Updated Smartphone & GPU Bench DBs Live!
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 24, 2011 12:08 AM EST- Posted in
- Site Updates
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- GPUs
We've been running our public performance database tool, Bench, for a few years now. Bench allows you to have direct access to the performance data we use in our reviews, segmented according to product category. Today we have five major product categories in Bench: CPU, GPU, Smartphone, Mobile and SSDs.
CPU Bench is the longest running without significant changes. You can actually compare Intel's most recently released Sandy Bridge E CPU to an old Core 2 Duo E6550 from four years ago in a number of tests using the tool.
GPU Bench has always posed a more significant challenge. Drivers and test platforms change very frequently, which often precludes us from keeping a running tally of benchmarks similar to what we do on the CPU side. We used our Radeon HD 7970 review as the kicking off point for our brand new PCIe 3.0 testbed for GPUs going forward - a platform we hope to keep in place for at least the next 12 months. While all of this data is already in the 7970 review, if you want to do any head to head comparisons between GPUs you can now do so using our updated GPU Bench 2012 database. The previous version of the database (GPU Bench 2011) is still available.
Similarly, we've finally updated our Smartphone Bench database. Smartphone Bench 2011 features all of the tests and test data we've been using in our most recent smartphone reviews (e.g. Droid RAZR). We opted against calling it Smartphone Bench 2012 because we plan on updating some of the benchmarks in the new year (e.g. you may have seen one of our new battery life tests in our Eee Pad Transformer Prime Follow-up).
We are in the preliminary stages of planning AnandTech's site refresh for 2012, including updates to Bench. If you have any suggestions you'd like to see implemented, please feel free to leave them as comments here. We already have a number of ideas of things we're trying to implement, but your opinions are the most important here so I'm always eager to listen if you're willing to share.
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gevorg - Saturday, December 24, 2011 - link
For the CPU bench, it would be nice to see overclocked versions of -K CPUs. Nothing extreme, but even mid-level stable overclocks would give decent reference points. Most people with -K CPUs that visit this site expect to overclock their CPUs at least somewhat. :)For the Smartphone bench, currently, most smartphones do not show the OS version that was used for the bench. Makes some comparisons pointless.
GPU bench can always benefit from more games.
Anyway, the bench is very good as it is, just throwing out some thoughts. Thank you!
ltcommanderdata - Saturday, December 24, 2011 - link
Just to add to gevorg's comments, for most Smartphone benchmarks the charts are sorted so that the best is on top. However, the battery life charts are reverse sorted with best on the bottom.The GPU 2012 and some of the SSD models are missing the pop-over notes on the test configurations, but I presume those will be added over time. 3DMark Vantage is also filed under DX11 instead of under DX10, although I suppose it might not matter for fill tests.
Given it's popularity, I'd suggest adding Skyrim, especially since the RPG genre doesn't seem to be currently represented in GPU 2012. Seeing it's poor multicore scaling, Skyrim would also make a good CPU benchmark to highlight clock speed and core architecture performance scaling between CPUs. RAGE is obviously the best candidate for the missing OpenGL category in GPU 2012.
WinZip 16.5 is supposed to be OpenCL accelerated when it's released so hopefully you'll be adding that to your CPU and GPU benchmarks. This will probably be the first general purpose GPGPU application that is useful to everyone. It'll be fascinating to see whether closely coupled CPU/IGP like Ivy Bridge and Trinity will be competitive against even high-end discrete GPUs in OpenCL WinZip due to the interconnect bandwidth and latency advantages or whether PCIe 3.0 levels the playing field.
JarredWalton - Saturday, December 24, 2011 - link
Regarding some of the games you suggest benchmarking:Rage just isn't a good benchmark because of the way the engine renders (see: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4970/)
Skyrim and Deus Ex: Human Revolution get tossed into the "not very good games to benchmark" pile as well. They're awesome games (IMO), but relatively poor benchmarks as they mostly bottleneck on the CPU and frankly don't look as good as they should for all the technology they use. (DX11, tessellation, etc. and still mostly CPU bound at 40-50 FPS in areas)
ltcommanderdata - Saturday, December 24, 2011 - link
Great write-up on RAGE. I didn't know about all the benchmarking issues. Perhaps Brink would make a better OpenGL benchmark then? It uses a hybrid OpenGL 3.1/2.1 renderer so it's newer than the id Tech 4 moniker would imply. Certainly, the only modern OpenGL 3+ game I can think of other than RAGE. With Prey 2 still coming, an id Tech 4 comparison still has relevance.Skyrim may still be useful as a CPU benchmark given it's CPU bottleneck. I guess there really aren't many alternatives for a RPG benchmark. Dragon Age II is getting a little old for a 2012 benchmark and Fable III PC didn't seem to be that popular. LA Noire might fit, but I believe it's frame rate capped.
I'm surprised Crysis 2 isn't in GPU 2012. I suppose BF3 has DX11 covered, but Crysis 2 would make a good DX9 stress test. It'd be more graphically intensive than the existing Portal 2 and Starcraft II and allow direct comparison between modern DX11 GPUs and older DX10 GPUs, which is very useful for people trying to decide when too upgrade. Something like BF3, which runs on DX10 GPUs but with effects disabled or with a less accurate substitute wouldn't allow a direct DX11/DX10 raw performance comparison. Might be interesting to throw the ATI X1950XTX, the fastest DX9 GPU I believe, in some of the lowest resolution DX9 benchmarks to illustrate how far we've come in the last 5 years. Portal 2 and Starcraft II supports it and I've heard reports that it works in Crysis 2 even though it's not officially supported.
Brian Klug - Saturday, December 24, 2011 - link
I fixed the battery life sort order :)-Brian
ltcommanderdata - Saturday, December 24, 2011 - link
Thanks.drumlight - Sunday, January 8, 2012 - link
Personally I'd like to see X-Plane 10 for an OpenGL benchmark as it is likely the only game I'll purchase a video card for.It also seems to be one of the only games that bottlenecks the PCIe2 bus so it could be useful in that regard for testing PCIe3.
http://www.x-plane.com/blog/2011/10/whats-this-who...
hardapple - Saturday, December 24, 2011 - link
This is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Thanks for all your hard work. These are wonderful resources.SilthDraeth - Saturday, December 24, 2011 - link
Echoing this. Awesome job guys. I have been coming to this site for 15 years at least, maybe more. Though I can't be 100% sure, and it is still my favorite review site on the net.JKflipflop98 - Saturday, December 24, 2011 - link
Oh sweet jeebus that some sexy data. ung.