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  • DiHydro - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    This is epic. Thank you for doing this.
  • DiHydro - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    To add a note: I think the ~$300 CPU year-over-year performance would be an interesting metric to see. That price point seems to be pretty popular for enthusiasts, and seeing back 5-6 years how that performance has increased per dollar would be neat.
  • bldr - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Agree!
  • close - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    It will be especially interesting to see those CPUs (the popular mainstream ones) tested now and compared to the numbers they got originally to see how much they lost with all the recent mitigations.
  • close - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Oh, because I forgot previously, congratulations and good luck with the endeavor! I got exhausted only by reading about the work you're going to have to do
  • Fozzie - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Except keep in mind that adjusted for inflation $200 in the year 2000 is worth over $300 now.

    You'd either be making a chart of the increased value over time just due to inflation or in fact the every increasing value at the $300 price point due to the reduced value of the Dollar on top of whatever performance gains occurred.
  • biosstar - Friday, July 24, 2020 - link

    You could also use the value of a dollar in a certain year (let's say 2020) and compare the processors in the inflation adjusted equal categories.
  • PeterCollier - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    What's the point of this Geekbench/Userbenchmark knockoff? I've never used AT's Bench tool. Especially not for smartphones, since the Bench tool is about 5 years out of date.
  • BushLin - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    A controlled environment across all tests is reason enough. Even if I don't agree with AT policy on what speed they allow RAM to operate, it is a fair comparison.
  • Byte - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    RAM is a really important topic. I think at this point in time, we can reasonable put almost maxed out ram for every platform. Like DDR3 can run at 2133, DDR4 we can run it at 3200 as prices are so close.
    It is like rating sports cars but all have Goodride tires on them.
    A dodge viper was a widowmaker when it came out. Today with a good set of summers like PS4S or PZero, you will have a hard time slipping even if you tried.
  • PeachNCream - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    You don't get what it means to perform a controlled test do you?
  • Aspernari - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link

    It's important to note that the environment is not actually well-controlled.

    https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/128480609693...

    We don't know temperature for the operating conditions for these tests, which matters more and more for boost behavior for CPUs and GPUs. He says 36c when he got into the office, we'll never know what the temperature peaked at, nor how often similar conditions were reached.

    A standard platform is a good choice, but a controlled environment is also important. Unfortunately, the results aren't as reliable as they otherwise might have been.
  • PeterCollier - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link

    And that's why this entire test is a complete waste of time. Something like Geekbench or especially Userbench is much, much better because it gives you a range of scores. Instead of trying to create false precision by saying that a AMD 4700U scored, say, a "979" on a benchmark, Userbench will say that all the 4700U's tested scored from 899 to 1008, and break it down into percentiles. This way, you have a range of expected performance in mind instead of being fixated on that "979" number, which could have been obtained in an unrealistic scenario.
  • Rudde - Saturday, July 25, 2020 - link

    Isn't userbench a synthetic together with geekbench? What exactly are they testing? Instead of knowing which of Intel i7 10700k and AMD ryzen 7 3800X is better at rendering, video encoding, number crunching or whatever your use case is, you'll get a distribution based on a largely unknown test. The Intel and AMD processors might end up being within error margins of each other in your use case, but that in itself tells something too. All benchmarks are inherently bad; there is not a single benchmark that captures every use case while not being affected by its environment (ram speeds, temperatures, etc). I prefer tests that I understand, over tests that I do not understand.
  • bananaforscale - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link

    One could ask what the point of Userbenchmark is in these days of quadcores being basically entry level while the benchmark has DECREASED its multicore weighting.
  • A5 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    For my own personal test, getting an i7-4770K in the list would be a big help.

    Once you have a compile test, a Xeon E5-1680v3 would be nice to see so that I can sell my corp on newer workstations...
  • Shmee - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link

