Office Performance

The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can cause concern during environments with a variable threaded workload. There is also an added issue of the motherboard remaining consistent, depending on how the motherboard manufacturer wants to add in their own boosting technologies over the ones that Intel would prefer they used. In order to remain consistent, we implement an OS-level unique high performance mode on all the CPUs we test which should override any motherboard manufacturer performance mode.

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

Dolphin Benchmark: link

Many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost 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 minutes.

Dolphin Emulation Benchmark

WinRAR 5.0.1: link

Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.

WinRAR 5.01, 2867 files, 1.52 GB

The single module of the 7400K shows the deficit in a slightly threaded workload.

Image Manipulation – FastStone Image Viewer 4.9: link

Similarly to WinRAR, the FastStone test us updated to the latest version. FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and thus single threaded performance is often the winner.

FastStone Image Viewer 4.9

For a purely single threaded test, both of the AMD APUs performed similarly here.

Web Benchmarks

On the lower end processors, general usability is a big factor of experience, especially as we move into the HTML5 era of web browsing.  For our web benchmarks, we take well known tests with Chrome 35 as a consistent browser.

Mozilla Kraken 1.1

Kraken 1.1

Google Octane v2

Google Octane v2

Professional Performance: Windows

We have a few benchmarks to characterise professional level performance on Windows.

Agisoft Photoscan – 2D to 3D Image Manipulation: link

Agisoft Photoscan creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.

Agisoft PhotoScan Benchmark - Total Time

Cinebench R15

Cinebench is a benchmark based around Cinema 4D, and is fairly well known among enthusiasts for stressing the CPU for a provided workload. Results are given as a score, where higher is better.

Cinebench R15 - Single Threaded

Cinebench R15 - Multi-Threaded

Linux Performance

Built around several freely available benchmarks for Linux, Linux-Bench is a project spearheaded by Patrick at ServeTheHome to streamline about a dozen of these tests in a single neat package run via a set of three commands using an Ubuntu 11.04 LiveCD. These tests include fluid dynamics used by NASA, ray-tracing, OpenSSL, molecular modeling, and a scalable data structure server for web deployments. We run Linux-Bench and have chosen to report a select few of the tests that rely on CPU and DRAM speed.

C-Ray: link

C-Ray is a simple ray-tracing program that focuses almost exclusively on processor performance rather than DRAM access. The test in Linux-Bench renders a heavy complex scene offering a large scalable scenario.

Linux-Bench c-ray 1.1 (Hard)

NAMD, Scalable Molecular Dynamics: link

Developed by the Theoretical and Computational Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, NAMD is a set of parallel molecular dynamics codes for extreme parallelization up to and beyond 200,000 cores. The reference paper detailing NAMD has over 4000 citations, and our testing runs a small simulation where the calculation steps per unit time is the output vector.

Linux-Bench NAMD Molecular Dynamics

NPB, Fluid Dynamics: link

Aside from LINPACK, there are many other ways to benchmark supercomputers in terms of how effective they are for various types of mathematical processes. The NAS Parallel Benchmarks (NPB) are a set of small programs originally designed for NASA to test their supercomputers in terms of fluid dynamics simulations, useful for airflow reactions and design.

Linux-Bench NPB Fluid Dynamics

AMD A10-7700K and AMD A6-7400K Mini-Review Gaming Benchmarks
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  • testbug00 - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Perhaps a thing on overclocking the GPU would be a nice little thing to add into these articles on APUs. If possible.
  • Refuge - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I don't think I've ever heard of anyone overclocking the integrated GPU in their CPU.

    That would be an interesting read, but I doubt it was translate to anything between heat and an already bandwidth starved GPU. I don't see OC helping anyone with these.
  • Edens_Remorse - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    eteknix has a great 7850k review that covers overclocking - definitely worth a read. Nothing like this sham of an article at all.
  • testbug00 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    I've overclocked a Trinity to around 1Ghz from it's base 800Mhz. 5-10% performance increase.
  • yannigr2 - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Is it so difficult to replace in the charts the prices of AMD APUs with the correct latest OFFICIAL prices? If AMD was selling A10 7850K OFFICIALLY at $50 today(just for example) why read $173 in the charts?

    Don't get it really, and I don't expect a serious answer. Probably someone will ask me again if I want gaming benchmarks first, maybe in an effort to downgrade the value of my post.
  • MrSpadge - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    AMD chips are regularly sold under well under their official price. I think that's why Ian lists the amazon price instead. BTW: that official price is always quoted for shipments of 1000 CPUs and excludes VAT, so it doesn't necessarily match retail prices by definition. One could argue to include both pricings, though. And maybe use a price comparison engine instead of simply Amazon.
  • yannigr2 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    $173 price on the charts today, has nothing to do with reality. The prices from Amazon show that. The prices on Amazon for Intel and on the charts are usually different from $0 to $2-$3. The price of 7850K in $127, on the Amazon $134 and on the charts $173. The difference is almost $40 and that paints a totally different image in performance/dollar than what it is in reality.

    I don't care if Ian lists the Amazon price or the lowest price on the planet. I just don't like charts that lie. And those charts lie creating a fake performance/dollar image that coincidentally favors the big company.
  • testbug00 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Well AMD says that they pricing the chip at $137 currently... It's over that currently.
  • Edens_Remorse - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

    Yeah... no.

    http://www.amazon.com/AMD-A10-Series-APU-A10-7850K...
  • Cryio - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Conclusion? You want a cheap PC with some gaming capabilities? Buy an A8 7650K and overclock it.

    You want the best gaming PC for the lowest money? Buy a an R9 285 or a GTX 960 and an Athlon 860K. It does the job just the same as an i3 for 40 dollars less.

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