SYSmark, WebXPRT, 7-zip
Testing Configuration
For this review, every single benchmark and test scenario we use has been updated or removed, including a couple of new entries. We are using the most up to date versions of each software as of last week, to make sure we account for any changes or architectural changes that have occurred. Here is the new suite, in alphabetical order.
- 7-zip Compression
- Audacity MP3 Encode
- Blender
- Cinebench R15
- Euler 3D
- Geekbench
- Handbrake
- POV-Ray
- SiSoft Sandra
- SYSmark 2014 SE
- WebXPRT
- X264 Encode
The full testbed configuration is listed below.
| Test System Setup | |
| CPU | Intel Core i9-7900X AMD Ryzen 7 1800X Intel Core i7-7700K Intel Core i5-7600K Intel Core i7-6700K Intel Core i7-6950X Intel Core i7-6900K Intel Core i7-6800K |
| Motherboard | ASUS Prim X299-Deluxe (Skylake-X) ASUS Crosshair VI Hero (Ryzen) ASUS Prime Z270-A (Kaby Lake, Skylake) ASUS X99-Deluxe II (Broadwell-E) |
| Memory | 16GB Corsair Dominator DDR4-2400 |
| Storage | Corsair Neutron XTi 480 SSD (Thanks Corsair!) |
| Sound Card | On-board |
| Graphics Card | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB |
| Graphics Drivers | NVIDIA 378.49 |
| Power Supply | Corsair HX1000 |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro x64 |
SYSmark 2014 SE
SYSmark® 2014 SE (Second Edition) is an application-based benchmark that reflects usage patterns of business users in the areas of Office Productivity, Data/Financial Analysis and Media Creation. Joining these in SYSmark 2014 SE is a new Responsiveness scenario which models ‘pain points’ in the user experience when performing common activities. SYSmark 2014 SE features the most popular applications from each of their respective fields.
This set of real-world tests form SYSmark is our first indication that something good is happening with the Core i9-7900X. The Office Productivity score of the new CPU is actually slightly ahead of the Core i7-7700K and it is 16% higher than the Core i7-6950X. The higher base and Turbo clocks of the new SKL-X parts looks to have a significant impact on single threaded workload performance. Total power consumption during the test on the 7900X is lower than the 6950X, despite the power draw on the Skylake-X platform being higher (as we’ll show later), indicate that work was done faster, allowing the CPU to get to idle power more quickly.
WebXPRT
WebXPRT 2015 uses scenarios created to mirror the tasks you do every day to compare the performance of almost any Web-enabled device. It contains six HTML5- and JavaScript-based workloads: Photo Enhancement, Organize Album, Stock Option Pricing, Local Notes, Sales Graphs, and Explore DNA Sequencing.
It runs these four tests seven times each:
- Photo Enhancement: Measures the time to apply three effects (Sharpen, Emboss, and Glow) to two photos each, a set of six photos total.
- Organize Album: Measures the time it takes to check for human faces in a set of five photos.
- Stocks Option Pricing: Measures the time to calculate financial indicators of a stock based on historical data and display the result in a dashboard.
- Local Notes: Measures the time to store notes securely in the browser's local storage and display recent entries.
- Sales Graphs: Measures the time to calculate and display multiple views of sales data.
- Explore DNA Sequencing: Measures the time it takes to filter eight DNA sequences for specific characteristics.
Each test uses different combinations of HTML5 Canvas 2D and Javascript, common elements in many Web pages, to gauge how well your device and browser work together in everyday Web browsing situations.
The Core i9-7900X is 19% faster than the Core i7-6950X, although it still lags behind the performance of the 7700K. This indicates some additional advantage to the faster SpeedShift implementation.
7-Zip Compression
The Core i9-7900X pulls in the fastest 7zip compression numbers of any processor we tested through 8-threads.
A 15% increase in performance
A 15% increase in performance resulting from a 50% increase in power consumption seems to indicate that this processor is firmly out of its comfort zone in terms of efficiency.
Makes me wonder where it would land with similar clock rates as the 6950X.
As for the i9 line-up, I don’t follow the argument that these CPUs are not the direct result of AMD’s renewed competitiveness. Sure, 6- through 10-core CPUs would’ve been planned for long ago, but their final clocks were set post-Ryzen. The idiotic KBL-X were rushed post-Ryzen. The MCC-i9s are clearly a rush job (hence their late launch) trying to compete with Threadripper.
