3D modeling and rendering

Cinebench rendering
Graphics is a classic example of a computing problem that's easily parallelizable, so it's no surprise that we can exploit a multi-core processor with a 3D rendering app. Cinebench is the first of those we'll try, a benchmark based on Maxon's Cinema 4D rendering engine. It's multithreaded and comes with a 64-bit executable. This test runs with just a single thread and then with as many threads as CPU cores (or threads, in CPUs with multiple hardware threads per core) are available.

The Core i7's dominance here is staggering. I won't belabor the point, but do have a look at the single-threaded results, where multiple cores and Hyper-Threading are no help at all. The Core i7-975 Extreme still leads the field by a considerable margin, in part because its Turbo mode mechanism allows it to run at 3.6GHz while rendering with a single thread. We've been talking some about the value trade-off between fewer, faster cores and more, slower cores in the context of the other processors. Thanks to Turbo mode, the Core i7 takes the edge off of that trade-off.

POV-Ray rendering
We're using the latest beta version of POV-Ray 3.7 that includes native multithreading and 64-bit support. Some of the beta 64-bit executables have been quite a bit slower than the 3.6 release, but this should give us a decent look at comparative performance, regardless.

3ds max modeling and rendering

Valve VRAD map compilation
This next test processes a map from Half-Life 2 using Valve's VRAD lighting tool. Valve uses VRAD to pre-compute lighting that goes into games like Half-Life 2.

Some trends emerge from our remaining 3D rendering tests. Among them: of course, having more cores is good. But also look at cache size. The Q8400 and Q9400 shadow one another, with very little daylight between them, and the Phenom II X2 550 barely stays ahead of the Athlon X2 550, with the only difference likely due to its 100MHz clock speed advantage.