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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
203 Comments
View All Comments
ol1bit - Tuesday, September 2, 2014 - link
You would think since intel seems stuck at a specific design speed for the most part(other than die shrink) that AMD could come up with a better architecture. Maybe there is no better architecture out there?coachingjoy - Tuesday, September 2, 2014 - link
ha, in three years we have 10-15% performance increase.
willis936 - Tuesday, September 2, 2014 - link
Since those parts are nearly identically clocked with a cost per core core being so low you're really getting about a 280% increase in performance per dollar over three years. Compared to other market segments that have practically stalled out everywhere in x86 land yes it is pretty amazing.LemmingOverlord - Tuesday, September 2, 2014 - link
about the gaming benchmarks, core count doesn't really make a difference in most of your chosen games... however there are still a few good CPU-benchmark games that come to mind, Civ V and the Supreme Commander series, to mention a couple. In fact I'd keep an eye out for Planetary Annihilation. It's avalilable this weekend, although I'm pretty sure Uber Entertainment would hand one over just for benchmarking.Gonemad - Tuesday, September 2, 2014 - link
"now the lowest end CPU for the extreme Intel platform". Yep, I'm just using an i7-920, that was exactly at the same spot in its day. Same architecture and memory as the extreme flagship, at a fraction of the cost. Not counting server chips, right?Intel Core i7-5820K, you say eh? Hmm... maybe I should write that down for later... Except I'm not planning anything beyond 1080p, then all of these chips and cards are a bit overkill.
Correction: I want full pedal-to-the-metal at 1080p, perhaps the "average build" should help... right? I appreciate anybody pitching in on the details for a machine to run anything at 1080p (or 1920x1200 actually) at 60 fps, but not more.
azazel1024 - Tuesday, September 2, 2014 - link
I'd like to add what is the most interesting to me is the 5820k. Hexacore cheap (Intel Hexacore, which IMHO is the only kind that matters). I'll likely never have the budget for a $1000 chip and then the system to do it justice.However I currently have an i5-3570 OC to 4GHz. Cost something like $380 for processor and board at the time. For what appears to be around $600 I could now get 50% more cores, hyperthreading and probably be able to reliably OC to a "consevative" 4.2GHz for probably >60% performance improvement for less than half again the cost.
In comparison to moving up to the i7-4770k, which would only cost maybe $50 or so less, with a modest performance improvement (probably only 15-30%).
It does make me VERY interested in Broadwell-E and Skylake-E, as those are the most likely points at which I might be looking at an upgrade. I do wonder if Skylake-E will see entry level Enthusiast Octocore, and maybe even if it'll mean high end mainstream Skylake Hexacore.
That would be an interesting decision if 6 or 8 core processors were not terribly far off in price.
Nfarce - Wednesday, September 3, 2014 - link
"However I currently have an i5-3570 OC to 4GHz. Cost something like $380 for processor and board at the time. For what appears to be around $600 I could now get 50% more cores, hyperthreading and probably be able to reliably OC to a "consevative" 4.2GHz for probably >60% performance improvement for less than half again the cost."Dude, did you forget about the cost of having to buy DDR4 memory modules? That will throw your numbers out the window.
BLOODYHELL - Thursday, September 4, 2014 - link
WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK FOR LARGE FILE VIDEO EDITING? MMA FIGHTING ETC. ADOBE PREMIRE CS6, VEGAS?BLOODYHELL - Thursday, September 4, 2014 - link
What do you guys think for large video editing MMA FIGHTS, WEDDINGS? Trying to save time editing and rendering videos.naxeem - Thursday, September 4, 2014 - link
Well, since Broadwell is not out yet, I doubt we'll see SkyLake that soon...