I’d be willing to bet that not a single CPU launched for this platform was planned exactly as-is 9 months ago.
Even if everything you say is
Even if everything you say is true, is that a problem? Is that not what we want? Some competition to push things forward?
Sorry, I might have simply
Sorry, I might have simply misread/misunderstood your conclusion.
As far as I’m concerned, it was not giving enough credit to AMD for the final specs of these CPUs, as they are / will be shipping.
Anyways, thanks for testing the rejiggered cashes and mesh topography and showing how it affects scaling when compared to its predecessor!
I am curious if future BIOS
I am curious if future BIOS updates will affect mesh speed(ping time?), and what kinds of differences that will make.
I like the performance/$ metrics. There’s so many ways to slice those — CPU Only, including motherboard and RAM (which you have to buy anyway to use the CPU), or full system price. Pros/Cons to each.
Best internet line of the day:
“Until July. Or August. Or October…”
Great review PCPer!
Future BIOS should not have a
Future BIOS should not have a direct effect on it, unless Intel changes its stance on the clocks of the cache. It runs at a slower clock that memory or the CPU itself, but it is controllable – I show you the change on one of our graphs here looking at thread to thread "ping times".
On the performance / dollar, you are right, we could have included memory and motherboard in that and it might be worth doing in the future. But I think most people reading will understand that the X299 motherboard price average is higher than the X370 motherboard price average, so the differenecs will widen slightly.
X370 may not be a fair
X370 may not be a fair yardstick if you want price/performance. X370 is closer to X299 in features (though still a long way off), but if want you want is maximum price/performance B350 is the way to go.
Hey Ryan great review. If
Hey Ryan great review. If possible for the gaming benchmarks could you post the 1% and .1% low frame rates or just the min fps if that would be easier. I have found the enthusiast platform tends to excel in the minimum FPS and smooth delivery of frames (less stutter) and that is what motiveates my purchases more than Max or Average fps i would rather have a CPU with a min of 60 fps and a max of 85 fps than one with a max of 105 fps and a min of 45 fps even if that mean it has a lower average fps, smoothness is everything for me
At what speed where you
At what speed where you running the 1800x infinity frabic ?
Also your idle system wattage look to be half of other sites for the 1800x. I wonder what you or they are doing differently.
Cinebench value. Not sure why but I get a score of 1641 on a stock 1800x. / $440 (amazon) = 3.72
I think you are using the launch day price of $500 ?
note: I run my ram at 2400mhz (the rated XMP profile)
All of the 1800X data was
All of the 1800X data was generated at stock settings, DDR4-2400 memory. And yes, I am still using the $499 launch price for that data, as you note.
Great Video Ryan, Actually
Great Video Ryan, Actually made me read the review… that was good too.
With….one little exception New parts, higher clocks, more cores
Kinda wanted to see what the “NiceHash” daily BTC amount would be, you know for science.
Consider including it in your benchmarks for all the new CPU’s?
Maybe…but CPUs, even
Maybe…but CPUs, even 10-core CPUs, are very inefficient in comparison to even moderate GPUs.
You are totally right, and
You are totally right, and rather handsome,
However after Electrickery a Ryzen 7 1700X nets $600 per annum
Which is peanuts to golden haired tech gods granted, but some peeps may want to put one in a corner and let it pay for itself (with all the assumptions granted) while heating up their greenhouse.
As alogs change and prices fluctuate, releases get more cores, it’ll be nice to keep an eye on hashing value.
Goes without saying that it will be awesome to have it on GPU charts.
You’re obviously way too important and tall to take on such a task, maybe the smaller more condensed you (Ken) could take on such a burden of honour.
Something I haven’t seen much
Something I haven’t seen much of is the (potential) benefit of this X299 plan to boutique system builders, and even larger mass producers of custom PCs such as HP with their Omen, and Dell / Alienware.
They could standardize on X299 for most of their builds, and then offer customers the choice of i5 and “entry level” i7 now, with the option to upgrade to a true HEDT system later on, while keeping the same chassis and main system components.
That and single-core performance should be best on those parts, especially when overclocked to their max.
In terms of TDP, did you
In terms of TDP, did you measure that at stock or overclocked? I’d have to assume stock, and if so, could the measurements be off due to the new platform?
