maximumpc.com SEP 2020 MAXIMUM PC 29
AS INTEL CONTINUES to push the
limits of 14nm, and Ryzen prefers to do
its own thing, we feel that overclocking
outside of the world of LN2 is effectively
dead for the majority of enthusiasts. For
that reason OC benchmarks are out of
the window straight away. That’s not to
say we won’t try overclocking, rather that
it’s something we’ll refer to in the copy.
Instead, we will report on what exactly
the maximum clock speed achieved is
at stock for both single and multi-core
performance under load.
For our synthetic tests, Cinebench R20,
HWBOT x265 @ 4K, and HEVC’s H.265
Decode @ 1080p are perfect. These three
tests deal with rendering, encoding, and
decoding. The latter two use different
file formats and resolutions to better
replicate what most professionals are
using in the digital world.
Moving on to our memory tests, and
because memory bandwidth is mostly
attributed to the number of memory
channels supported and memory speed,
we’re going to skip that. Instead, what
does matter is memor y latency, as it gives
us an idea of how the core structure is set
up. AIDA64 Extreme’s Memory Latency
test is perfect for that.
The most interesting tests for
us revolve around power draw and
temperature. For this we’re going to use
Prime95, HWMonitor, and a handy watt
meter to get the results we need. We’ll
run one instance of Prime95’s blend test
and measure the maximum temperature
and wattage pulled over a 10-minute run.
Proving Processor Performance
PROCESSOR BENCHMARKSProduct Name Product Name
Cinebench R20 Single/Multi (Index) 00 / 00 00/00
Max Sustained Single/Multi Clock Speed (MHz) 00 / 00 00/00
HWBOT X265 @ 4K (fps) 00 00
HEVC H.265 Decode 1080p @ 25Mbps (fps) 00 00
AIDA64 Memory Latency (ns) 0.0 0.0
3DMark: Fire Strike @ 1080p (Index) 00 00
Total War: Three Kingdoms @ 1080p (fps) 000 000
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey @ 1080p (fps) 000 000
Adobe Premiere Pro Benchmark @ 4K (m:s) 0:0 0:0
Adobe After Effects Benchmark @ 4K (m:s) 0:0 0:0
Power Draw Prime95 Idle/Load (w) 00/00 00/00
Max Temp Prime95 Idle/Load (C) 00/00 00/00Best scores are in bold. Our test bed consists of ......After that we move on to our real-
world testing for gaming, video-rendering
and editing. We’re running two A A A
titles—Total War: Three Kingdoms,
and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, both at
1080p. Total War has always been a CPU-
dependent title regardless of resolution,
whereas Assassin’s Creed is the opposite,
giving us a good spread as to how valuable
the CPU is in the gaming department.
Then lastly we have our two Adobe
real-world tests. With Premiere we’ll be
rendering out a basic, five-minute video
@ 4K, and then with After Effects we’ll
render a freely available 10-second 4K
intro template, and time both to give us
a good guide as to how these processors
perform under real-world conditions.