Harrynowl's ULTIMATE CPU Showdown! (WIP)

[harrynowl]

Harrynowl's ULTIMATE CPU Showdown! (WIP)

 

So... here it comes at long last. As a follow up from this thread from a while ago I've made this thread.

 

Here's my ULTIMATE showdown between 10 (and counting) CPUs from different price points, ages, sockets, core counts, clock speeds and more!

 

This showdown has taken about a month of preparation, testing and planning in my spare time, I've finally gotten the hardware together and made the time to do it. 

 

I've done a lot of research into the benchmarks I'd like to run, I don't want to run hundreds as it is very time consuming, I'm sure @Slick could back me up on this one. However I am open to a couple of suggestions.

 

Now the project isn't finished. I still have all the results to graph over the next week or so. I'd just like to let people know what I'm up to and that I'm doing the project I set out to do. Right now you could consider this a journal until complete.

 

This is a project I'd like to add to expand with future CPUs where possible.

 

Please follow the thread to be notified of updates!

 

Contending CPUs

 

I've chosen CPUs mostly from my in-house selection, I've chosen ones that represent different points in time since 2004 and the technological advancements. I'll be running the CPUs overclocked and I'll state the OC below.

 

Intel:

Pentium 4 HT 631 @4.2GHz

Pentium Dual Core E2180 @3GHz

Core2Duo E6600 @ 3.7GHz

Core2Duo E8400 @ 4.4GHz

Core2Quad Q9650 @4.1GHz

G3258 @4.7GHz

i5 4690K @4.7GHz

 

AMD:

 

FX4300 @4.7GHz

FX6300 @4.5GHz

FX8320 @4.3GHz 

 

Test hardware/standard test benches:

 

Windows 7 x64

Catalyst 14.12 ‘Omega’

Radeon HD7950 @ 1100MHz/1400MHz

8GB DDR3 @1866MHz OR 4GB DDR2 @1066MHz

Nepton 280L

CX600M

AM3(+):

M5A97 EVO R2.0

LGA775:

ASUS P5Q “Green”

LGA1150:

Z97I-Plus

 

Benchmark Suite

 

CPU Benchmarks:

Cinebench 11.5

Cinebench R15

AIDA64 CPU

SuperPi 1M

SuperPi 32M

MaxxMEM 2.0

PI/Linpac Multicore

WinRAR

 

Synthetic GPU benchmarks:

Cinebench R15 OpenCL

Valley Benchmark ExtremeHD

3D Mark FireStrike

Synthetic Game benchmarks:

Final Fantasy: World Reborn Benchmark

Resident Evil 6 Benchmark

Sniper Elite V2 Benchmark

Lost Planet 2 Benchmark

Tom Clancy HAWX2 Benchmark

Dirt 3 Benchmark

CS:S Benchmark

Real Game benchmarks:

Battlefield 3 (64P, small map)

Battlefield 4 (64P, siege)

Medieval 2: Total War (Load Saved Battle)

I'll try add more.

 

Gaming benchmarks not likely to happen. I don't have the time to dedicate anymore and I had to sell off some of my hardware to pay for things like a car.

 

I'll run all the benchmarks at the highest preset and standard resolution is 1080p.

 

When the project is complete I'll add a ZIP with all my screenshots, tables, graphs etc.

[harrynowl]

CPU Benchmarks

 

Cinebench R15:

Cinebench R15 is a test that uses the Maxon Render Engine, it lets the CPU calculate the image and then based on the time taken to complete it will return a score. It has both multi and single cores tests. I've included both results for you to look at. Read more.

 

 

In the multicore test most of the more mordern and high end CPUs do a pretty good job, the 8320 does very well in this test for its price and had it been a higher clock speed it'd easily score much higher or the same than the i5 counterpart. 

 

 

In the single core tests things look a little different, as expected the latest Intel processors are at the top of the charts, however disappointingly AMDs offerings are sitting towards the bottom of the chart, not entirely unsurprising but given the age of some of the parts in this comparison you'd expect a little more from a 2012 chip.

 

Cinebench R11.5:

Slightly older version of the Cinebench render engine, it drops some instruction sets but I included it as a lot of other R11.5 results are available online for your own comparison.

 

Results are very similar to the R15 scores here, AMD are doing well in multithreaded testing here and offers an impressive value again.

 

 

The Haswell offerings again offer very strong performance in this test, with everything else trailing pretty far behind.

 

AIDA64 CPU:

This is a simple integer test that uses a 10x10 chessboard calculation and tests the CPUs prediction ability, there's a penalty for mispredictions. CPUs with long pipelines will typically struggle in this test due to the penalty for a misprediction. Read more.

 

Performance wise Intel's i5 CPU is doing very well in this test, not far behind is AMDs 8 core offering which comes in a little cheaper. However we do see the older Q9650 beating out the 6 and 4 core AMDs which would suggest AMDs branch prediction isn't particularly good. And in the last few spots are the dual core CPUs which is expected as this is a multithreaded test.

 

MaxMem:

Maxmem is a memory benchmark that'll test the IMCs capability to handle the RAM, typically DDR3 platforms and newer chips should do pretty well in this test.

 

In these tests I'd expect DDR3 platforms to have a advantage by default due to the banwidth available, however the Haswell memory controller seems to be far ahead of AMDs offerings, in this test it's over 5x the speed. I suspect the program may not be optimized for AMDs architecture or perhaps AMDs IMC is just that slow.

 

 

And the latency would be linked to how old the IMC is and what memory technology is in use.e This seems to be pretty linear in terms of age with the newest chips having the lowest latency and the oldest ones having the highest.