    Those are great Haswell EP CPUs, and they OC too! I have an E5-1660v3 in my X99 rig.
  • Mockingtruth - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    I have a 3570k and a E8600 spare with respective motherboards and ram if useful?
  • CampGareth - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Personally I'd like to see a Xeon E5-2670 v1 benchmarked. I'm still running a pair of them as my workstation but these days AMD can beat the performance on a single socket and halve the power consumption.
  • Samus - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Do you run them in an HP Z620? I ran the same system with the same CPU’s for years at one of my clients. What a beast.
  • Arbie - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    I din't realize how much work was being done. Thank you for maintaining this great resource.
  • Arbie - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    And maybe consider the technically excellent and easily benchmarked Ashes of the Singularity instead of the problematic Far Cry 5. Not as popular but modern and multi-core (and a great game).
  • BushLin - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    I suspect it's due to Far Cry 5's need for 8 threads which manifests in stutter for 6c6t CPUs in contrast to smooth gameplay on lower clocked 4c8t CPUs.
  • Tilmitt - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Has anyone ever played Ashes as a game though?
  • Arbie - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    1000+ hours so far. Glorious in all respects including phenomenal AI. But when Ashes is mentioned someone always pops a comment like yours, which they probably just read somewhere else since it certainly isn't based on actual experience. Still hurts the game, though.
  • driscoll42 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    This is awesome and amazing, I can't wait to see the results. And I hate to say "But what about", but maybe, if possible, go back to some of the popular older ones? No need to retest *everything*, but the most popular CPUs pre-2010 like the i7-920, Core 2 Quad Q6600, Core 2 Duo E8600, Core i7-870, etc...
  • ltcommanderdata - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    If they are going to test a few LGA 775 CPUs, I'd vote to also include NetBurst's last gasp, aka the Pentium Extreme Edition 965 as a really old gen reference. It'd be interesting to include it's then competitor, the Socket 939 AMD Athlon 64 FX-60, as well. I've always been curious whether Hyperthreading support allowed the Pentium EE 965 to age better than expected as multithreading became mainstream and possibly reduce the gap against the FX-60 and even early Core 2 Duo Conroe CPUs in modern software compared to the gap seen at launch.
  • mganai - Thursday, July 23, 2020 - link

    How about the dual socket LGA 771 with two Core 2 Extreme QX9650s?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNo7qoLRtkQ
  • aryonoco - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Epic work Ian. Epic!

    Now if only your publisher implemented a subscription model (a la Ars Technica) so I could still support your work withthout being bombarded by ads and tracked, I would feel a lot less guilty enjoying the fruits of your amazing work.
  • lmcd - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    This 100%
  • JustAKeyboard - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Need to add some Via Nano and Eden entries. How negative does the scaling go on your graphs?
  • Ian Cutress - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    I have a VX900-I motherboard, but last time I tried to install Windows 10, it wasn't having it.
  • CrystalCowboy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    This sounds like a bleep-ton of work. What about mitigations for the various CPU compromises over the last several years?
  • webdoctors - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Nice, looking fwd to the comparison of the i2500k with todays procs!
  • Mr Perfect - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    I especially appreciate that Bench has power consumption in it. Comparing the performance of an old 95w CPU to a new "95w" CPU isn't complete without seeing those numbers.
  • lightningz71 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Are you interested in processor donations from us for this project? I am reasonably certain that I have an i5-2400 that is in working condition on my shelf that I could gladly send your way.

    If you maintain an actively updated list somewhere that includes the processors that you have, and the ones that you are still looking for, and how to get them to you, I'm sure that, especially for the older ones, many of us are happy to help you out!
  • sorten - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    This sounds incredible! Thank you, Ian.
  • 8aravindk - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Please consider open sourcing this project, not in terms of benchmarks, which you need to run yourself for authenticity, but maintain a publicly accessible wish list of processors (Like that Excel screenshot in yellow and red), I am sure people would love to donate their old processors that they were gonna chuck anyway, this would also reduce your investment by quite a bit. Also, please consider a cheap subscription as your ads are not good, people use reading modes now and I’ll gladly pay for your service.
  • danjw - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    I would really like to see the AMD Ryzen 2700X added.
  • WiseSwampDragon - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    I have an old system with a AMD Geode LX 800 CPU. I'd love to see that one in the Bench DB.
  • 29a - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Please remove Egomark from the benchmark list.
  • Meteor2 - Monday, August 3, 2020 - link

    Why?
  • Mr Perfect - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Reading through the OS preparation section, I kind of wonder if setting up a domain would be helpful?

    Joining a test PC to a domain would allow all of those settings to be configured through GPO instead of running tons of batch files and scripts. You'd also gain the ability to point Windows Update at a WSUS server, where you control what updates are even shown to the PC (in your case, probably none). Throw in the ability to remotely run scripts with Domain Administrator accounts, and you could probably skip around those UAC prompts too.

    It would be a lot of setup the first time around, but it does point to that automation-eventually-pays-off thing.
  • Icehawk - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Very cool!

