Broadwell: Intel Core i7-5775C And i5-5675C Review

Features
By Igor Wallossek, Chris Angelini
published

Iris Pro Graphics 6200: Workstation

AutoCAD 2015 2D and 3D Performance

AutoCAD is a popular application from Autodesk. First, we’re testing its "2D" performance with Cadalyst 2015. Quotes are used there because AutoCAD deals with 2D the same way many other applications do nowadays: through DirectX's D3D interface. This way of implementing 2D is worth testing since there really hasn't been any hardware acceleration for 2D through the kernel-mode driver since Windows Vista. Graphics cards with unified shader architectures don’t have dedicated 2D units anymore, either.

Consequently, this benchmark adds value to our review, since most of the 2D calculations are executed via the CPU these days. This means that they’re more dependent on host processing than the graphics card. This carries through to our results, which heavily favor the higher-clocked Haswell-based CPUs.

The picture changes as soon as 3D performance is involved. Intel's Broadwell architecture leads, and AMD’s APUs don’t stand a chance due to their weaker x86 cores.

Maya 2013 (OpenGL)

The SPECviewperf software suite uses OpenGL exclusively for Maya, manipulating a model made up of 727,500 vertices. 

Graphics processing limits this benchmark's performance, since the CPU load isn't particularly demanding. Intel’s new Core i7-5770C with Iris Pro 6200 provides up to 36 percent more performance than AMD’s Radeon R7 on the A10-7560K. Ouch.

Showcase 2013 (DirectX)

The next benchmark is based on DirectX. Autodesk might be alone in the field of large application vendors, but many smaller companies are making the move to DirectX as well. The benchmark for Showcase 2013 uses eight million vertices and, among others, shading, projected shadows and self-shadowing.

Based on those weak frame rates, it's pretty clear that integrated graphics isn't the way to go for an optimal experience. Still, Iris Pro 6200 comes out a whopping 109 percent ahead, even if that’s not enough to provide usable results.

Cinebench R15 (OpenGL)

Cinebench R15’s integrated OpenGL graphics benchmark places a bit more emphasis on the CPU, which becomes apparent when looking at the GeForce GTX 980’s different frame rate results. If you're only using processor graphics, however, then that becomes your bottleneck.

Igor Wallossek
246 Comments Comment from the forums
  • RNOblivion
    Proof read your articles. This seems to be an increasing prevalent theme of Tom's over the last couple years.
    Reply
  • greghome
    are these numbers real?.............Not only does it match lower mid range cards, but it completely destorys AMD's APUs........
    :shock:
    Reply
  • Nuckles_56
    With the Sandra 2015 benchmark on the first page, you are testing the i7 7557c against the i7 4790k instead of the i7 5775c
    Reply
  • babernet_1
    Sad how AMD is absolutely shoved into the dust bin. I hope their upcoming Zen next year will be worthwhile with its 14nm process and more Intel-like cores.
    Reply
  • wtfxxxgp
    This is exactly what I said to a buddy of mine about a month ago. Everyone is going on about how little Intel has done with CPUs over the past few years - presumably due to no real competition from AMD. Then people starting looking to Zen as being the real competitor for Intel and saying things like "Intel are in for a shock" - I had the view that Intel weren't resting on their laurels all this time - they've just been biding their time and doing amazing things in a hush hush manner. When Zen is released it will soon be completely obliterated by some of the tech that Intel would have been working on in the meantime - AMD has lagged too far behind for too long and love them or hate them, Intel is the benchmark when it comes to CPUs - period. They own this space, and these 2 chips have just rendered AMD APUs completely useless now. I'd be interested in this for a HTPC solution with some light gaming - League of Legends etc. This is impressive, however, like the article concluded, what a poor time for them to be released.
    Reply
  • Grognak
    Wow. 93% better average framerate in GTA V than a 7850K with DDR3-2400 RAM... And that's just the i5. Incredible.
    Reply
  • shrapnel_indie
    Since Broadwell is unlocked, would have been interesting to see how they overclocked. Yeah Skylake is breathing down the neck of Broadwell now thanks to the delays it suffered... but still would be fun to see.


    You’ve waited this long—why not hang tight for a few months for Skylake and start anew with 100-series chipsets, DDR4 and the return of unlocked 95W K-series CPUs?

    Last I heard Skylake was supposed to support DDR3 and DDR4. Was that just a rumor that wasn't the truth or will it actually support DDR3 as well?
    Reply
  • alpha27
    heh iris coming close to a 750gtx 500 cuda core NVidia better watch out hey
    hmm if intel whacked a few iris's on a gfx chip and did there thing they could possibly beat NVidia...and make even more money lol, hmm mutli 128mb ring buses and iris core's and hbm...delicious
    Reply
  • de5_Roy
    it's a good review. two big reviews back to back, nice job. :)

    i missed some things:
    unlocked broadwells but no o.c. not even a little look into how these overclock and behave o.c.ed.
    no comparison (gaming, power use, htpc etc.) with the desktop haswell i5 and i7 -R cpus' iris pro igpus. the amd comparisons were good though. i hope you guys test these against the haswell iris pro later.


    in some of the charts, the core i7 5775 was written as i7 7557.
    in the test setup page, system memory section, is it "transcend" instead of "transcent"?

    edit:
    one last thing: do these unlocked broadwell cpus really have 16x gen 3.0 lanes off the processor? i thought these were soc dies (with southbridge disabled) with 8x gen 3.0 lanes.
    Reply
  • SteelCity1981
    not surprising given that it has an irs pro gpu in it, that's intel top of the line gpu. now obv even with that said it's in no competition with highend gpus from NVidia or amd as any apu's gpu would get destroyed, but what's good is the fact that it's helping to push gpus on apu's to become better and better and since intel has greatly stepped up their game in the apu's gpu department i'd expect amd to step up their game even further and push back. I also see that since there is such a big gain with broadwells gpu, that skylake won't see any real jump in that department. i'd imagine that the irs 6000 series is going to carry over onto skylake with little improvement over broadwells irs 6200.
    Reply