Results: Content Creation
In both 3ds Max 2012 and 2013, Intel’s 12-core Xeon E5-2697 V2 is smoking-fast, slipping right past the eight-core Xeon E5-2687W and upcoming Ivy Bridge-E-based Core i7-4960X. The desktop-oriented CPUs are a ways behind.
This is the greatest victory yet for Intel’s upcoming Xeon E5-2697 V2. It flies past the eight-core Xeon E5-2687W, finishing our Blender workload in less than half the time of a Core i7-4770K. It’s looking like 3D modelers are going to seriously benefit from the potential that Ivy Bridge-EP offers to Apple’s Mac Pro, even in a single-socket configuration.
Based on Maxon’s Cinema 4D software, our scripted Cinebench test measures single- and multi-core processor performance.
In order to fit its 12 Ivy Bridge-based cores into a 130 W thermal design power, the Xeon E5-2697 V2 employs a 2.7 GHz base clock rate. With Turbo Boost enabled, a single core ramps up to 3.5 GHz. That’s slower than the rest of our test platforms in Cinebench’s single-core metric.
The threaded component takes off though, despite a maximum 12-core clock rate of 3 GHz. Intel’s eight-core Xeon E5-2687W is the next-closest comparison point. It spins up to 3.4 GHz with Turbo Boost enabled and all of its cores utilized, but still doesn’t come anywhere close to the Ivy Bridge-EP-based part.