    Would like to see your handbrake HEVC encoding done via software with no vendor encoder - it’s the only way you guys can be getting those crazy fps numbers. I don’t want to see how a vendor encoder runs, I want to see how the CPU runs - and those hardware ones are still worse than software so I do not use them even though it is a massive speed boost.
  • extide - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Using vector instructions like AVX is still "software" encoding. It's fully CPU, and not at all a lower quality hardware encoder.
  • faizoff - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Until I upgraded from an HD 6870 to an RX 580 recently I had no idea GPUs had dedicated encoders. I've tried them and they are definitely faster than the CPU, the same file that I tried got well over 40 fps compared to the 5 fps when choosing the CPU encoder.

    The caveat was that the GPU encoded files were much larger in size with comparable quality.
  • lmcd - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    There's ways to push file size back down afaik.
  • Meteor2 - Monday, August 3, 2020 - link

    Not with hardware encoding.
  • jaminvi - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Looks great from here. Good cross section of test. Looking forward to it.
  • catavalon21 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    This is outstanding. Very much like the stuff on this site back in this site's early days, like comparing Pentium performance with and without MMX. Comparing the performance between VX and HX chipsets. Tip of the hat, old man.
  • vasily - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    You might want to check out Phoronix Test Suite and openbenchmarking.org.

    https://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/
    https://openbenchmarking.org/
  • colinisation - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    would love to see the following processors added
    5775C (overclocked to 4Ghz) - just purely to see what impact the eDRAM has on workloads
    4770K
    7600K

    Phenom II X4
    Highest Bulldozer core

    VIA's highest performance x86 core
  • faizoff - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    What a gargantuan project this is going to be. And I cannot wait, oddly enough I've been using the bench tool the past few weeks to get a sense of how much difference an upgrade for me would make.

    I am probably one of the many (or few) people that have still held on to their i5 2500k and this is one of the places I can select that CPU and compare the benchmarks with newer releases.

    This project looks to be an amazing read once all done and will be especially looking forward to those segments "how well does x CPU run today?"
  • Alim345 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Are you going to make benchmark scripts available? They should be useful for individual comparisons, since many users might have overclocked CPUs which were more common in 2010-2015.
  • brantron - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Just to fill out the starting set:

    7700K needs a common AMD counterpart, i.e. Ryzen 2600
    Sandy or Ivy Bridge i7
    Haswell i7

    That would also make for a good article, as it should be possible to overclock any of those to ~4.5 GHz for a more apples to apples comparison.
  • StormyParis - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Thank you for that. My main question is not "what should I buy" because that's always very well covered, and on a fixed budget there's never much choice anyway, but "should I upgrade *now* which is only worth it when last time's amount of money gets you at least 2x performance. I'ive got a 7yo Core i5... I'll look into it !
  • eastcoast_pete - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Ian, thanks for this!
    One aspect I've wondered about for a while is whether you could include performance/Watt in your tests and comparisons going forward? I know that's usually done for server CPUs, but I also find it of interest for desktop and laptop CPUs.
  • thebigteam - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    I think I have the below list of Intel CPUs available if needed, likely with working mobos too. Would be very happy to clean out the closet and get these to you guys :) Likely some 2009/2010 Athlons as well
    E8400
    i3 530
    i3 540
    i5 760
    i5 2500
    i5 4670K
  • inighthawki - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Thank you so much for changing your gaming benchmark methodology. I tend to play my games at 1440p on lowest settings for maximum framerates, which is far more often than not CPU bound. It was always so annoying seeing the benchmarks be GPU bound when I'm trying to see how much a new CPU helps.
  • Smell This - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Chicken
    (lol)

    With AM3, AM2+ and AM2 processors, AM3+ processors broke backwards-compatibility.

    A mobo like the MSI 790FX K9A2 Platinum transitioned nearly 250 processors from S754-939, to AM2-AM3, beginning with the single-core Athlon 64 3000+ 'Orleans' up to the PhII x6 DDR3 Thubans.

    These were the progeny of the K8 or 'Hammer' projects. A Real Man would never leave them behind ...

    https://www.cpu-upgrade.com/mb-MSI/K9A2_Platinum_%...
  • Smell This - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link


    ;- )
  • Oxford Guy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    "If there’s a CPU, old or new, you want to see tested, then please drop a comment below."

    • i7-3820. This one is especially interesting because it had roughly the same number of transistors as Piledriver on roughly the same node (Intel 32nm vs. GF 32 nm).

