The Intel Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X CPU Review Part 1: Workstation
by Ian Cutress on September 25, 2017 3:01 AM ESTBenchmarking Performance: CPU Rendering Tests
Rendering tests are a long-time favorite of reviewers and benchmarkers, as the code used by rendering packages is usually highly optimized to squeeze every little bit of performance out. Sometimes rendering programs end up being heavily memory dependent as well - when you have that many threads flying about with a ton of data, having low latency memory can be key to everything. Here we take a few of the usual rendering packages under Windows 10, as well as a few new interesting benchmarks.
All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.
Corona 1.3: link
Corona is a standalone package designed to assist software like 3ds Max and Maya with photorealism via ray tracing. It's simple - shoot rays, get pixels. OK, it's more complicated than that, but the benchmark renders a fixed scene six times and offers results in terms of time and rays per second. The official benchmark tables list user submitted results in terms of time, however I feel rays per second is a better metric (in general, scores where higher is better seem to be easier to explain anyway). Corona likes to pile on the threads, so the results end up being very staggered based on thread count.
Blender 2.78: link
For a render that has been around for what seems like ages, Blender is still a highly popular tool. We managed to wrap up a standard workload into the February 5 nightly build of Blender and measure the time it takes to render the first frame of the scene. Being one of the bigger open source tools out there, it means both AMD and Intel work actively to help improve the codebase, for better or for worse on their own/each other's microarchitecture.
LuxMark v3.1: Link
As a synthetic, LuxMark might come across as somewhat arbitrary as a renderer, given that it's mainly used to test GPUs, but it does offer both an OpenCL and a standard C++ mode. In this instance, aside from seeing the comparison in each coding mode for cores and IPC, we also get to see the difference in performance moving from a C++ based code-stack to an OpenCL one with a CPU as the main host.
POV-Ray 3.7.1b4: link
Another regular benchmark in most suites, POV-Ray is another ray-tracer but has been around for many years. It just so happens that during the run up to AMD's Ryzen launch, the code base started to get active again with developers making changes to the code and pushing out updates. Our version and benchmarking started just before that was happening, but given time we will see where the POV-Ray code ends up and adjust in due course.
Cinebench R15: link
The latest version of CineBench has also become one of those 'used everywhere' benchmarks, particularly as an indicator of single thread performance. High IPC and high frequency gives performance in ST, whereas having good scaling and many cores is where the MT test wins out.
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mmrezaie - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
unofficially threadripper supports ECC. Do you have the plan to look into it?p.s. I sent an email to Anandtech support about abusive ads directing to some questionable websites. I am in EU and I see these ads for a long time now.
Ryan Smith - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
"p.s. I sent an email to Anandtech support about abusive ads directing to some questionable websites. I am in EU and I see these ads for a long time now."Er, we don't have a support email address. So I'm not sure who you sent that to.
Anyhow, we're always trying to squash malvertising. It comes in on programmatic ads, which does make the process tricky. But if you can get it to reliably and repeatedly trigger, please contact me. If we can get network logs collected, then we can isolate the source and get said ads pulled.
mmrezaie - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I sent it to advertisement link I found in the "contact us" page. Sorry by saying support. That's what we call it in our organization. thanks for the reply.snowmyr - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Check that link again and you'll see that it's not really an anandtech email address and might not get forwarded to the right people.mmrezaie - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I sent it to advertisement link I found in the "contact us" page. Sorry by saying support. That's what we call it in our organization. thanks for the reply.AdditionalPylons - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Just sent you a tweet with a screenshot, Ryan. I've been very annoyed with these clickbait ads for avery long time as well.
hughc - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Wasn't sure what you were referring to. I have AdBlock whitelisting the domain, so I see all the display advertising.I'm also using ClickbaitKiller. Disabled it, and now I can see the unit in question - very happy to hide this trash.
thesavvymage - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I get inappropriate ads as well. I'm not sure where I can send a screenshot, but the one I have on this page under the article is "This Is Better Than Adderall, According to US College Students. Try It!"Like what? This is a professional tech site and ads like that have no business being on here. Banner ads for tech companies? Good. Side ads for relevant products? Good. This BS thats always underneath every article? Absolutely unacceptable.
Gothmoth - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
do you really think anandtech cares how they make money.. maybe when anad was still here.i see these ads too, a website who cares about it´s reputation would distance itself from such crap.. but not anandtech.
ddriver - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
"maybe when anad was still here" LOL, if he didn't care about money, he'd not sell the site to money makers for money. That's the N1 business model, and the sole motivation for doing anything - get it to get popular, then sell it out, and all its users with it.