The Intel Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X CPU Review Part 1: Workstation
by Ian Cutress on September 25, 2017 3:01 AM ESTBenchmarking Performance: SPECwpc v2.1
Anyone can run wPrime (why would you?) or Geekbench, but more often than not these pre-built synthetic tests are not representative of any user’s workload. This applies even more to professional environments or prosumer workloads, where time is money: if someone interested in hardware cannot pinpoint exactly how the new hardware is going to benefit them, that is $20 of billable time down the drain.
One of the difficulties of a benchmark reviewer is finding relevant benchmarks for the audience at hand. I’ve discussed what AnandTech is and our audience to several high profile software vendors who are in the business of supplying professional grade, critical programs that top technology companies use to produce the next $700 smartphone. These engineers are our readers, and it only seems best that we benchmark something that can assist them in accelerating our workflow. Unfortunately, the almost blanket response from these ISVs is negative, even if the request is for a limited software license in exchange for repeated discussion of the software on AnandTech (and third party benchmark data to assist their customers in hardware purchasing). My last discussions with two major ISVs led to a ‘interesting but we don’t see the value’ response and a ‘we’re doing our own in-house thing’ response respectively. No-one wants to know. Unless you work at one of these companies and want to get in touch.
The fall-back position in this case is to call on SPEC for their Workstation benchmark series. SPECwpc has existed in one form or another for several years, using pre-compiled binaries for a mix of medical, oil-and-gas, engineering, visualization and system level benchmarks. There are over 30 benchmarks, some running multiple copies to keep all the cores busy, and repeated runs offer very good consistency. A full run can take over six hours, making a sizeable increase to even our CPU workflow.
We’re reporting almost all of the subset scores in our benchmarking. Some tests require a GPU, and so we maintain the same RX 460 graphics card on each processor we test, along with the same screen resolution and driver. Ideally we would use professional graphics cards, like AMD’s FirePro range or NVIDIA’s Quadro range, however we currently use four identical RX 460 cards to keep the benchmarks on our test beds continually flowing, and sourcing four of the same pro card on long-term loan is actually fairly difficult.
Because SPECwpc takes so long and is fairly new, we only have results for a few processors so far. This should expand as we continue using this test. We’re likely to limit this test to HEDT processors and above, along with one or two mainstream processors (i7-K, Ryzen 7). For this review, out of the two Intel processors in the title, we only had time to run it on the Core i9-7980XE.
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mmrezaie - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
unofficially threadripper supports ECC. Do you have the plan to look into it?p.s. I sent an email to Anandtech support about abusive ads directing to some questionable websites. I am in EU and I see these ads for a long time now.
Ryan Smith - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
"p.s. I sent an email to Anandtech support about abusive ads directing to some questionable websites. I am in EU and I see these ads for a long time now."Er, we don't have a support email address. So I'm not sure who you sent that to.
Anyhow, we're always trying to squash malvertising. It comes in on programmatic ads, which does make the process tricky. But if you can get it to reliably and repeatedly trigger, please contact me. If we can get network logs collected, then we can isolate the source and get said ads pulled.
mmrezaie - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I sent it to advertisement link I found in the "contact us" page. Sorry by saying support. That's what we call it in our organization. thanks for the reply.snowmyr - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Check that link again and you'll see that it's not really an anandtech email address and might not get forwarded to the right people.mmrezaie - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I sent it to advertisement link I found in the "contact us" page. Sorry by saying support. That's what we call it in our organization. thanks for the reply.AdditionalPylons - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Just sent you a tweet with a screenshot, Ryan. I've been very annoyed with these clickbait ads for avery long time as well.
hughc - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
Wasn't sure what you were referring to. I have AdBlock whitelisting the domain, so I see all the display advertising.I'm also using ClickbaitKiller. Disabled it, and now I can see the unit in question - very happy to hide this trash.
thesavvymage - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
I get inappropriate ads as well. I'm not sure where I can send a screenshot, but the one I have on this page under the article is "This Is Better Than Adderall, According to US College Students. Try It!"Like what? This is a professional tech site and ads like that have no business being on here. Banner ads for tech companies? Good. Side ads for relevant products? Good. This BS thats always underneath every article? Absolutely unacceptable.
Gothmoth - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
do you really think anandtech cares how they make money.. maybe when anad was still here.i see these ads too, a website who cares about it´s reputation would distance itself from such crap.. but not anandtech.
ddriver - Monday, September 25, 2017 - link
"maybe when anad was still here" LOL, if he didn't care about money, he'd not sell the site to money makers for money. That's the N1 business model, and the sole motivation for doing anything - get it to get popular, then sell it out, and all its users with it.