The Intel Broadwell Desktop Review: Core i7-5775C and Core i5-5675C Tested (Part 1)
by Ian Cutress on June 2, 2015 7:45 AM ESTOffice Performance
The dynamics of CPU Turbo modes, both Intel and AMD, can add a wrinkle to testing in 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-threaded 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.
Crystal Well doesn’t help much in Dolphin, indicating it is more CPU frequency limited than DRAM/cache limited.
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 is our typical benchmark to go to when testing whether DRAM is factor, and the improvements provided by the Crystal Well implementation trump any frequency deficit.
3D Particle Movement
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
3DPM, like Dolphin, is concerned more with CPU frequency than DRAM accesses.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.9
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 results are given in seconds.
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 four well known tests with Chrome 35 as a consistent browser.
Mozilla Kraken 1.1
WebXPRT
Google Octane v2
In the webtests, the Broadwell-DT CPUs didn’t necessarily take top spot but they are punching above their expected weight for their frequency.
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nandnandnand - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
A10-7870K is listed as $137 and A10-7850K as $173Ian Cutress - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
$137 is the launch price of the A10-7870K.$173 was the launch price of the A10-7850K.
We mentioned why we do launch pricing in our graphs in previous reviews, but it comes down to our graphs not being dynamically linked to a retailer and we have to pick a point that's suitable over time. Launch pricing does that, even though there might be future discounts over time.
nandnandnand - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Ok, that makes sense.Business opportunity: add a drop down to switch from launch price to "live price" for Newegg/Amazon/etc., hyperlink live prices, get a cut from every click.
AS118 - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link
I agree with nand. Other sites do this, and it's helpful to me because I often read reviews to make a purchase anyway, and it helps me see what the price is right now.FlushedBubblyJock - Sunday, June 14, 2015 - link
Take a look at how much the GTX980 stomps the amd 290X above - in the review here where they aren't concerned and paying attention and picking the best games for amd gimpy hardware.Just look at the FPS difference... let it sin in - the reviewers haphazardly reveal the truth when they are not intending to.
bloodroses75 - Wednesday, June 17, 2015 - link
Oh look, a current gen video card beat a last gen card that is just over half the price.You may want to try waiting until the 300 series is released/ bench marked before spouting how superior one is over the other. If the 300 series ends up being a dud (which it kinda looks like it will), so be it; at least it will be an 'apple to apple' comparison.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
You don't need dynamically updated prices. simply pick the prices around the release date of the new hardware. If the price of a 1 or 2 years old comparison chip was lowered significantly (yes, this still happens sometimes), comparing it based on launch price is misleading and will always make some people shout "unfair". You easily fix this.taltamir - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
I agree, the obvious thing to do is use the price as it is during the time the article was written.That means launch price for the item being reviewed and current prices for all items it is being compared to
ImSpartacus - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
Since you have to do a "snapshot" pricing for these reviews, you may want to consider looking at average pricing at the time of review. At least then the time frame for each snap shot is the same.nathanddrews - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link
There's a fine line between "just enough" information and "too much". Prices for CPUs vary greatly depending on where you buy them.