A Broadwell Retrospective Review in 2020: Is eDRAM Still Worth It?
by Dr. Ian Cutress on November 2, 2020 11:00 AM ESTGaming Tests: Chernobylite
Despite the advent of recent TV shows like Chernobyl, recreating the situation revolving around the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the concept of nuclear fallout and the town of Pripyat have been popular settings for a number of games – mostly first person shooters. Chernobylite is an indie title that plays on a science-fiction survival horror experience and uses a 3D-scanned recreation of the real Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. It involves challenging combat, a mix of free exploration with crafting and non-linear story telling. While still in early access, it is already picking up plenty of awards.
I picked up Chernobylite while still in early access, and was impressed by its in-game benchmark, showcasing complex building structure with plenty of trees and structures where aliasing becomes important. The in-game benchmark is an on-rails experience through the scenery, covering both indoor and outdoor scenes – it ends up being very CPU limited in the way it is designed. We have taken an offline version of Chernobylite to use in our tests, and we are testing the following settings combinations:
- 360p Low, 1440p Low, 4K Low, 1080p Max
We do as many runs within 10 minutes per resolution/setting combination, and then take averages.
| AnandTech | Low Res Low Qual |
Medium Res Low Qual |
High Res Low Qual |
Medium Res Max Qual |
| Average FPS |  |
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The Broadwell CPUs remain high performers here as the frame rates get cranked up, with the Broadwell Core i7+i5 even matching the latest Comet Lake Core i5, even at 1080p Max settings.
For our Integrated Tests, we run the first and last combination of settings.
Integrated graphics shows how far AMD's basic options are ahead.
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realbabilu - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
That Larger cache maybe need specified optimized BLAS.Kurosaki - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
Did you mean BIAS?ballsystemlord - Tuesday, November 3, 2020 - link
BLAS == Basic Linear Algebra System.Kamen Rider Blade - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
I think there is merit to having Off-Die L4 cache.Imagine the low latency and high bandwidth you can get with shoving some stacks of HBM2 or DDR-5, whichever is more affordable and can better use the bandwidth over whatever link you're providing.
nandnandnand - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
I'm assuming that Zen 4 will add at least 2-4 GB of L4 cache stacked on the I/O die.ichaya - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
Waiting for this to happen... have been since TR1.nandnandnand - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
Throw in an RDNA 3 chiplet (in Ryzen 6950X/6900X/whatever) for iGPU and machine learning, and things will get really interesting.ichaya - Monday, November 2, 2020 - link
Yep.dotjaz - Saturday, November 7, 2020 - link
That's definitely not happening. You are delusional if you think RDNA3 will appear as iGPU first.At best we can hope the next I/O die to intergrate full VCN/DCN with a few RDNA2 CUs.
dotjaz - Saturday, November 7, 2020 - link
Also doubly delusional if think think RDNA3 is any good for ML. CDNA2 is designed for that.Adding powerful iGPU to Ryzen 9 servers literally no purpose. Nobody will be satisfied with that tiny performance. Guaranteed recipe for instant failure.
The only iGPU that would make sense is a mini iGPU in I/O die for desktop/video decoding OR iGPU coupled with low end CPU for an complete entry level gaming SOC aka APU. Chiplet design almost makes no sense for APU as long as GloFo is in play.