The Intel Broadwell Desktop Review: Core i7-5775C and Core i5-5675C Tested (Part 1)
by Ian Cutress on June 2, 2015 7:45 AM ESTOffice Performance
The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can add a wrinkle to testing in environments with a variable threaded workload. There is also an added issue of the motherboard remaining consistent, depending on how the motherboard manufacturer wants to add in their own boosting technologies over the ones that Intel would prefer they used. In order to remain consistent, we implement an OS-level unique high performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Dolphin Benchmark: link
Many emulators are often bound by single-threaded CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces 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 minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53 minutes.
Crystal Well doesn’t help much in Dolphin, indicating it is more CPU frequency limited than DRAM/cache limited.
WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
WinRAR is our typical benchmark to go to when testing whether DRAM is factor, and the improvements provided by the Crystal Well implementation trump any frequency deficit.
3D Particle Movement
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
3DPM, like Dolphin, is concerned more with CPU frequency than DRAM accesses.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.9
FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and results are given in seconds.
Web Benchmarks
On the lower end processors, general usability is a big factor of experience, especially as we move into the HTML5 era of web browsing. For our web benchmarks, we take four well known tests with Chrome 35 as a consistent browser.
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
WebXPRT
Google Octane v2
In the webtests, the Broadwell-DT CPUs didn’t necessarily take top spot but they are punching above their expected weight for their frequency.
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Flunk - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
The 5820K is even available for < €400.ImSpartacus - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
And it's not THAT expensive. It's certainly not cheap, but it's reasonable considering Intel's dominance.bug77 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
I would love to see a quad core clocked higher (or with better IPC). I don't use highly parallel software that much and I have no use for an integrated GPU.Sadly, with no competition, Intel has just been pumping the GPU for 4 generations in a row. Not that I blame them.
Taneli - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Improving single threaded performance is extremely hard, just ask AMD. I'd expect improvements of 5-10% per generation for the next few years.bug77 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
They could still raise the clock speed. Intel CPUs could hit 4GHz on air for years. Even the top-level Haswell can do it, but it's 4 core+HT part. If I could replace my i5-2500k with a 4GHz quad-core, that would be good enough for me. Removing the integrated GPU from the equation would yield even more thermal legroom for the CPU. But it's not happening. With CPU performance securely in their hands, Intel is trying to secure positions in GPU and mobile markets (they'd be crazy not to at least try to diversify).Yet raising the clock speed conflicts with higher IPC. Because raising clock speed needs a longer pipeline and a longer pipeline means taking a more serious hit for branch mispredictions. AMD has managed to seriously raise IPC with AthlonXP. Intel did it with their Core architecture. And nothing happened ever since. Because there's no more pressure on Intel and AMD doesn't have the cash to invest anymore.
swaaye - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
You don't know that the GPU is impeding clock rate.Increases to clock rate increase power consumption dramatically. You can always overclock Broadwell yourself.
IPC has been steadily improving. Core 2, and anything from AMD, are far behind at this point.
bug77 - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
"IPC has been steadily improving. Core 2, and anything from AMD, are far behind at this point."Not really. If you look here: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7003/the-haswell-rev...
You'll see there's usually less than 10% gained (watch the i7 3.5GHz parts). And that's spread over three generations. Broadwell bring another 2-3%.
And yes, AMD has been playing the same game, only they're stuck in their Athlon64 days.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Dude, Intel is offering exactly this with i7 4790K. A really highly clocked quad core. Use your external GPU and the iGPU won't consume any power nor limit clock speed. In fact it makes the die larger and thus helps cooling a bit.sonicmerlin - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Oh please. What a garbage excuse. "It's hard"? Intel's more than doubled IPC/Watt in their mobile chips over the last 3-4 years. They just don't care about high end IPC because they have no competition.vision33r - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
That is what the XEON offers a better price and value than the X58xx line if you don't need unlocked performance. You can buy many XEON 6 cores cheaper than the X58xx line.