by Rob Williams on November 28, 2011 in Processors
To those looking to build the biggest, baddest high-end PC around, the wait for Sandy Bridge-E was no doubt painful. But, it’s finally here, and much to our expectations, Intel has once again solidified its position as the performance leader. So let’s take a look at what it offers, and compare it to the i7-990X, i7-2600K and AMD FX-8150.
SPEC’s CPU2006 is the most comprehensive benchmark in our test suite. Its goal is to test both the general execution performance of a machine and also the chosen compiler, and as such, it makes great use of all available threads across one or more CPUs along with the memory sub-system.
You might not have heard of SPEC before, and if so, it’s likely because the non-profit group creates benchmarks targeted at the enterprise rather than the desktop. The folks responsible for each one of its benchmarks take things extremely seriously, and nothing gets released without extensive review. Many companies belong to SPEC as members, offering input and other insight. Some of these include AMD, Intel, Apple, ASUS, HP, Fujitsu, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, NEC, NVIDIA, Novell, Red Hat, Super Micro, VMware, Dell and EMC.
The CPU2006 suite is a about as complicated to explain as it is to run. We’ve prepared what we feel to be the best possible configuration for use with the tool, and as the result of much testing, we use Intel Compiler version 12 coupled with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 for our testing. This is one of the few current configurations that can deliver submittable results, as Intel Compiler supports the most recent C standard, C99, whereas most compilers do not (in Linux, gcc would be a good replacement).
While CPU2006 can take advantage of the AVX instruction set, for the sake of fairness across all current processors we opt to not use it. The ultimate reason for this decision is that while some instruction sets might be important to programmers, AVX is not one of them. Thus, using AVX could skew results and give an unrealistic impression of what a CPU can do for people in this field.
Due to its inherent design to run each test three times over, we do not run the entire CPU2006 more than once, as it would be redundant. At the same time, a full run on an Intel Core i7-2600K takes just over 13 hours to complete, so it’s not feasible to run the entire suite multiple times over.
More information on the suite and how we use it can be read about in this forum post.
SPEC CINT2006
|
|
Intel
|
AMD
|
Test
|
i7-3960X
|
i7-990X
|
i7-2600K
|
FX-8150
|
400.perlbench
|
31.7
|
26.8
|
31.1
|
23.0
|
401.bzip2
|
25.1
|
20.6
|
25.5
|
20.2
|
403.gcc
|
30.0
|
24.8
|
31.5
|
19.4
|
429.mcf
|
54.4
|
48.3
|
54.3
|
42.0
|
445.gobmk
|
24.2
|
22.7
|
24.1
|
20.1
|
456.hmmer
|
42.1
|
33.9
|
40.9
|
31.1
|
458.sjeng
|
30.1
|
27.0
|
29.8
|
20.9
|
462.libquantum
|
584
|
467
|
457
|
384
|
464.h264ref
|
38.7
|
32.8
|
38.1
|
29.8
|
471.omnetpp
|
29.3
|
27.0
|
29.8
|
20.4
|
473.astar
|
30.4
|
23.7
|
29.4
|
22.7
|
483.xalancbmk
|
38.4
|
31.8
|
35.7
|
21.8
|
SPEC CFP2006
|
|
Intel
|
AMD
|
Test
|
i7-3960X
|
i7-990X
|
i7-2600K
|
FX-8150
|
410.bwaves
|
138
|
91.8
|
93.3
|
84.2
|
416.gamess
|
26.8
|
22.2
|
26.6
|
18.3
|
433.milc
|
64.9
|
54.3
|
66.6
|
35.6
|
434.zeusmp
|
85.8
|
74.7
|
71.4
|
70.7
|
435.gromacs
|
28.3
|
24.3
|
27.8
|
23.2
|
436.cactusADM
|
180
|
165
|
121
|
129
|
437.leslie3d
|
112
|
75.7
|
69.5
|
56.9
|
444.namd
|
26.2
|
20.8
|
25.7
|
20.3
|
447.dealII
|
48.3
|
37.4
|
49.7
|
32.8
|
450.soplex
|
43.9
|
36.5
|
42.0
|
27.3
|
453.povray
|
46.0
|
31.7
|
45.1
|
26.5
|
454.calculix
|
36.2
|
30.5
|
36.5
|
29.1
|
459.GemsFDTD
|
69.8
|
54.8
|
50.7
|
42.9
|
465.tonto
|
22.5
|
19.6
|
22.7
|
17.1
|
470.lbm
|
200
|
151
|
120
|
128
|
481.wrf
|
59.0
|
50.2
|
57.6
|
40.2
|
482.sphinx3
|
58.6
|
46.4
|
55.7
|
34.7
|
Intel Core i7-3960X – 3.30GHz 6-core / 12-thread (Sandy Bridge-E)
Intel Core i7-990X – 3.40GHz 6-core / 12-thread (Gulftown)
Intel Core i7-2600K – 3.40GHz 4-core / 8-thread (Sandy Bridge)
AMD FX-8150 – 3.60GHz 8-core / 8-thread (Zambezi)
|
In the overall results, the i7-3960X exhibits huge gains over the i7-990X, although the delta is tightened when compared to the i7-2600K. Once again, we see proof of just how good of an architecture Sandy Bridge is compared to its predecessors and competitors. In both integer and floating-point operations, there’s just no contest of which is best.