The Intel Haswell Refresh Review: Core i7-4790, i5-4690 and i3-4360 Tested
by Ian Cutress on May 11, 2014 3:01 AM ESTCPU Synthetic Benchmarks
Content Creation - Cinebench
Based on MAXON’s CINEMA 4D animation software, Cinebench is used to determine the CPU and graphics performance via OpenGL. The software has gone through many iterations over the years, and here we use versions 10, 11.5 and 15 to compare single-threaded and multi-threaded CPU performance. As the generations increase, the software becomes more multithread aware and scales better, however for consistency with older results we keep the version 10 results in our database.
Video Conversion - x264 HD 3.03 Benchmark
Graysky's x264 HD test uses x264 to encode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
Encryption –TrueCrypt v0.7.1a: link
TrueCrypt is an off the shelf open source encryption tool for files and folders. For our test we run the benchmark mode using a 1GB buffer and take the mean result from AES encryption.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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.
Console Emulation –Dolphin Benchmark: link
At the start of 2014 I was emailed with a link to a new emulation benchmark based on the Dolphin Emulator. The issue with emulators tends to be two-fold: game licensing and raw CPU power required for the emulation. As a result, many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant post 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; meaning that anything above this is faster than an actual Wii for processing Wii code, albeit emulated.
Dolphin relies very much on architecture as well as CPU single thread speed. It would also stand to reason that there is a small about of thread switching going on, given how far off the i3 and i7-4765T CPUs are.
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AndrewJacksonZA - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
If you didn't clarify "Human limited" and "CPU limited" I would've understood them the other way around:"Human limited" has the human being as the slowest part of the system with a very fast CPU.
"CPU limited" has the CPU as the slowest part of the system.
Harry Lloyd - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Testing performance of these CPUs is completely pointless. The only interesting thing about them is power consumption and thermals.geok1ng - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
The benchmarks of the Xeon 2687 v2 8c/16Ht imply that the upcoming Extrem Edition haswell-E CPU will be a landslide. 5960X can't come soon enough.Antronman - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
If the 5960x will be as bad as the 4960x, the 5930k can't come soon enough either.milkMADE - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
too bad the only sku with 8-cores to give it that landslide are the EE $1000 5960xgeok1ng - Tuesday, May 13, 2014 - link
a xeon 1680 v2 , single socket 8c/16ht costs $1887, and afetr 6 months we still do not know if it is unlocked like the 6cores 1650/1660. So $1000 for a 5960x is not outlandishChrispy_ - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Looking at the Z97 vs H97, why are small businesses not allowed to use SRT?Such dumb.
Antronman - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
How many fucks I give: 0.StrangerGuy - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Intel can spam a million SKUs left and right while pretending it's relevant like 10 years ago and it still doesn't mask the fact there are only like 2 chips @ $50 and $220 that makes sense for 90% and 9.99% of desktop users respectively, and most of them are well served by chips sold 3 years ago.Antronman - Monday, May 12, 2014 - link
Actually there are more "sensible" enthusiast chips. For example, if I am running a 4k setup, and I also record gameplay and upload it to youtube, I want something notably better performing than the 4670k. And I would say that much larger .01% of the computer-using community is pro overclockers and video editors and scientists and software developers.There's so many niches these days, a much greater percentage of people needing more specific solutions is present than most people think.