Media, Productivity And Compression
Lower is better in timed applications, where single-threaded audio encoding benefits from the higher clock speeds of previous builds while multi-threaded video encoding benefits from the new machine’s additional cores. Photoshop’s OpenCL-optimized filters hang in the balance, favoring the GTX 980 of last-year’s machine.
WinZip strangely favors the SLI machine when using OpenCL enhancement, where non-games typically don’t get that type of benenfit. WinRAR appears to balance added cores against added clock frequency, while WinZip’s CPU-based compression and 7-Zip both agree that the new machines extra cores are extra-nice to have.