CPU Benchmarks

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives in essence an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, memory subtimings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link

3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.

3D Particle Movement: Single Threaded

3D Particle Movement: MultiThreaded

Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: link

Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.

WinRAR 5.01, 2867 files, 1.52 GB

Image Manipulation – FastStone Image Viewer 4.9: link

Similarly to WinRAR, the FastStone test us updated for 2014 to the latest version. FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and thus single threaded performance is often the winner.

FastStone Image Viewer 4.9

Video Conversion – Handbrake v0.9.9: link

Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. The principle today is still the same, primarily as an output for H.264 + AAC/MP3 audio within an MKV container. In our test we use the same videos as in the Xilisoft test, and results are given in frames per second.

HandBrake v0.9.9 LQ Film

HandBrake v0.9.9 2x4K

Rendering – PovRay 3.7: link

The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.

POV-Ray 3.7 Beta RC4

Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link

As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.

7-zip Benchmark

Sunspider 1.0.2

Sunspider 1.0.2

Kraken 1.1

Kraken 1.1

GIGABYTE AM1M-S2H In The Box, System Benchmarks Gaming Benchmarks
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  • FriendlyUser - Sunday, August 17, 2014 - link

    I can think of many, many friends who would be perfectly happy using this kind of system for everyday tasks. This is truly "good enough" computing.
  • Arbie - Monday, August 18, 2014 - link

    Ian's comment on "unreality" resonates with me. In fact I'd feel bad paying only $35 for a motherboard. Just to think what is involved in producing such a thing makes my head spin. The people doing it deserve more than they are getting from this. Even $100 is cheap. Approaching $200 brings it more in line with my personal reality, though it's still pretty amazing - and you get one heck of a board for that.

    It is somehow wonderful that the world can have $35 mobos and the low-cost PCs built on them. I just don't look there.
  • fanofanand - Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - link

    Must be nice living in your world. This guy helps out those less fortunate and all you can do is brag about how you would just throw it in the garbage? You sir, suck at life.
  • fanofanand - Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - link

    That was supposed to be a reply to the dude trashing HardwareDufus, not sure how it landed at the end....either way, I think it's fantastic that he helps out those less fortunate with your "trash"
  • jabber - Wednesday, August 20, 2014 - link

    Well what do you do with tech junk when no one wants it? This is my job, not a hobby. I have a wife, that means you cant hoard stuff. I live in the first world, people don't want it any more. A friend of mine sells old Dell single core PCs. He sells 10 of them for like $90 on a pallet and no one wants them. It's junk.

    I'll say it again...junk.

    Plus if you give old slow computers to people...they expect you to support it. I have a life.

    Quit being so dippy and sentimental and get with stark modern reality. It's just some crappy 12 year old CPUs and PCs. Not like I'm throwing food in the trash in front of staving kids.

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