    • 5775C

    • 5675C (which outperformed and matched the 5775C in some games due to thermal throttling)

    • 5775C with TDP bypassed or increased if this is possible, to avoid the aforementioned throttling

    • I would really really like you to add Deserts of Kharak to your games test suite. It is the only game I know of that showed Piledriver beating Intel's chips. That unusual performance suggests that it was possible to get more performance out of Piledriver if developers targeted that CPU for optimization and/or the game's engine somehow simply suited it particularly.

    • 8320E or 8370E at 4.7 GHz (non-turbo) with 2133 CAS 9-11-10 RAM, the most optimal Piledriver setup. The 9590 was not the most performant of the FX line, likely because of the turbo. A straight overclock coupled with tuned RAM (not 1600 CAS 10 nonsense) makes a difference. 4.7 GHz is a realistic speed achievable by a large AIO or small loop. If you want air cooling only then drop to 4.5 Ghz but keep the fast RAM. The point of testing this is to see what people were able to get in the real world from the AMD alternative for all the years they had to wait for Zen. Since we were stuck with Piledriver as the most performant Intel alternative for so so many years it's worth including for historical context. The "E" models don't have to be used but their lower leakage makes higher clocks less stressful on cooling than a 9000 series. 4.7 GHz was obtainable on a cheap motherboard like the Gigabyte UD3P, with strong airflow to the VRM sink.

    • VIA's highest-performance model. If it won't work with Windows 10 then run the tests on it with 8.1. The thing is, though... VIA released an update fairly recently that should make it compatible with Windows 10. I saw Youtube footage of it gaming, in fact, with a discrete card. It really would be a refreshing thing to see VIA included, even though it's such a bit player.

    • Lynnfield at 3 GHz.

    • i7-9700K, of course.
  • Oxford Guy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Regarding Deserts of Kharak... It may be that it took advantage of the extra cores. That would make it noteworthy also as an early example of a game that scaled to 8 threads.
  • Oxford Guy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    Also, the Chinese X86 CPU, the one based on Zen 1, would be very nice to have included.
  • Oxford Guy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    VIA CPUs tested with games as recently as 2019 (there was another video of the quad core but I didn't find it today with a quick search):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPvKwqSMo-k
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da0BkEW459E

    The Zhaoxin KaiXian KX-U6880A would be nice to see included, not just the Chinese Zen 1 derivative.
  • Oxford Guy - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    "due to thermal throttling"

    TDP throttling, to be more accurate. I suppose it could throttle due to current demand rather than temp.
  • axer1234 - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    honestly i would love to know how different generation processor perform today especially higher core count. like prescott series pentium 4 athlon II phenomX6 core2 duo core2quad nehlam sandy bridge bulldozer etc with todays generation work loads and offering

    in many scenario like word excel ppt photoshop it all works very well still in many offices
    its just the new generation of application slowing it down for almost the same work etc
  • herefortheflops - Monday, July 20, 2020 - link

    @Dr. Cutress.,

    As someone that has been dealing with similar or greater product testing challenges and configuration complexity for the better part of a decade or so, I would like to commend you for your ambitious goals and efforts so far. Additionally, I could be of high value to your effort if you are willing to discuss. I have reviewed in-depth the bench database (as well as competing websites) and I have come to the conclusion the Anandtech bench data is of very limited usefulness at present--and would require some significant changes to the data being collected/reported and the way things have been done to this point. I do understand where the industry is going, the questions the readers are going to be asking of the data, and the major comparisons that will be attempted with the data. Unfortunately, much of your effort may easily become irrelevant unless you proceed with some extreme caution to provide data with more utility. I also know methods to accomplish the desired result while reducing the size and cost of the task at hand. Reply by e-mail if you are interested in talking.

    Best,
    -A potential contributor to your effort.
  • Bensam123 - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Despite how impressive this is, one thing that hasn't been tackled is still multiplayer performance and it vastly changes recommendations for CPUs (doesn't effect GPUs as much).

    It goes from recommending a 6 core chip hands down to trying to make a case for 4 core chips still in this day and age. I own a 3900x and 2800 and I can tell you hands down Modern Warfare will gobble 70% of that 12 core chip, sometimes a bit more, that's equivalent to maxing out a 8 core of the same series. That vastly changes recommendations and data points. It's not just Modern Warfare. Overwatch, Black Ops 3(same engine as MW), and recently Hyper Scape will will make use of those extra cores. I have a widget to monitor CPU utilization in the background and I can check Task Manager. If I had a better video card I'm positive it would've sucked down even more of those 12 cores (my GPU is running at 100% load according to MSI AB).

