The Intel Haswell-E CPU Review: Core i7-5960X, i7-5930K and i7-5820K Tested
by Ian Cutress on August 29, 2014 12:00 PM ESTGaming Benchmarks
One of the important things to test in our gaming benchmarks this time around is the effect of the Core i7-5820K having 28 PCIe 3.0 lanes rather than the normal 40. This means that the CPU is limited to x16/x8 operation in SLI, rather than x16/x16.
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. We test at 1920x1080 on Ultra graphical settings.
Nothing here really shows any advantage of Haswell-E over Ivy Bridge-E, although the 10% gaps to the 990X for minimum frame rates offer some perspective.
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Bioshock Infinite likes a mixture of cores and frequency, especially when it comes to SLI.
Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
Tomb Raider is blissfully CPU agnostic it would seem.
Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is a benchmarking wet dream – a highly complex benchmark that can bring the toughest setup and high resolutions down into single figures. Having an extreme SSAO setting can do that, but at the right settings Sleeping Dogs is highly playable and enjoyable. We run the basic benchmark program laid out in the Adrenaline benchmark tool, and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
The biggest graph of CPU performance change is the minimum frame rate while in SLI - the 5960X reaches 67.4 FPS minimum, with only the xx60X CPUs of each generation moving above 60 FPS. That being said, all the Intel CPUs in our test are above 55 FPS, though it would seem that the 60X processors have some more room.
Battlefield 4
The EA/DICE series that has taken countless hours of my life away is back for another iteration, using the Frostbite 3 engine. AMD is also piling its resources into BF4 with the new Mantle API for developers, designed to cut the time required for the CPU to dispatch commands to the graphical sub-system. For our test we use the in-game benchmarking tools and record the frame time for the first ~70 seconds of the Tashgar single player mission, which is an on-rails generation of and rendering of objects and textures. We test at 1920x1080 at Ultra settings.
Battlefield 4 is the only benchmark where we see the 5820K with its 28 PCIe lanes down by any reasonable margin against the other two 5xxx processors, and even then this is around 5% when in SLI. Not many users will notice the difference between 105 FPS and 110 FPS, and minimum frame rates are still 75 FPS+ on all Intel processors.
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NeatOman - Friday, August 29, 2014 - link
Sooo... its good for very high end gaming and rendering.Motion2082 - Friday, August 29, 2014 - link
Hey guys, I'm running a i7 2600k on ME4Z @ 4.8GHz. My system is fast enough for most applications, only struggles with multiple applications running. Should I be looking at Haswell-E or waiting until Broadwell? Only annoyance I have with i7 2600k is slow video encoding and restrictions on multi-tasking.TeXWiller - Saturday, August 30, 2014 - link
Adjust manually your process priorities and core affinities, if necessary. The old work horse will take you a lot longer still. I may have a 14-hour rendering process going with fully loaded cores and still run a nice FPS session at will, provided that I adjust the process priority manually.mapesdhs - Saturday, August 30, 2014 - link
What is your RAM speed? I find 2133 @ CL10 to be optimal with the M4E/Z (I have
five of those boards, all with 2700Ks @ 5.0).
Make sure you have a good SATA3 SSD to exploit the Intel SATA3 port. Don't use
the Marvell ports. An H80i with NDS fans works really well for low-noise, but even an
old TRUE with any two decent fans will happily run a 2700K @ 5.0 (I've used the
TRUE, TRUE Black, VenomousX, Phanteks, etc., but recently bought a whole pile of
refurb H80s for a good price).
If you want an intermediate upgrade, get a used 3930K C2, a good used X79 board
(I keep buying the ASUS P7X79 WS, done five so far), move over your RAM, etc.
Note the same caveats re Intel/Marvell ports, use an H100i + NDS fans instead, and
voila, you're up & running away with a 6-core for not much outlay. A recent build I did
empllyed a 3960X which cost 245 UKP, the above ASUS board for 190 UKP, etc.
