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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Basilisk - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
While I enjoy the image of you chatting away with worms a'dangling, The Bard has his due:"Shall I bend low and in a bondman's key, With BATED breath and whispering humbleness, Say this..." [Shylock]. Billy originated the phrase, and his spelling is still considered correct... although it's a common enough error. Think of it as abated (restrained) breathing.
Informative article, however, so Thanks!
dwbogardus - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Really? I thought it meant breath that smelled like bait! (just kidding)coburn_c - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
I swear I saw a 'Death of the Desktop' and a 'PC gamers outnumber next-gen consoles' article in the same news feed last week.dave_the_nerd - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
So this is what you were working on?!?!10 days with no updates; you had me worried AnandTech. Thanks for the kickbutt review, as always.
davegraham - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
lol. in your conclusion, you say "baited breath" which would lead someone to believe that you smell of fish. what you meant to say is "bated breath" which approximates to your intent. :) great article overall Ian.IndyJaws - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Merchant of Venice +1FreeMan4096 - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
Impressive article. Bookmarking the webpage.Galatian - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
Ian: on page 12 dual 7970 testing in Bioshock Infinite the graph for minimum frame rates has the core i3 twice with two completely different values.Thanks anyway for the great article!
extide - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
"Eventually as the future of the chipset progresses, I see all these ports becoming flexible, though I would imagine we are a few years out from this." -- I actually don't think that will happen. It undoubtedly will increase the complexity of the chipset to allow the possibility for every single port to be configurable, thus increase costs. However, it is very unlikely that you would have a situation where you wouldn't want any SATA ports, or USB3 ports. Thus it seems pretty pointless to make ALL of the ports configurable. I would imagine that we will see a future with MORE configurability, but I would bet you will always see some dedicated ports.mapesdhs - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
If anyone's curious as to how the article's results compare to an oc'd older CPU,
here are some CB R15 numbers for a 5GHz i7 2700K (RAM @ 2133 CL10, ASUS M4E):
1-thread: 177
N-thread: 880
There's a power consumption difference of course, but the lower purchase cost of
a used 2700K makes up for it by more than an order of magnitude.
Ian.