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Workstation CPU and GPU Benchmarks Test Notes
Some of these applications also make an appearance in our standard test suite, but those test configurations and benchmarks are focused on a typical desktop-class environment. In contrast, the following tests are configured to stress the systems with workstation-class workloads. Because these are more oriented to prosumer/professional use cases, we limited our test pool to the Ryzen 9/Core i9 and Ryzen 7/Core i7 processors.
We loaded down our test platforms with 64GB of DDR4 or DDR5 memory spread across four modules to accommodate the expanded memory capacity required for several of these workstation-focused tasks. We used the officially supported stock memory speeds for 2DPC configurations. Notably, the Ryzen 7000 chips support ECC memory by default, though motherboard vendors have to certify their own implementations. Intel’s Alder Lake also supports ECC memory, but only on its workstation-focused W-series motherboards.
Adobe Premiere Pro and Lightroom and Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
Puget Systems is a boutique systems vendor that caters to professional users with custom-designed systems targeted at specific workloads. The company has developed a series of acclaimed benchmarks for Adobe software, which you can find here.
The Photoshop benchmark gauges performance in a diverse range of tasks, measuring the time taken to complete general tasks and apply filters. This test leans heavily on GPU acceleration, and it's clear that high clock rates benefit performance tremendously. The 7950X is 5% faster than the 12900K at stock settings, and 15% faster after tuning. It’s also 22% faster than the prior-gen 5950X.
The Ryzen 9 7950X is even more impressive in Puget’s Adobe After Effects benchmark, taking an 8% lead over the 12900K at stock settings and expanding to a 13% lead after overclocking. The 7950X is also 29% faster than the 5950X. Once again, we see the Core i9-12900K take a step backward after overclocking.
SPECworkstation 3 Benchmarks on AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
The SPECworkstation 3 benchmark suite is designed to measure workstation performance in professional applications. The full suite consists of more than 30 applications split among seven categories, but we've winnowed down the list to tests that largely focus specifically on CPU performance. We haven't submitted these benchmarks to the SPEC organization, so these are not official benchmarks.
The Calculix workload is based on the finite element method for three-dimensional structural computations, and it typically responds well to both higher core counts and clocks. The 7950X leads here where Ryzen 9 trailed before, exhibiting yet another impressive speed up.
SPECworkstation 3's Rodinia LifeSciences benchmark steps through four tests that include medical imaging, particle movements in a 3D space, a thermal simulation, and image-enhancing programs. The 5950X dominates these heavily-threaded workloads,
The earth’s subsurface structure can be determined via seismic processing. One of the four basic steps in this process is the Kirchhoff Migration, which generates an image based on the available data using mathematical operations. Threaded horsepower comes into play, and once again, we see the 7950X take the lead.
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