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What would you like to see in CPU reviews?

W1zzard

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Now that my first CPU review is posted, I'd like to ask the community for thoughts on methodology, benchmark selection etc. (This not to discuss anything Ryzen-specific, posts will be deleted).

What applications do you use in daily life that make you wait? Would you like to see more/fewer games? Other resolutions?

- Databases?
- Rendering?
- Simulation?

I can automate nearly every application to perform benchmark testing, so don't worry if it can be done :)
 
Let's see if anyone has ideas for a reproducible test suite in Matlab, cEmu and something database/dataset related like R.

What about a game benchmark combined with streaming it live?
 
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Let's see if anyone has ideas for a reproducible test suite in Matlab, cEmu and something database/dataset related like R.

As an heavy Matlab user I would love to have an idea of a cpu performance on such application. Since Matlab is paid and quite expensive, maybe Octave could be an alternative!
 
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Well I'm after 4K reviews which is pretty much non existent. Since this is the way going forward.

Apart from that it would be nice to see how crossfire and SLI fairs also. Perfect example is Ryzen.

Obviously this is from a gaming point of view.

BTW your list of games for the Ryzen review was first class!

Thanks.
 
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Multiple broswer tabs with loading/switching etc. and between that and office-type apps.

Maybe a "simulation" of a non-gaming scenario in an office where someone is moving back and forth between database screens, email etc. and maybe compiling some code or running tests in the background.

Running tasks in the background while gaming, e.g. Skype on a second screen while you give someone on the video link a tutorial.

Web pages on a second screen while gaming (e.g. monitoring social media, stocks etc.).

Time to switch out of/close a game to the desktop ("boss mode"). ;)
 
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Personally, crunching is currently what's important to me when picking a CPU.
 
Multiple broswer tabs with loading/switching etc. and between that and office-type apps.

Maybe a "simulation" of a non-gaming scenario in an office where someone is moving back and forth between database screens, email etc. and maybe compiling some code or running a tests in the background.

Running tasks in the background while gaming, e.g. Skype on a second screen while you give someone on the video link a tutorial.

Web pages on a second screen while gaming (e.g. monitoring social media, stocks etc.).

Time to switch out of/close a game to the desktop ("boss mode"). ;)

I was thinking about this since fx series came out.
During benching your disable everything to make the test as valid and comparable as possible.
But as nemesis.ie said that is not how we use our computers.
Downloading stuff in background, maybe youtube on the second screen or stocks (whatever rocks your world), maybe some encoding.
One test Gaming while running something else in the background would give great insight.

In the Ryzen review you can see that the power draw on i7 7700k is the same for Prime95 and in gaming which means that in both scenarios is being utilized maximum.
For comparison Ryzen had 154W Prime95 vs 121W Gaming which means its not utilizing the CPU fully in gaming.
And I'm not trying to start a debate here for Ryzen, but benching should represent real world scenarios and for most people is running something else in the background while gaming.
For people that gonna say that they are exclusively gaming only, unless you are disabling updates, Antivirus, Firewall etc you are running something else.
 
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Personally, crunching is currently what's important to me when picking a CPU.
^^ This!

However, since crunching relies on many factors it would be difficult to nail down actual crunching capability unless you were able to test it for at least 2-3 weeks.

There is a CPU benchmark built into the BOINC Manager software that may allow some comparison. It's a quick test that measures the Floating Point/Whetstone and Integer/Dhrystone performance of the CPU on a per core/thread basis.

These results are available online through various stats sites such as this one for an 1800X in use by one of our Team members:
http://stats.free-dc.org/stats.php?page=host&proj=bwcg&hostid=3834496
*see top half of the page- note that this website has been a little wonky lately :rolleyes:

Example- This is an 1800X vs a 3930k
* Note- not a completely accurate comparison since the benchmark varies between operating systems...

ryzencompare.jpg
 
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Now that my first CPU review is posted, I'd like to ask the community for thoughts on methodology, benchmark selection etc.

