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Workstation & HPC Performance
2D Benchmarks: DirectX and GDI/GDI+
If you want to know more about our HPC benchmarks, check out the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X CPU Review. We didn't just copy results from that story, though. Rather, after a number of BIOS updates and software configuration changes, we retested everything. This gives us a more up-to-date picture, reflecting improvements of up to 15% that AMD worked hard to enable.
Intel's Core i7-7820X outstrips the -7900X in our AutoCAD 2D workload due to its frequency and IPC throughput advantage. The Core i9-7900X wins in the GDI/GDI+ benchmarks, though. Both processors provide more performance than a Broadwell-E-based Core i7-6900K.
2D Benchmarks: Adobe Creative Cloud
Per-cycle performance plays a role in these lightly-threaded applications, giving the -7820X an advantage in several tests. Both Skylake-X models suffer lower performance than we'd expect in the Photoshop Heavy and InDesign workloads. Hopefully Adobe is planning an update that'll address this anomaly.
3D Benchmarks: DirectX and OpenGL
The Core i7-7700K vigorously cuts through most of these workloads, indicating that prefer high clock rates, all else being equal.
Both Skylake-X-based chips trade places through several of the tests; the distance between them remains small, though.
CPU Performance: Workstation
Broadwell-E leads the Skylake-X-based processors in a few of these workloads, reminding us that Intel's mesh topology may lead to performance regressions in some cases.
The Ryzen 7 1800X is incredibly competitive during this round of testing.
CPU Performance: Photorealistic Rendering
Rendering benefits from brute-force parallelism, so the 10-core Core i9-7900X naturally provides the best performance.
The workload utilizes all cores fully, so it also provides a good multi-threaded comparison between the eight-core -7820X and Ryzen 7 1800X. Intel's processor takes the lead due to its per-cycle performance advantage, but Ryzen is surprisingly competitive given its lower price and value-oriented platform. It also doesn't require a custom water-cooling loop to reach its potential, whereas Skylake-X does.
CPU Performance: Encoding & Compression/Decompression
The -7820X falls into a predictable place during our threaded encoding workload. Nipping at its heels is AMD's nagging (and much less expensive) Ryzen 7 1800X.
Core i7-7820X struggles mightily with our lightly-threaded decompression workload. Its place in the chart is much lower than we'd expect, given the way Intel implements its Turbo Boost technology.
High Performance Computing (HPC)
Complex HPC applications largely benefit from the -7820X's high clock rate and beefy core count. But aside from the SRMP workload, AMD's Ryzen 7 1800X again proves to be the fly in Intel's high-priced ointment.
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