Westmere-EP to Sandy Bridge-EP: The Scientist Potential Upgrade
by Ian Cutress on March 4, 2013 9:30 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Xeon
- Westmere-EP
- Sandy Bridge-EP
For completeness, we run our normal motherboard benchmarks.
WinRAR x64 3.93 - link
With 64-bit WinRAR, we compress the set of files used in the USB speed tests. WinRAR x64 3.93 attempts to use multithreading when possible, and provides as a good test for when a system has variable threaded load. If a system has multiple speeds to invoke at different loading, the switching between those speeds will determine how well the system will do.
Despite the slight memory difference between the two platforms, using E5-2690s with HT off has a significant 29% advantage over HT being on or the X5690 results.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.2 - link
FastStone Image Viewer is a free piece of software I have been using for quite a few years now. It allows quick viewing of flat images, as well as resizing, changing color depth, adding simple text or simple filters. It also has a bulk image conversion tool, which we use here. The software currently operates only in single-thread mode, which should change in later versions of the software. For this test, we convert a series of 170 files, of various resolutions, dimensions and types (of a total size of 163MB), all to the .gif format of 640x480 dimensions.
With the single thread speeds being similar, the only separation between our systems should be IPC – and thus as expected the Sandy Bridge-EP system is ahead, but only by 3-6%.
Xilisoft Video Converter
With XVC, users can convert any type of normal video to any compatible format for smartphones, tablets and other devices. By default, it uses all available threads on the system, and in the presence of appropriate graphics cards, can utilize CUDA for NVIDIA GPUs as well as AMD APP for AMD GPUs. For this test, we use a set of 32 HD videos, each lasting 30 seconds, and convert them from 1080p to an iPod H.264 video format using just the CPU. The time taken to convert these videos gives us our result.
With XVC having many threads is what counts, meaning that 24 threads on a full X5690 system will equal our small video conversion test. At this level, we would need more content to see significant difference. With HT off however, the Westmere-EP result is nearer that of a single 3960X than the E5-2690s.
x264 HD Benchmark
The x264 HD Benchmark uses a common HD encoding tool to process an HD MPEG2 source at 1280x720 at 3963 Kbps. This test represents a standardized result which can be compared across other reviews, and is dependant on both CPU power and memory speed. The benchmark performs a 2-pass encode, and the results shown are the average of each pass performed four times.
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SatishJ - Monday, March 4, 2013 - link
It would be only fair to compare X5690 with E5-2667. I suspect in this case the performance difference would not be earth-shattering. No doubt E5-2690 excels but then it has advantage of more cores / threads.wiyosaya - Monday, March 4, 2013 - link
There is a possible path forward for those dealing with "old" FORTRAN code. CUDA FORTRAN - http://www.pgroup.com/resources/cudafortran.htmI would expect that there would be some conversion issues, however, I would also expect that they would be lesser than converting to C++ or some other CUDA/openCL compliant language.
As much as some of us might like it to be, FORTRAN is not dead, yet!
mayankleoboy1 - Monday, March 4, 2013 - link
1. Why not use 7Zip for the compression benchmark ? Most HPC people would like to use a FREE, Highly threaded software for their work.2.Using 3770K @ 5.4 Ghz as a comparison point is foolish. Any Ivy bride processor above ~4.6 on air is unrealistic. And for HPC, no body will use a overclocked system.
Senti - Monday, March 4, 2013 - link
WinRar is interesting because it's very sensitive to memory subsystem (7zip is less so), but 3.93 is absolutely useless as it utilizes about half of my cpu time and the end result it turns into powersaving impact benchmark before anything else. AT promised to upgrade sometime this year, but before it we'll continue to have one less useful benchmark.Not overclocking your cpu when you have good cooling is plain waste of resources. Of course I mean not extreme overclocks, but permanent maximum "turbo" frequency should be your minimum goal.
SetiroN - Monday, March 4, 2013 - link
Sorry but...-So what?
Being "sensitive to memory" doesn't make a worse benchmark better, or free;
-So what?
Nobody will ever have good enough cooling to be able to compute daily at 5.4, which is FAR above max turbo anyway. Overclocked results are welcome, provided that I don't need an additional $500 phase change cooler and $100+ in monthly bills.
tynopik - Monday, March 4, 2013 - link
> Being "sensitive to memory" doesn't make a worse benchmark better, or free;It makes it better if your software is also sensitive to memory speed
different benchmarks that measure different aspects of performance are a GOOD thing
Death666Angel - Monday, March 4, 2013 - link
The OC CPU I see as a data point for his statement that some workloads don't require multi socket CPU systems but rather a single high IPC CPU. It may or may not be unrealistic for the target demographic, but it does add a data point for or against such a thing.IanCutress - Tuesday, March 5, 2013 - link
1. WinZip 3.93 has been part of my benchmark suite for the past 18 months (so lots of comparison numbers can be scrutinized), and is the one I personally use :) We should be updating to 4.2 for Haswell, though going back and testing the last few years of chipsets and various processors takes some time.2. My inhouse retail CPU does 4.9 GHz on air, easy :) But most of the OC numbers are courtesy of several HWBot overclockers at Overclock.net who volunteered to help as part of the testing. For them the bigger score the better, hence the overclocks on something other than ambient.
Ian
mayankleoboy1 - Monday, March 4, 2013 - link
How many real world workloads are using hand-coded AVX software ?How many use compiler optimized AVX software ?
What is the perf difference between them?
Not directly related to this article, but how many softwares have the AMD Bulldozer/piledriver optimised FMA and BMI extensions ?
Kevin G - Monday, March 4, 2013 - link
What is going on with the Explicit Finite Difference tests? The thing that stood out to me are the two results for the i7 3770K at 4.5 Ghz with memory speed being the differentiating factor. Going from 2000 Mhz to 2600 Mhz effective speed on the memory increased performance by ~13% in the 2D tests and ~6% in the 3D tests. Another thing worth pointing out is that the divider in Ivy Bridge has higher throughput than Sandy Bridge. This would account for some of the exceedingly high performance of the desktop Ivy Bridge systems if the algorithms make heavy use of division. The dual socket systems likely need some tuning with regards to their memory systems. The results of the dual socket systems are embarrassing in comparison to their 'lesser' single socket brethen.The implicit 2D test is similarly odd. The odd ball result is the Core i7 3820@4.2 Ghz against the Ivy bridge based Core i7 3770k@stock (3.5 Ghz). Despite the higher clock speed and extra memory channel, the consumer Sandy Bridge-E system loses! This is with the same number of cores and threads running. Just how much division are these algorithms using? That is the only thing that I can fathom to explain these differences. Multi-socket configurations are similarly nerfed with the implicit 2D test as they are with the explicit 2D test.
Did the Browian Motion simulations take advantage of Ivy Bridge's hardware random number generator? Looking at the results, signs are pointing toward 'no'.
I'm a bit nitpicky about the usage of the word 'element' describing the n-Body simulation with regards to gravity. The usage of element and particle are not technically incorrect but lead the reader to think that these simulations are done with data regarding the microscopic scales, not stellar.
The Xilisoft Video Converter test results seem to be erroneous. More than doubling the speed by enabling Hyperthreading? How is that even possible? Best case for Hypthereading is that half of the CPU execution resources are free so that another thread can utilize them and get double the throughput. HT rarely gets near twice as fast but these results imply five times faster which is outside the realm of possibility with everything else being equal. Scaling between the Core i7-3960k and the dual E5-2690 HT Off result looks off given how the results between other platforms look too.