Benchmark Results: Content Creation
Well-optimized for threading, the two six-core Sandy Bridge-E-based chips run away with first and second place in 3ds Max 2012.
Core i7-3770K takes third place, narrowly outperforming the existing Core i7-2700K. The implication here is that Ivy Bridge is only getting a marginal speed-up due to the IPC-oriented improvements that Intel folded in. A difference of five seconds is hardly noteworthy.
The new Cycles engine wouldn’t cooperate with our AMD-based platforms, so we have the results from five different machines with Intel CPUs in them. Both six-core models land in the lead, followed by the Core i7-3770K and -2700K nearly tied for third place. The Core i5-2550K, lacking Hyper-Threading and some shared L3 cache, trails a ways back.
We didn’t have any issues using the older rendering engine on any of our platforms, though the finishing order is exactly the same amongst the Intel-based CPUs. Factoring in AMD’s Phenom II X6 1100T and FX-8150 only tacks those two parts onto the end of the chart.
Same story in SolidWorks. The six-core Intel chips dominate, followed by the Core i7-3770K and -2700K, seemingly joined at the hip. Intel’s Core i5-2550K lands in fifth place, trailed by both AMD processors. Despite the fact that we saw FX-8150 do so stinking well in Photoshop, it simply gets outclassed in all of our content creation titles.