    This is a huge deal and while I understand, I get it, it's hard to reliably reproduce the same results in a multiplayer environment because it changes so much and generally seen as taboo from a hardware benchmarking standpoint, it is vastly different then singleplayer workloads to the point at which it requires completely different recommendations. Given how many people are making expensive hardware choices specifically because they play multiplayer games, I would even say most tech reviews in this day and age are irrelevant for CPU recommendations outside of the casual single player gamer. GPU recommendations are still very much on par, CPU is not remotely.

    I talk about this frequently on my stream and why I still recommended the 1600 AF even when it was sitting at $105-125, it's a steal if you play multiplayer games, while most people that either read benchmarking websites or run benchmarks themselves will start making a case for a 4c Intel. 6 core is a must at the very least in this day and age.

    Anandtech it's time to tread new ground and go into the uncharted area. Singleplayer results and multiplayer results are too different, you can't keep spinning the wheel and expect things to remain the same. You can verify this yourself just by running task manager in the background while playing one of the games I mentioned at the lowest settings regardless of being able to repeat those results exactly you'll see it's definitely a multi-core landscape for newer multiplayer games.

    Not even touched on in the article.
  • Bensam123 - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    70%, I have SMT off for clarification.
  • Sootie - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Any chance of a crowd sourced version of the bench? People with unusual CPU's could run a cut down version of the bench with only software that does not require a license and heavily disclaimed that it was not an official run just to add a few more data points of rare devices. I have a whole museum of old servers I can run some tests on but it's not practical to send them elsewhere.

    I'm a big fan of all the work you have done and are doing on the bench though I use it constantly for work and home.
  • Tilmitt - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Phenom II X6 and X4 would be cool to see if the "more cores make future proof" narrative actually holds up.
  • lmcd - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    X6 outperformed early Bulldozer 8 cores by a notable bit if that's of any interest.
  • loads2compute - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Dear Ian,

    Wow! What a nice idea to test all these legacy processors on modern benchmarks. I think it is a great idea!

    But als wow, what an enormous effort you are taking on automating all that stuff, starting from scratch and using autohotkey as your main tool. It seems like going to an uninhabited island, starting civilization from scratch and taking a tin opener as your main tool.

    In my line of work (bioinformatics) we have to automate a load of consecutive tasks. Luckily there are frameworks for this, which make the work a lot easier.

    Luckily there is already a framework for automated testing and benchmarking which happens to work on Linux, Mac and Windows (and even BSD). It is called the phoronix test suite http://phoronix-test-suite.com/. It can be extended with modules, so you could integrate all your desired tests in there. There is even paid support available, but since they guy who runs this (Michael Larabel) is working on a fellow tech outlet (phoronix.com) I am sure you can work something out to your mutual benefit. No doubt he is interested in all these old processor benchmarks too!

    The phoronix test suite also comes with phoromatic, which according to the website : "allows the automatic scheduling of tests, remote installation of new tests, and the management of multiple test systems all through an intuitive, easy-to-use web interface."

    So please do not start from scratch and do this yourself! Use this great open-source tool that is already available and consequently you will be able to get a lot more work done on the stuff that actually interests you! (I take it AHK scripting is not your hobby).
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Scripts are already done :)
    The issue is that a lot of tests have a lot of different entry points; with AHK I can customizer for each. I've been using it for 5 years now, so coding isn't an issue any more.

    Fwiw, I speak with Michael on occasion. We go to the same industry events etc
  • eek2121 - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Was procuring a new GPU really that hard? I am going to blame your owner on this one. If you were an independent website I honestly would have purchased a 2080ti and donated it to you. It honestly seems like not being independent is hurting you more than it is helping. Without going into specifics, I know of websites smaller than AT that can afford at least 3 good full time writers and a bunch of awesome hardware.

    I have toyed with the idea of starting an alternative site where all hardware is procured in the retail channel. I know what advertising rates are like and I know that using affiliates, sponsorships, and advertising more than cover the cost of a few models per generation. Maybe it’s time AT staff strike out on their own. Just a thought.

    Outside of that, I look forward to future endeavors.
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Procuring a GPU is always difficult, as we don't have the bandwidth to test AIB cards any more.

