Intel Core i7-5775C Review: More Than Meets the Eye

CPU Benchmarks

The AIDA64 suite has various benchmarks for CPU, FPU and memory testing: CPU Queen is an integer benchmark that tests branch prediction and misprediction penalties. CPU PhotoWorxx tests the SIMD integer arithmetic execution units of the CPU and the memory subsystem. CPU ZLib is a compression benchmark that tests the combined CPU and memory performance. CPU AES is a multi-core encryption benchmark that uses Advanced Encryption Standard data encryption. CPU Hash is an integer benchmark that measures performance using SHA1 hashing algorithm.

FPUJulia measures single precision FP, FPU Mandel measures double precision FP, FPUSinJulia measures extended precision FP while FPUVP8 is a video compression test utilizing the FPUJulia fractal module. Despite the lower clock speed at stock, the i7-5775C pulls ahead in CPU hash and Photoworx and matches the CPU Z-lib performance of a stock i7-4770K. These results are to be taken with some reservations as AIDA64’s i7-5775C “Broadwell” support is still in beta so these results will be updated at a later time when a newer version of the software comes out.

MAXON’s Cinebench R15 runs two sets of benchmarks, a processor test for the CPU and an OpenGL test for the graphics cards. The 3D rendering workload is based on Maxon’s Cinema 4D, a program utilized by movie production studios world wide for special effects so it is a semi-synthetic test closer to real-world 3D graphics benchmarking. Not surprisingly, with the i7-5775C’s stronger Iris Pro graphics, it pulls ahead of the i7-4770K in OpenGL. This level of performance also leap frogs ahead of the A10-7850K’s R7 graphics by close to 10 points. Single core performance is close but multi-core leaves a considerable gap between the i7-4770K and the i7-5775C at stock.

Cache and Memory Benchmarks

Aside from CPU and FPU benchmarks, AIDA64 also has a cache and memory benchmark built-in. Due to differences in architecture of course, the AMD APU only has an L1 and L2 cache while the i7-5775C is the only one with an “L4” cache which refers to its pool of eDRAM that is not available in the previous generation Haswell i7-4770K processor.

Multimedia, Compression and Semi-Synthetic Benchmarks

x264 is a popular free software library for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. x264 FHD measures how efficient a system is in encoding H.264 video and produces results in frames-per-second. H.265/HEVC video encoding is the future of video able to compress significantly larger resolution videos including 4K and make streaming feasible. The downside is that hardware support is still few and far between so processing requirement is steeper than current H.264/AVC standards. x.265 is an open-source implementation of the H.265 standard and x.265 HD benchmark tests the CPU’s ability to process an HEVC video. This is purely processing power benchmark and the i7-5775C manages to stay close to the i7-4770K despite the lower clock speed. It will be interesting to see the clock-for-clock comparison later.

Handbrake is free open-source video transcoder that can convert various video file formats to compatible video files for other typical media viewing applications such as in an iPhone or Android tablet. Blender Foundation’s open movie Sintel video, a 1GB 1080p H.264 5.1 surround audio MKV file was used converted to the built-in iPod Preset (5G Support), then manually timed. The results are in seconds and the lower number is the better result.

WinRAR is a very popular compression program and has a built-in multi-threaded benchmark. The new Broadwell i7-5775C clearly pulls ahead here in compression and more than makes up for the lower multi-core performance in the Cinebench CPU rendering benchmark.

Other than the OpenGL test in the Cinebench R15 benchmark, PCMark 8 is the only program in our CPU test suite that includes the GPU for benchmarking since it is a semi-synthetic measuring program that simulates typical home, work or creative authoring related workloads including web browsing, gaming, photo editing, video chat and productivity. Like Futuremark’s 3DMark, a numerical score is generated from the combination of semi-synthetic tests. The score reflects the performance of the entire system (including GPU and SSD performance) and how well it performs the tasks relative to other PCs. Not surprisingly, the creativity score shot through with the i7-5775C compared to the i7-4770K due to strong graphics performance. Despite the A10-7850K’s strong Radeon R7 GPU, scores are a lot lower due the hampered CPU processing power seen in the benchmarks previously.