The Intel Skylake i7-6700K Overclocking Performance Mini-Test to 4.8 GHz
by Ian Cutress on August 28, 2015 2:30 PM ESTCPU Tests on Windows: Professional
Cinebench R15
Cinebench is a benchmark based around Cinema 4D, and is fairly well known among enthusiasts for stressing the CPU for a provided workload. Results are given as a score, where higher is better.
Agisoft Photoscan – 2D to 3D Image Manipulation: link
Agisoft Photoscan creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.
Rendering – PovRay 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.
HandBrake v0.9.9 LQ: link
For HandBrake, we take a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and convert it to the x264 format in an MP4 container. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.
Conclusions on Professional Performance
In all of our professional level tests, the gain from the overclock is pretty much as expected. Photoscan sometimes offers a differing perspective, but this is partly due to some of the randomness of the implementation code between runs but also it affords a variable thread load depending on which stage. Not published here are the HandBrake results running at high quality (double 4K), because it actually failed at 4.6 GHz and above. There is a separate page addressing this stability issue at the end of this mini-review.
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Oxford Guy - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
The problem is that overclocks should NEVER be called stable if they aren't.And, I don't like the way Anandtech pumps ridiculous amounts of voltage into chips (like they did with the 8320E).
Gigaplex - Sunday, September 27, 2015 - link
Production software in my books is any released software that completes a useful task, rather than just run synthetic tests.hyno111 - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
Is there a temperature chart for overclocking?sonny73n - Sunday, August 30, 2015 - link
Ian seems to miss the most important part in OCing.MrSpadge - Thursday, September 3, 2015 - link
The temperature depends strongly on your cooling, TIM application etc. If Ian included those numbers, people would be shouting "but I get different values with..."kneelbeforezod - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
12% better performance for a 32% power increase. uha.StrangerGuy - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
I OCed a cheapo AXP1700 by 25% on a budget nForce 2 board and stock cooling simply with FSB 266->333. I OCed my $183 E6300 that surpassed a $1000 X6800 in performance.Now, Intel and Asus et al thinks they are doing us a favor top-end mainstream CPUs that are barely overclockable on even on the most pricey of mobos, and hardly anyone calling out their bullshit, just because of unlocked multipiers? Gimme a break.
Am I the only sane guy here or what?
jihe - Monday, August 31, 2015 - link
That's why I'm still on nehalem, overclocking an x5650 is much more fun than this pay a premium to overclock crap that intel has been feeding us.SanX - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
Ian, add at least 4790k at 4.5-4.8GHz for us to see how bad new processors actually areV900 - Saturday, August 29, 2015 - link
Isn't this right about the usual time an AMD troll jumps in to tell us how you can overclock Kaveri to 5 Ghz, and you don't even need an aircooler or anything!