I know you know this, but for anyone who wonders how Intel defines TDP…from https://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/white-paper/resources-xeon-measuring-processor-power-paper.pdf:
“Intel defines TDP as follows: The upper point of the thermal profile consists of the Thermal Design Power (TDP) and the associated Tcase value. Thermal Design Power (TDP) should be used for processor thermal solution design targets. TDP is not the maximum power that the processor can dissipate. TDP is measured at maximum TCASE.1”
All measured at stock
All measured at stock settings.
Seems to me that there has
Seems to me that there has been a cost-shift Intel has done here from the CPUs to the chipsets. The motherboards are about $100 more expensive than they should be. This way, Intel can make their CPUs out to be a better value than they actually are.
I don’t think that’s
I don't think that's accurate. Intel is probably getting slightly more from the X299 than the Z270, but I would guess not much. If anything, the motherboard vendors know this is a higher end platform and audience, so they put higher end products together to serve it.
Ryan,
Did overclocking the
Ryan,
Did overclocking the cache + using faster RAM have any effect on benchmarks?
I honestly did not have time
I honestly did not have time to check, only to do the latency evaluation you saw on that page. We'll be following up – my expectation is that it will have affect on things like 7zip and the 1080p gaming results, if it all.
I’m looking at Guru3D’s X299
I’m looking at Guru3D’s X299 motherboard reviews and it seems like the BIOS that run the more conservative power profile have higher memory/L3 latency and run worse in games and synthetics like Cinebench. The Cinebench scores matched your results so I’m assuming these latency tests were done using the lower power profiles.
It will be interesting to see what your latency tester shows on the higher power profiles.
Great Review!
Grammar
Great Review!
Grammar Nazi:
On the last page, under the last picture
It is worth noting here that our early testing with the X299 motherboards has including troubling amounts of performance instability and questionable compatibility.
Ah, thanks. 🙂
Ah, thanks. 🙂
Interesting to see the
Interesting to see the Intercore latency affect Skylake X so much. Despite Ryzen’s latency affecting games, it does compete well with Broadwell often, despite lower clocks usually.
It’s nearly the reverse in gaming with Skylake X, where it’s clocked higher, and still loses.
I hope Ryan does some detailed tests with Skylake X X CPUs, and Threadripper to see how the increase CPUs & CCX’s will affect latency; and as a result affect some use cases.
“And to combat Threadripper,
“And to combat Threadripper, it seems clear that Intel was willing to bring forward the release of Skylake-X, to ensure that it maintained cognitive leadership in the high-end prosumer market.”
Impressive Intel know the release date for Threadripper back in 2015 when they scheduled Basin Falls! https://regmedia.co.uk/2015/05/26/intel-kdm-roadmap-1.jpg
Hey Ryan,
Great job as
Hey Ryan,
Great job as always! Just wanted to give a little feedback about the graphs – the font is borderline unreadable and that is on a 1080p 27″ ultrasharp Dell.
Otherwise keep on rocking!
Why is your latancy test
Why is your latancy test different to that from sysoft Sandra?
http://www.tomshardware.de/performance-benchmarks-ubertaktung-leistungsaufnahme-kuhlung,testberichte-242365-2.html
Intel 7900x
Sisoft: 79ns
PCPer: 100ns
AMD Fabric:
Sisoft: 122
PcPer: 140
Perhaps you guys should
Perhaps you guys should factor in the platform cost in these reviews – B350 Mobos can be had for ~$100, while these X299 Mobos cost at least $400. It’s hard to argue the i7-7800X is a suitable competitor for the 1700 when you have to pay another $400 for the motherboard, and are still two cores short (though the higher clocks make up for this)
Intel needs to offer multi-core mainstream offers to truly compete with the 1700 in the future. Right now higher clocks trump twice the threads, but if games like Battlefield and the higher core count of consoles are anything to go for that won’t last forever.
Perhaps you guys should
Perhaps you guys should factor in the platform cost in these reviews – B350 Mobos can be had for ~$100, while these X299 Mobos cost at least $400. It’s hard to argue the i7-7800X is a suitable competitor for the 1700 when you have to pay another $400 for the motherboard, and are still two cores short (though the higher clocks make up for this)
Intel needs to offer multi-core mainstream offers to truly compete with the 1700 in the future. Right now higher clocks trump twice the threads, but if games like Battlefield and the higher core count of consoles are anything to go for that won’t last forever.