CPU Performance: Rendering Tests

Rendering is often a key target for processor workloads, lending itself to a professional environment. It comes in different formats as well, from 3D rendering through rasterization, such as games, or by ray tracing, and invokes the ability of the software to manage meshes, textures, collisions, aliasing, physics (in animations), and discarding unnecessary work. Most renderers offer CPU code paths, while a few use GPUs and select environments use FPGAs or dedicated ASICs. For big studios however, CPUs are still the hardware of choice.

All of our benchmark results can also be found in our benchmark engine, Bench.

Corona 1.3: Performance Render

An advanced performance based renderer for software such as 3ds Max and Cinema 4D, the Corona benchmark renders a generated scene as a standard under its 1.3 software version. Normally the GUI implementation of the benchmark shows the scene being built, and allows the user to upload the result as a ‘time to complete’.

We got in contact with the developer who gave us a command line version of the benchmark that does a direct output of results. Rather than reporting time, we report the average number of rays per second across six runs, as the performance scaling of a result per unit time is typically visually easier to understand.

The Corona benchmark website can be found at https://corona-renderer.com/benchmark

Corona 1.3 Benchmark

 

LuxMark v3.1: LuxRender via Different Code Paths

As stated at the top, there are many different ways to process rendering data: CPU, GPU, Accelerator, and others. On top of that, there are many frameworks and APIs in which to program, depending on how the software will be used. LuxMark, a benchmark developed using the LuxRender engine, offers several different scenes and APIs.

In our test, we run the simple ‘Ball’ scene on both the C++ and OpenCL code paths, but in CPU mode. This scene starts with a rough render and slowly improves the quality over two minutes, giving a final result in what is essentially an average ‘kilorays per second’.

LuxMark v3.1 C++

 

POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing

The Persistence of Vision ray tracing engine is another well-known benchmarking tool, which was in a state of relative hibernation until AMD released its Zen processors, to which suddenly both Intel and AMD were submitting code to the main branch of the open source project. For our test, we use the built-in benchmark for all-cores, called from the command line.

POV-Ray can be downloaded from http://www.povray.org/

POV-Ray 3.7.1 Benchmark

 

CPU Performance: System Tests CPU Performance: Encoding Tests
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  • callmebob - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link

    Haha to myself.

    AMD's B550 slide tricked me for a moment, as it makes it appear as if the CPU only has 20 PCIe lanes total. Which is of course bollocks, Ryzen has 24 PCIe lanes total (20 usable + 4 chipset link).

    Does it mean AMD artifically only allows 16 of the 20 CPU PCIe lanes to be used on B550 motherboards? Really? I am confused whether that is a mistake in the slide, or if that will be the actual reality. I hope, and for AMDs sake, it is the former...
  • DanNeely - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link

    If you're talking about the "The New AMD B550 chipset" slides, the problem is they're poorly designed and you've misread them. On the left side of the 1st one you've got a box with 20 PCIe lanes 16 for the graphics and 4 for the chipset, then below that you've got a box with what is either 4 lanes for a single 4x 4.0 SSD, 2 sets of 2 lanes for a pair of 2x 4.0 SSDs, or a 2x PCIe link and 2 sata ports. Below that in the list of text it has 16 lanes and 8 lanes as the first two items.
  • Makaveli - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link

    The cooling fans on the X570 are silent as I've never heard mine once in the 6 month's I've been using it. I wouldn't worry about it.
  • wr3zzz - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link

    It's less about noise than durability. I've had two MB died on me prematurely in 30+ years and both are due to the little cooling fans dying. Unless you are buying top of the line $1000 MB, those fans are garbage comparing to what's used on GPU and CPU.
  • callmebob - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link

    > Unless you are buying top of the line $1000 MB

    Oi, are you still using Zimbabwe dollaroos? ;-)
    But yeah, other than the creative pricing i am totally with you in regard to those little teeny fans...
  • lightningz71 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link

    If I’m interested in CPUs in this price range, I’m also considering the following units:
    2700
    2600x
    2600
    1600AF
    3600

    While I realize that the intel 10 series isn’t available yet, a low end current 9 series i5 and a higher end 9 series i3 would have also been relevant.

    I realize that this was under a short deadline, but at least a couple of comparisons in that range for maybe a few tests would have helped.

    For my money, the base 2700 is very hard to beat in this price range. It would only ever loose in things that are strictly single core or strictly AVX2, which are very case specific, and would wipe the floor with the 3300x in anything multi core sensitive, judging by the 2600 tests alone. It can usually be had for within $10 of the msrp of the 3300x.

    The 3300x is interesting at $99. The 3100 at $80
  • Holliday75 - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link

    Why does everyone spell lose with two "O's"?
  • Namisecond - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link

    Two not mutually exclusive possibilities:
    1. English is not their native language
    2. They failed at English.
  • callmebob - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link

    ...because they are playing it loose with the spelling of lose.
    Also, Double O's posess a certain elgance, sophistication and general badassery. They are also deadly. Ooh, and keep your girl away from them, especially one particular Double O.
  • Ian Cutress - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link

    When some people say lose, they put all the emphasis on the o, so it sounds longer, so they think one is not enough. Ask them to spell loose straight after, and you get to see some good old gears start clunking into place.

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