CPU Benchmarks

The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern during 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 a OS-level unique high performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode.

HandBrake, SD Filmlink

For HandBrake, we take two videos (a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short) and convert them to 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.

HandBrake v0.9.9 LQ Film

HandBrake, 4K60 Animationlink

HandBrake v0.9.9 2x4K

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.

Agisoft PhotoScan Benchmark - Total Time

Dolphin Benchmarklink

Many emulators are often bound by single thread 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.

Dolphin Emulation Benchmark

WinRAR 5.0.1link

This test compresses 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 5.01, 2867 files, 1.52 GB

PCMark8 v2 Work 2.0 OpenCL on IGP

A new addition to our CPU testing suite is PCMark8 v2, where we test the Work 2.0 and Creative 3.0 suites in OpenCL mode.  As this test is new, we have not run it on many AMD systems yet and will do so as soon as we can.

PCMark8 v2 Work 2.0 OpenCL IGP

PCMark8 v2 Creative 3.0 OpenCL IGP

Hybrid x265

Hybrid is a new benchmark, where we take a 4K 1500 frame video and convert it into an x265 format without audio. Results are given in frames per second.

Hybrid x265, 4K Video

Cinebench R15

Cinebench R15 - Single Threaded

Cinebench R15 - Multi-Threaded

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.

3D Particle Movement: Single Threaded

3D Particle Movement: MultiThreaded

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.

FastStone Image Viewer 4.9

All of our CPU benchmarks are responsive to more frequency, and for tests that are all about single threaded performance (3DPM-ST, FastStone, Dolphin), the overclocked processors match each other. The highly clocked i7-4790K at stock is taking the lead in each of these benchmarks against the other processors at stock frequencies quite easily. For multi-threaded scenarios, it is interesting to note that when overclocked, Handbrake does not seem to use the extra threads that efficiently when encoding 4K60. This is presumably because each thread needs a fair amount of cache and there is little speed-up in switching the work between threads.

Overclocking on Devil’s Canyon Gaming and Synthetics on Processor Graphics
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  • Braincruser - Sunday, July 13, 2014 - link

    Rendering should be left to GPU cores in shaders. They scale much much better than cpu.
  • Mark-Benney - Thursday, August 14, 2014 - link

    I wrote out a the Manderoot program on a Acorn Electron 32k, Back in the very early days. Took 48hrs to complete up on books with fan placed under it. Lol bet you were not even born when i first wrote program in Dos/Machine code/Pascal/BBC Basic. And still in nappys when I was overclocking a Intel Celron from 233mhz to a stable 24/7 367mhz
  • CrystalBay - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link

    Thanks Dr. Ian I love my Intel 4790K @ 4.8 Ghz , I also love Asus Z97 Deluxe . This isa the simplest way to OC in my 25 years of building PC's ... Screw it being AVX stable capitol BS never will be used instruction . Any modern chip fails at it anyway ... Go Devils ,go AMD
  • pcjoeyd - Wednesday, February 18, 2015 - link

    crystalBay,,, not ANY modern chip fails...just your unstable cpu setup. why run at 4.8ghz and run your cpu super hot? bump it down to 4.6-4.7ghz (you won't notice any difference), run your cpu much cooler and be 100% stable.
  • superjim - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link

    Intel hasn't made a good OCing chip since Sandy Bridge. Devil's Canyon just reinforces how good SB was. Nearly every i5 and i7 chip could hit 4.4 without issue with most at 4.6+ on a good air cooler. Raise your hand if you're still on SB only because there is nothing better...
  • AlucardX - Tuesday, July 15, 2014 - link

    same here. I'm on 2500k at 4.5 GHz. I kept reading this article to try to determine if it was time for a rebuild, and i guess the answer is no. this would be more appealing if the i7 had true 8 core CPU's in it
  • jloutz - Thursday, July 24, 2014 - link

    Completely agree with above posts. I'm at 4.5 GHz on closed loop water on a 2500k and this thing has been rock solid for four years (by far the longest upgrade cycle since I started DIY builds in 1998. I believe I got a Microcenter CPU/ASUS MB bundle for ~ $300 (wow!) I've added SSD's and a new graphic card, but still itching for a CPU/MB chipset upgrade. Let's see what Skylake brings to the party??
  • pcjoeyd - Thursday, February 19, 2015 - link

    yep, no need to get anything greater than sandybridge as it stands now. I have my 2600k i7 clocked at 4.4ghz super stable and cool. My daughter's pc I have her 2500k running at 4.7ghz. I'm using Noctua NH-U14S coolers in both systems. Rock solid, runs cool and super QUIET!!
  • MrSpadge - Saturday, July 26, 2014 - link

    Switched from Sandy to Ivy for the better power consumption under moderate OC (4.1 GHz @ 1.03 V). Running 24/7 load on it, so even stock voltage (1.18 V) is far too expensive.
  • bhima - Sunday, August 3, 2014 - link

    Still rocking my i5-2500K at 4.2 on air. I could go higher, but I'm pretty conservative when it comes to OC. I have no need to upgrade as games aren't bottlenecked by my processor, and using the Adobe suite is still a trivial task for Sandy Bridge.

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