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Productivity Performance
PRODUCTIVITY PERFORMANCE
Cinebench R10 is a 3D graphic application benchmark. It renders a high-resolution model of a motorcycle and gives a score at the end. It utilizes as many cores as are available. POV-Ray is a rendering application as well. As with Cinebench it runs multithreaded using as many cores as available. Both applications take advantage of Hyperthreading. For a more detailed analysis, it is possible to tell the built-in benchmark the number of threads to run. We run both applications single-threaded and then again multithreaded with the maximum number of threads possible for each CPU.
When an application is confined to a single thread, processor frequency counts. Both dual core CPUs perform well here, because they are higher clocked than almost all other CPUs in this test. The 661 leads the crowd, besting its predecessor by almost 30%! The picture looks much different when you render multi-threaded. In this case, the E8600 is rendering with 2 threads, all other CPUs with 4 threads. The 920 can, as a quadcore CPU with Hyperthreading capability, render even with 8 threads. The E8600 is now falling much behind. The 661 is leads the E8600 by around 25%, but can’t compete with the much lower clocked quadcore 750. Although Hyperthreading helps somewhat, it for sure cannot compensate the lack of 2 additional physical cores. There is no way that in multi-threaded applications a dual core processor beats a quadcore processor, even if the latter is lower clocked.
WinRAR is running multithreaded as well, so Hyperthreading is therefore enhancing performance. The result of the built-in benchmark is given in kilobyte/sec. Have a look at the 920 and the 750: When running single-threaded both perform identical. But compressing multi-threaded, the 920 is 10% faster because it runs the task with 8 threads, while the 750 is limited to 4 threads. Again we can see the 661 beating the E8600 by around 30% and performing on par or better in single threaded performance than the quadcore competition. But there is no way to compete with the quad-cores when WinRAR is running multithreaded.
The workloads for the Office 2007 Excel tests are provided by Intel. They are scripted to show the advantage of multi-threading with Intel multi-core processors. The 920 is leading the equally clocked 750 by up to 15% in this benchmark, thanks to Hyperthreading. The AMD processor falls far behind in this (Intel-provided) benchmark. The 661 is finishing the workloads around 25% ahead of the E8600, but both are behind the quadcore processors.
AVG 8.5 (virus checking) and MainConcept (H.264 video encoding) are running multi-threaded and taking therefore advantage of HT as well. Again you can see that the 920 running with 8 threads is unbeatable in multi-threaded applications. Both dual core CPUs are coming in last. The 661 is a massive 36% faster encoding the video clip to H.264 than the E8600.
iTunes 8.2 is running mainly single threaded. 4 physical cores have therefore little or no advantage against 2 physical cores. Both dual core CPUs are encoding faster with iTunes 8.2 than the tested quadcore processors thanks to their higher frequency. For some reason the 661 is “only” 5% faster than the E8600.
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All original content copyright James Rolfe.
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