 

Multithreaded PI & Linpack:

This benhmark is another timed mathmatical calculation, the Pi benchmark calculates Pi to 80,000 decimal places using all available threads. The Linpack does the Linpack calculation on all available threads. Read more.

 

Given that it's a multithreaded test the multicore offerings seem to do pretty well, there appears to be a bottleneck on the FX chips at around 19.8 seconds as both the 6 core and 8 core offering scored very similarly, but the 4300 is trailing behind. 

 

SuperPI 1M & 32M:

Super PI is a pretty classic floating point benchmark, it uses a single thread and it measures the time to calculate Pi to a set amount of decimals, in this test I'll use the popular 1M and 32M presets. Read more.

 

Due to only using a single thread the G3258 and 4690K perform very similarly, and the FX series would score the same if they were at the same clock speed. In this test all but 1 Intel chip beats out AMDs offerings which would indicate a problem with AMDs implementation of the x87 instructions which are used in this test.

 

WinRAR:

This is the benchmark built into WinRAR, it's a fairly simple multithreaded integer test, in these tests multicore CPUs with strong integer power (namely the FX series) are likely to perform very well.

 

As expected AMDs CPU offerings do very well in this test, AMDs Bulldozer (And derivatives) are designed on a CMT architecture that they originally intended to implement into servers, as multithreaded integer workloads are fairly common in that environment. And as expected the weaker dual core CPUs fall behind in this test.

[harrynowl]

Reserved for future use.

[harrynowl]

Reserved for future use.

[Fate]

AMD:

Phenom 960T** (waiting on this one)

Are you going to do X6 benchmarks as well if it unlocks?

[harrynowl]

Are you going to do X6 benchmarks as well if it unlocks?

If it does. Yes. Although I'll have to add a motherboard to my platform as the M5A97 EVO R2.0 doesn't feature core unlocking.

[FuzzyYellow]

Nice! It'll be interesting to see how my 4.4Ghz g3258 stacks up against the same chip clocked 300mhz higher.

[EpicAdom]

I like the idea, can't wait to see the results!

[harrynowl]

I like the idea, can't wait to see the results!

Hopefully it won't take too long to sort out, as there's a lot of stuff

[Raudi_]

Really looking forward to the results I'll be keeping my eye on this one.

[Speedbird]

Hmm, I you provide some more details on benchmarking procedures I can give you my Q8200 results. I have an i3-550 and an AMD Sempron 145 too. And some P4s.

[harrynowl]

Hmm, I you provide some more details on benchmarking procedures I can give you my Q8200 results. I have an i3-550 and an AMD Sempron 145 too. And some P4s.

I'll be posting pictures of my settings & videos of my game benchmark runs, all in due course

[Speedbird]

I'll be posting pictures of my settings & videos of my game benchmark runs, all in due course

Hmm, looks like I can make a hardware configuration similar to yours. All I need is an R9 280 for it to be same...

[harrynowl]

Hmm, looks like I can make a hardware configuration similar to yours. All I need is an R9 280 for it to be same...

and one that can run my BIOS at that

[Speedbird]

and one that can run my BIOS at that

Wait, maybe I could send you my Q8200. If you lend me a 775 CPU to use in the meantime.

[harrynowl]

Wait, maybe I could send you my Q8200. If you lend me a 775 CPU to use in the meantime.

You could... however postage/tax etc comes into consideration. But the only 775 CPU I'm willing to spare is my E2160 or E4500.

[niofalpha]

This seems interesting... Subscribed.

[Jumper118]

i like cpu's. 

[Dabombinable]

If I was able to, i'd send you my E8500, E0 stepping and a beast of an overclocker on air (might even try it with my new cooler and see if it can hit the 5GHz mark, its got the headroom now).
Ps. Xeon's FTW

[dragoon20005]

@harrynowl

 

once you are finished with your CPU benchmarks

 

can I have the Q9650 in exchange for my Core 2 Duo E7300 and MSI P31 mobo?

 

My PC needs a revival here

[harrynowl]

@harrynowl

 

once you are finished with your CPU benchmarks

 

can I have the Q9650 in exchange for my Core 2 Duo E7300 and MSI P31 mobo?

 

My PC needs a revival here

I don't really have any use for those parts though

[Dabombinable]

I don't really have any use for those parts though

I found a whole bunch if E8400s for less than $25 each on ebay, they are based in Australia too.

[harrynowl]

I found a whole bunch if E8400s for less than $25 each on ebay, they are based in Australia too.

sounds fun

 

I got my E8400 brand new for £13 on Amazon

[dragoon20005]

I don't really have any use for those parts though

Hmm Well i got 3 LGA 775 CPUs with me

 

I got one Pentium 4 3.0GHz, Core 2 Duo E6420 2.13GHz and the Core 2 Duo E7200

 

both Core 2 Duo CPUs are tested working. WIll try the Pentium 4 soon

 

I manage to find the 775 mobo that i can get which supports DDR3

 

my plan was to run the 2.53GHz CPU with 8GB DDR3 and get a cheap 1TB HDD in a new case for better cable management and HDD mounting

[Dabombinable]

Hmm Well i got 3 LGA 775 CPUs with me

 

I got one Pentium 4 3.0GHz, Core 2 Duo E6420 2.13GHz and the Core 2 Duo E7200

 

both Core 2 Duo CPUs are tested working. WIll try the Pentium 4 soon

 

I manage to find the 775 mobo that i can get which supports DDR3

 

my plan was to run the 2.53GHz CPU with 8GB DDR3 and get a cheap 1TB HDD in a new case for better cable management and HDD mounting

Is that pentium 4 by any chance a 630? Because that's the model this computer came with.