Case in Point: The Best CPU Under $300
CPU Intensive Task: 3D Rendering
CPU Intensive Task: 3D Rendering
Next up, we’ll look at two 3D application benchmarks. The freeware renderer POV-RAY (2.70, beta 32), which also allows you to run the test with all CPUs and threads, or just as a single thread. Cinebench 10 breaks out single versus multithreaded scores.
POVRAY sees a 5.2% gain in the All CPU benchmark, but 6% in the single threaded test. That’s slightly better than perfect scaling (if clock speed were the only criteria.) From our past experience, POVRAY sees no real benefit from higher memory bandwidth.
Cinebench, on the other hand, has a real time component as well as a software rendering piece. What’s interesting is that the single CPU score is lower than expected, while the multi-CPU test is higher than expected.
