Benchmark Results: Web and Synthetic

Here are our results from our web and synthetic tests. A reminder of our systems:

System Overview

µArch

APU

Base /
Turbo MHz

Memory

Channel

HP Elitebook 745 G2

Kaveri

A10 PRO-7350B (19W)

2100 / 3300

8 GB

Dual

HP Elitebook 745 G3

Carrizo

PRO A12-8800B (15W)

2100 / 3400

4 GB

Single

Toshiba Satellite
E45DW-C4210

Carrizo

FX-8800P (15W)

2100 / 3400

8 GB

Single

HP Pavilion
17z-g100

Carrizo

A10-8700P (15W)

1800 / 3200

8 GB

Single

Lenovo Y700

Carrizo

FX-8800P (15W)

2100 / 3400

16 GB

Single

Google Octane 2.0

Lots of factors go into web development, including the tools used and the browser those tools play in. One of the common and widely used benchmarks to judge performance is Google Octane, now in version 2.0. To quote: 'The updated Octane 2.0 benchmark includes four new tests to measure new aspects of JavaScript performance, including garbage collection / compiler latency and asm.js-style JavaScript performance.' We run the test six times and take an average of the scores.

Octane splits hairs between the Kaveri and A10-8700P, but the Toshiba has the higher skin temperature and can turbo for longer than the Elitebook G3.

Kraken mirrors Octane, except this time the A10-8700P gets a jump on the Kaveri.

WebXPRT 2013/2015

WebXPRT aims to be a souped up version of Octane and Kraken, using these tools in real time to display data in photograph enhancement, sorting, stock options, local storage manipulation, graphical enterfaces and even filtering algorithms on scientific datasets. We run the 2013 and 2015 versions of the benchmark.

In both versions of the benchmark, the Kaveri system beats all the 15W Carrizo platforms. It was inevitable that at some point during the benchmarking that those extra four watts of thermal headroom in the chip might allow the CPU to turbo for longer – as WebXPRT is by nature a bursty workload, if it can use this to its advantage then we’ll surely see a regression.

I want to pull out some power numbers a little early here to show what I mean. Here are the two Elitebooks in WebXPRT 2013, whose scores differ by 6%:

These power numbers were taken under the ‘all else equal rule’, so each screen was at the same brightness and almost zero applications requesting run time in the background. Here we see that the Carrizo system is drawing less power on average in idle and load (a common theme), but suffers from higher peak power draw and a much larger average-to-idle change in power (which can be overshadowed by onboard components coming out of sleep). It means we get the very uneasy metric of 1208.7 J of energy consumed for the Kaveri over idle and 1932.8 J of energy consumed for Carrizo, though it does depend on how much idle is truly idle across the whole SoC and platform.

This might be where the performance deficit lies though – in a Carrizo system that boasts lower power at idle and lower power draw on average, in a bursty workload environment it is actually wasting time and power to switch things on and off constantly.

Cinebench 15/11.5

Cinebench is a widely known benchmarking tool for measuring performance relative to MAXON's animation software Cinema 4D. Cinebench has been optimized over a decade and focuses on purely CPU horsepower, meaning if there is a discrepancy in pure throughput characteristics, Cinebench is likely to show that discrepancy. Arguably other software doesn't make use of all the tools available, so the real world relevance might purely be academic, but given our large database of data for Cinebench it seems difficult to ignore a small five minute test. We run the modern version 15 in this test, as well as the older 11.5 due to our back data.

Cinebench shows the spread of performance relating to the microarchitecture advantages of Carrizo compared to Kaveri, as well as the benefits that a 35W part can give over a 15W part. That being said, this spread of results, while perhaps an academic answer to ‘which is the fastest’ is not often seen in the real world.

x264 HD 3.0

The x264 HD 3.0 package we use here is also kept for historic regressional data. The latest version is 5.0.1, and encodes a 1080p video clip into a high quality x264 file. Version 3.0 only performs the same test on a 720p file, and in most circumstances hits its limit on high end processors, but still works well for mainstream and low-end. Also, this version only takes a few minutes, whereas the latest can take over 90 minutes to run.

I think this article provides a pretty delicate and nuanced treatment of chorizo and its place in the market (both potential & actual). There's no doubt that the circumstances demanded it. This was not business as usual and I'm glad Anandtech recognized the need for that additional effort.

We're fooling ourselves if we pretend that any journalistic entity puts the sane amount of effort into every project. We're talking about living, breathing humans, not robots. Reply

I found the language convoluted, verbose, and difficult to read, compared to, say, Anand's straightforward and logical writing:

"Nonetheless, Intel’s product line is a sequence of parts that intersect each other, with low end models equipped with dual core Pentiums and Celerons, stretching into some i3 and i5 territory while still south of $1000. In this mix is Core M, Intel’s 4.5W premium dual core parts found in devices north of $600."

"south of/north of"... can't you just put in "below/above"? And all that "intersecting of parts", can't you just say from the Atom to Pentiums, Celerons, i3's, and i5's....

The whole thing reads like they're paying you to score a high word count. Lots of information to extract here, but it can be 3 pages shorter and take half as long to read.Reply

That is why Anandtech has video adds on their main page - designed for people like you. Who simply lack reading comprehension past 8th grade and find it hard to understand. Just watch watch the video on how to loose weight that auto-plays on the side.

There's no question that Anand had a powerful way of writing that was uniquely simple yet educated you nevertheless. And for a layman that reads this sort of stuff to learn new information, that's very attractive and I kinda miss it (along with Klug).

However, I give Ian a pass because he at least attempted to use other brand of conveying his ideas. In certain sections he used special table-like fitting to separate "parallel" sections/stances so that the rader would be more apt to compare them. So there's at least some effort, though he surely could do better. Reply

fmcjw does have a point, but in all fairness it is much harder to explain techical stuff in layman terms than it is to be long-wordy. Carl Sagan was the master of it on TV, and Anand was excellent at it on paper.Reply

I didn't find anything wrong with the language Ian used, as this is piece is still on a technical level, but can be understood by the layman that knows a bit more than just what the stickers on the outside tell.

To me, the phrase "parts that intersect each other" lays out that there is a myriad of options where configurations overlap, where as saying "from the Atom to Pentiums, Celerons, i3s and i5s" indicates that there is a pricing structure that is related to general CPU performance, which there really isn't when it comes to low-end machines.Reply