 years ago and it still doesn't mask the fact there are only like 2 chips @ $50 and $220 that makes sense for 90% and 9.99% of desktop users respectively, and most of them are well served by chips sold 3 years ago.Antronman - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Actually there are more "sensible" enthusiast chips. For example, if I am running a 4k setup, and I also record gameplay and upload it to youtube, I want something notably better performing than the 4670k. And I would say that much larger .01% of the computer-using community is pro overclockers and video editors and scientists and software developers.There's so many niches these days, a much greater percentage of people needing more specific solutions is present than most people think.