    Fwiw AT only has 2/3 FT writers.
    If we were to spin back out, we'd need investors and a strategy.
  • Igor_Kavinski - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Request: Core i7-7700K DDR3 benchmarks (There are Asus and Gigabyte mobos that allow DDR3 to be used) to compare with Core i7-7700K DDR4 benchmarks. Thanks!
  • Xex360 - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Very fascinating.
  • dad_at - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Pls include HEDT Sandy Bridge E: one of Core i7 3960X, 3970X, 3930K, etc. Once it was present in the CPU bench, but you removed it since 2017...
  • ballsystemlord - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    @Ian, I love your 30,000 datapoints per article. Thanks for benching all these things.
    The AMD Phenom II 1090T (the original consumer 6 core!!!) is the CPU I'd like to see in the new suite.
  • Samus - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Can you build an automated (filtering/categorizing) submission form for donations. I have many Xeon’s, especially the v3’s you have a shortage of, that I would be willing to donate for the cause.
  • ballsystemlord - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    @ian @Samus Use email to contact each other.
  • Dragonsteel - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    I'd like to see comparisons for the mainstream 300$ to 400$ CPUs starting with the i7 series.

    I'd really like to see i72600k on those benchmarks. Both stock and OC performance. I do run this CPU, bit am looking at upgrading soon to a comparable model. It just hasn't made sense until now with the new platform updates and more powerful GPUs.
  • Slaps - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    Would it be possible to add Counter-Strike Global Offensive? You can use the in-game console to load a demo (replay) of a professional match and let it run to get very real and consistent results.
  • ET - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    What an amazing project. Great and detailed article, too. I'm looking forward to seeing the results. I appreciate Bench, and often when I see someone on Reddit ask about an upgrade from, say, a Phenom II 1055T to FX 6120, I go to Bench to make a comparison (though of course can't often find the exact models).

    Hopefully the UI for Bench will be improved. Search and auto-completion, comparing more than 2 CPUs, these are things I'd expect.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    y-cruncher sprint graphs are missing.
  • 137ben - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    This is an ambitious project, and it is the reason I enjoy coming to Anandtech.
  • ozzuneoj86 - Tuesday, July 21, 2020 - link

    This is amazing work! Thank you for doing this!

    One suggestion though... and I've mentioned this in past comments... please please please rename the lowest of the four quality settings for gaming benchmarks. The "IGP" setting is unnecessarily confusing to those looking at CPU benchmarks being run on a top of the line GPU. No IGP is involved. Just call it " VERY LOW" or something.
  • Meteor2 - Monday, August 3, 2020 - link

    Yes x1000!

    (What does IGP even stand for in this context?!)
  • jebo - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link

    Can we get a rundown of the underlying systems being used? RAM etc.

    Thanks for this!
  • GeoffreyA - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link

    Astounding work, Ian! All the best on the project.
  • Kdam - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link

    Thanks for the effort. I was wondering if it was possible to include a cam benchmark (mastercam or other)
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, July 23, 2020 - link

    Would it be possible to add a sort or filter to see 95th percentile frame rates only? A filter by quality level? It would make reading the data much easier. QOL
  • OldTech920 - Thursday, July 23, 2020 - link

    Your CPU table (on page 2) is weirdly incomplete for Nehalem and Westmere CPUs. Specifically, it's missing the whole 1st generation Nehalem HEDT parts (aka "Bloomfield" 45 nm chips using the X58 chipset), such as i7-920, i7-940, through i7-975 EE . Combined with a recent GPU, these are still amazingly viable 4-core/8-thread CPUs.
  • Robberbaron12 - Monday, July 27, 2020 - link

    THere is no support for X58 and skt 1366 anymore in the latest version of Win 10, so its not possible to install the test suite. I know it still works if you had a 3-4 year old version on Win 10 but you can to clean install now, and I'm pretty sure skt 1156 is going the same way.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link

    Windows 10 is a disgrace.
  • juraj2 - Friday, July 24, 2020 - link

    That is a great project. I would like to see as performance per watt has been changing during the years. Also, current benchmarks show for example CPU with 105W, but that is completely false because during the test CPU was consuming much more power. This makes results confusing and mostly in favour of Intel. Intel is cheating a lot in this regard.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, July 28, 2020 - link

    Real power consumption is definitely more interesting than the "let's pretend" TDP numbers.
  • alpha754293 - Monday, July 27, 2020 - link

    This is fantastic!!!