Gave 1221 for CB R15, while your 2600K @ 4.8 should give around 850, so that's a
very nice bump for threaded tasks and running multiple apps in general.
I suggest an 840 Pro or 850 Pro for an SSD, though there are lots of used bargains
available. I bagged a 512GB Vector for 160, ideal as a cache for AE, while an OEM
840 Pro was only 87. Best of all, I keep getting 1475W Thermaltake Toughpower XT
Gold units for around 125 UKP (less than half normal new cost), perfect for handling
four heavy GPUs for CUDA or whatever (my system has four GTX 580 3GB atm) in
an oc'd 6-core system with multiple SSDs, RAID, etc.
More references, examples & suchlike available on request - don't want to clog this thread.
Ian.
LordHaHa - Friday, August 29, 2014 - link
Mixed feelings on this one. This is a solid effort here, and the 5820K at around $390 is potentially interesting, seems very similar to the 3930K and it's a bit cheaper by default.That said, I don't see much of a reason to upgrade from SB-E or IB-E if you already have something in that. Certainly even the 5820K is a bit overkill for gaming for the price.
I do have to say we live in strange times where even latter-day Core 2 systems (paired with very good video cards, as a caveat) are still fairly capable for most single player gaming environments; certainly they can still handle any casual task thrown at them. And anyone who's got to Sandy Bridge has had little reason to upgrade their systems yet, for sure. Ten years ago, saying "I have no reason to upgrade my 2-4 or so generation old box" would have been crazy talk.
Laststop311 - Friday, August 29, 2014 - link
Very impressed with the 8 core overclock. I was worried that having such a low stock meant the oc wouldn't be too good. They had it on a crappy closed loop 140mm rad and it did well. I have a custom loop that cools the motherboard chipset and vrm, the cpu, and the gpu. A triple 5.25" reservoir with dual mcp 655 pumps in series at setting 4 1 below max pump speed a 60mm thick 420mm rad with 6x 140mm noctua a15 fans in push pull. Hopefully I can hit 4.8ghz i'll be very happy but as long as i can hit 4.5ghz ill be satisfied. I'm coming from a 4261mhz i7-980x so this is going to be a rly big upgrade for my video work and even a noticeable boost in gaming not huge but noticeable.I'm totally pleased with the i7-5960x. Waited 3 generations from nehalem to upgrade. With haswell-e ill be waiting at least 4 possibly 6 generations to upgrade unless some crazy new chipset geature makes me do it earlier.
cactusdog - Saturday, August 30, 2014 - link
I really wish they took the voltage regulator off the CPU. Its really a bit sad that a 4790K can beat this highend expensive chip in single threaded tasks. I was really looking forward to this but performance doesn't justify the cost unless you do a lot of multi threaded stuff. With skylake coming with PCI-E 4 this system is going to be outdated pretty quickly. One thing is for sure, the days of big overclocks on the CPU side are over.ToTTenTranz - Saturday, August 30, 2014 - link
The 28 lanes in the 5820k don't make much difference in SLI because it uses the SLI bridge as interconnect between the graphics cards.It would be interesting to see if the 16x/8x configuration makes any difference with two of the newer bridgeless Radeon cards.
Especially since the first build exemplified in this review uses that same configuration (5820k with two Radeon 285 cards).
mlambert890 - Monday, September 1, 2014 - link
there absolutely is *not* data going across the sli bridge at all. the only thing going across the bridge is timing and signaling info. it is a tiny 1GB/s interconnectat extremely high resolutions on pcie 2 SLI is where you specifically DO need more lanes. pcie 3 alleviates this. multi 4k would bottleneck again, but the best gpus can barely handle a single 4k in high detail anyhow even in tri-sli
fallaha56 - Saturday, August 30, 2014 - link
Hmm one last benchmark (emulation-related) I'd like to see (and suspect many others would too) -run PCSX2 in software mode with 8+ threads and see if there's benefits.Try something really tough like Shadow of the Colossus.
Looks like this chip is a man looking for a mission, is that it?