Results: Adobe Creative Cloud And Compression Tools
It's interesting to see the GeForce GTX 970 demonstrate similar performance as the GeForce GTX 770 in tests that exploit GPU-based compute. We're not sure what's slowing the newer board down, but we were hoping to see it exhibit a lead over Nvidia's previous-gen architecture.
CPU and memory performance are critical variables in the rest of these tests, which do not leverage the heterogeneous nature of OpenCL. The After Effects benchmark is single-threaded and, like iTunes and LAME, responds to clock rate and installed memory, so the results are practically identical. Similar to Photoshop, Premiere Pro is optimized for multi-core CPUs and benefits from Hyper-Threading.
Compression Tools
The chart below represents three separate benchmarks. WinZip's -EZ switch forces the app to use maximum compression. That's a processor-bound test, and its more taxing workload translates to longer completion times. The OpenCL-accelerated version leverages graphics resources to help compress files larger than 8MB.
Our OpenCL-enabled benchmark shows an impressive performance improvement thanks to the GeForce GTX 970, which makes the previous page's Photoshop result even more puzzling. Regardless, the Core i7-based system wipes the floor with the previous build's Core i5.