Well.. we've already exchanged a few posts, but I'm glad this thread was created. :)

Whatever benchmarks you'll use, I do have 2 general suggestions.
I. Let's keep stuff fairly mainstream, accessible and - ideally - make at least some of the benchmarks downloadable. This would make it possible for us to check how our machines compare with the newest stuff.
As such, I think you should consider free or paid mainstream software only, so - for example - not things like Matlab, AutoCAD, Photoshop etc.
Moreover, you could at least think about starting a "3rd party" community results' database. I'm not saying it's essential, but could work as an extra resource next to results in controlled environment.
II. I'd love to see some more statistics in the results, but keeping it as simple as possible: FPS quantiles for gaming, number of samples and dispersion in time-measuring benchmarks etc.


As for the benchmarks, here are some possibilities:
1) IMO a serious Excel test is a must. Access could be incorporated (as today it's more an Excel back-end for data storage than a sensible database).
Germany's population is 80 mio, so it's very likely that just in your country there are more people looking at Excel for >4h a day than those doing serious 3D rendering all over the planet. :)
2) Database (ideally both SQL and NoSQL). This should include some advanced analytic coding and scripting (as basic data manipulation tests the storage speed more than anything else). You'll need a DB with decent scripting for that (PostgreSQL?). You could consider SQLite as well, because it's hugely popular as embedded db in a lot of software.
3) Numerical computation / data analysis - huge amount of software to choose from: R, Octave, Python etc. This could include generating 2D images as a result (a complicated plot/graph can take a few seconds, so it shouldn't be underestimated :)).
4) Virtualization - ability to work with multiple VMs (each with some CPU-heavy tasks).
5) Everyday tasks / productivity - running a lot of things at the same time rather than separate. Such benchmark tests a lot more than just multi-thread performance. I'd go for a movie + compression + firefox + file copying etc. I'd exclude gaming, because it doesn't offer stable CPU load and would ruin the results.
6) Antivirus scan - totally ignored in many reviews for a reason I don't understand. A weekly full scan is one of the most irritating things I do (even worse than off-site backup).

I'm not suggesting video encoding and rendering for a simple reason - some very good benchmarks are already available.
 
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Well I'm after 4K reviews which is pretty much non existent. Since this is the way going forward.

Apart from that it would be nice to see how crossfire and SLI fairs also. Perfect example is Ryzen.

Obviously this is from a gaming point of view.

BTW your list of games for the Ryzen review was first class!

Thanks.

Although multi-gpu seems to be becoming less relevant, I too would love to see some benches in CPU reviews. It doesn't need to be a ton, just a couple of games that have good support (I don't own any 2016/2017 games so I can't recommend any).
 
Multiple broswer tabs with loading/switching etc. and between that and office-type apps.

Maybe a "simulation" of a non-gaming scenario in an office where someone is moving back and forth between database screens, email etc. and maybe compiling some code or running tests in the background.

Running tasks in the background while gaming, e.g. Skype on a second screen while you give someone on the video link a tutorial.

Web pages on a second screen while gaming (e.g. monitoring social media, stocks etc.).

Time to switch out of/close a game to the desktop ("boss mode"). ;)

I think you're referring to reality? ;)
 
Yeah some kind of crunching benchmark would be nice. I don't know the legality of this but it would be interesting to see some emulator results too since they are so dependent on CPU performance.
 
I will write up a small package for you to test CPU performance on genome assembly. Bioinformatics is a huge rising field where most computational resources go in most Universities. Not gonna be done fast though. My hope if to get a paper published on this along with starting something similar to Stanford Folding@home. Basically recruiting all these awesome idling HEDT processors to help assemble genome of various species.
 
I'd like to see if gains from previous generation are worth buying
 
just Two words:

The Division


:cool:+:kookoo:=jboydgolfer:laugh:
@Kursah
 
Multitasking is a good thing to be tested, especially for CPUs having 8 or more threads. Gaming, streaming, virus scanning, compessing, video-encoding could be some proposed tasks to be included.
 
Be nice to see a direct comparison core/core and thread/thread no matter the price difference.

Also some dancing clowns would be nice :toast::nutkick:
 
I would like to see the gaming benches run on ALL configurations in the test

The X99 setups in the Ryzen review are also not as fast as the 7700k in gaming, and the review should have reflected that as a first look at where the ryzen sits against intels 2 platforms
 
I liked the Ryzen review and its bench suite, good mix of titles in gaming and beyond.

What I would like to see in a CPU test is some side-by-side work, being browser with youtube playing + CPU limited game. Or game recording + game.
 
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