    I was the person who asked for the OpenSSL benchmark because I was moving a lot of data around and needed SHA256 to ensure the data transfers completed successfully.

    Thank you for putting this together.
  • ruthan - Monday, July 27, 2020 - link

    Well lots of bla, bla, bla.. I checked graphs in archizlr they are classic just few entries.. there is link to your benchmark database, but here i see preselected some Crysis benchmark, which is not part of article.. and dont lead to some ultimate lots of cpus graphs. So it need much more streamlining.

    i usually using old Geekbench for cpus tests and there i can compare usually what i want.. well not with real applications and games, but its quick too. Otherwise usually have enough knowledge to know if is some cpu good enough for some games or not.. so i dont need some very old and very need comparisions. Something can be found at Phoronix.
    These benchmarks will always lots relevancy with new updates, unless all cpus would in own machines and update and running and reresting constantly - which could be quite waste of power and money.
    Maybe some golden path is some simple multithreaded testing utility with 2 benchmarks one for integers and one for floats.
  • Ian Cutress - Wednesday, August 5, 2020 - link

    When you're in Bench, Check the drop down menu on your left for the individual tests
  • hnlog - Wednesday, July 29, 2020 - link

    > For our testing on the 2020 suite, we have secured three RTX 2080 Ti GPUs direct from NVIDIA.
    Congrats!
  • Koenig168 - Saturday, August 1, 2020 - link

    It would be more efficient to focus on the more popular CPUs. Some of the less popular SKUs which differ only by clock speed can have their performance extrapolated. Testing 900 CPUs sound nice but quickly hit diminishing returns in terms of usefulness after the first few hundred.

    You might also wish to set some minimum performance standards using just a few tests. Any CPU which failed to meet those standards should be marked as "obsolete, upgrade already dude!" and be done with them rather than spend the full 30 to 40 hours testing each of them.

    Finally, you need to ask yourself "How often do I wish to redo this project and how much resources will I be able to devote to it?" Bearing in mind that with new drivers, games etc, the database needs to be updated oeriodically to stay relevant. This will provide a realistic estimate of how many CPUs to include in the database.
  • Meteor2 - Monday, August 3, 2020 - link

    I think it's a labour of love...
  • TrevorX - Thursday, September 3, 2020 - link

    My suggestion would be to bench the highest performing Xeons that supported DDR3 RAM. Why? Because the cost of DDR3 RDIMMs is so amazingly cheap (as in, less than 10%) compared with DDR4. I personally have a Xeon E5-1660v2 @4.1GHz with 128GB DDR3 1866MHz RDIMMs that's the most rock stable PC I've ever had. Moving up to a DDR4 system with similar memory capacity would be eye-wateringly expensive. I currently have 466 tabs open in Chrome, Outlook, Photoshop, Word, several Excel spreadsheets, and I'm only using 31.3% of physical RAM. I don't game, so I would be genuinely interested in what actual benefit would be derived from an upgrade to Ryzen / Threadripper.

    Also very keen to see server/hypervisor testing of something like Xeon E5-2667v2 vs Xeon W-1270P or Xeon Silver 4215R for evaluation of on-prem virtualisation hosts. A lot of server workloads are being shifted to the cloud for very good reasons, but for smaller businesses it might be difficult to justify the monthly expense of cloud hosting (and Azure licensing) when they still have a perfectly serviceable 5yo server with plenty of legs left on it. It would be great to be able to see what performance and efficiency improvements can be had jumping between generations.
  • Tilmitt - Thursday, October 8, 2020 - link

    When is this going to be done?
  • Mil0 - Friday, October 16, 2020 - link

    Well they launched with 12 results if I count correctly, and currently there are 38 listed, that's close to 10/month. With the goal of 900, that would mean over 7 years (in which ofc more CPUs would be released)
  • Mil0 - Friday, October 16, 2020 - link

    Well they launched with 12 results if I count correctly, and currently there are 44 listed, that's about a dozen a month. With the goal of 900, that would mean 6 years (in which ofc more CPUs would be released)
  • Mil0 - Friday, October 16, 2020 - link

    Caching hid my previous comment from me, so instead of a follow up there are now 2 pretty similar ones. However, in the mean time I found Ian is actually updating on twitter, which you can find here: https://twitter.com/IanCutress/status/131350328982...

    He actually did 36 CPU's in 2.5 months, so it should only take 5 years! :D

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