3DMark Gets Updated with New CPU Benchmarks To 3DMark for Windows

UL Benchmarks has released a new functional test "3DMark CPU Profile" with 3DMark that can measure CPU performance. It is provided as a free update to "3DMark" and is available in "3DMark Advanced Edition" and "3DMark Professional Edition".

"3DMark CPU Profile" is different from the test that displays only the total score, and the feature is that you can grasp the CPU performance according to the number of threads. Test with the largest available thread first, then measure the performance of 16 threads, 8 threads, 4 threads, 2 threads, and single thread and display the scores individually. The faster the score, the higher the rating. By the way, the maximum thread test is useful for assessing all the potential performance of the CPU, and the 16-thread test is suitable for CPU performance indicators of intensive tasks that benefit from multithreading, such as digital content and 3D rendering. 8-thread tests are said to have the greatest impact on the performance of the latest DirectX 12 games, 4-thread and 2-thread tests affect the frame rate of games for DirectX 9, and single-thread tests are used as indicators of the most basic tasks and game performance.

• Maximum number of threads test: Represents the full potential of your CPU by using all available threads, the ideal test for processors with a high number of cores.
• 16 Thread Test: This is a good way to measure CPU performance in computationally intensive tasks, such as digital content creation and 3D rendering, which benefit from the use of multiple threads.
• 8-wire test: Performance in more modern DX12-based games is usually maximized when using 8-wire.
• 4-wire and 2-wire test: The performances in older games based on DX9 to DX11 are generally seen related to the performance in two to four wires.
• 1-thread test: It is the fundamental measurement to see how fast your processor is.

The 3DMark CPU Profile includes six tests that feature a combination of physics computations and custom simulations. All six tests use the same workload; it is only the amount of threading that changes, with tests limited to using either 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, or the maximum number of available threads.

Each of the six tests produces a score. Scores are comparable across tests. You can compare the 8-thread score with the 4-thread score, for example. A higher score means the CPU performed the work faster.

A hardware monitoring chart shows you how the CPU clock frequency and CPU temperature changed while the tests were running.

How to benchmark and compare CPU performance
The 3DMark CPU Profile shows you how your CPU scores compare with other results from the same processor.

The green bars on the 3DMark CPU Profile result screen show you how your scores compare with the best scores for your CPU. The longer the green bar, the closer your score is to the best result for your CPU model.

The median score, shown by the marker, shows the performance level you should expect for your CPU. In most cases, the median represents performance with stock settings. If your score is below the median, it may indicate a problem with cooling or background processes. Check the hardware monitoring chart to see how the CPU temperature changed during the run.

The distance from the median marker to the end of the bar represents the overclocking potential of the CPU. For overclockers, the 3DMark CPU Profile provides more ways to measure the effects of overclocking and more ways to compete for the highest scores!

Please note that these features are powered by benchmark results from 3DMark users. These insights may be unavailable for some CPU models until enough results are submitted.

Your 3DMark CPU Profile scores should increase up to the number of threads supported by your CPU. In this screenshot from a CPU with 4 cores and 8 threads, you can see that the scores for 8 threads, 16 threads and Max threads are the same within the usual 3% accuracy range for UL benchmarks. For CPUs with SMT, which have more threads than cores, the benefit of having more threads decreases beyond the number of CPU cores.

Six levels of CPU performance
The 3DMark CPU Profile includes six tests. These six levels make it easier to compare the performance of different CPU models by looking at the results from thread levels they have in common.

Max threads
The Max-threads score represents the full performance potential of your CPU when using all available threads. The practical use cases for this score lie outside of gaming in extremely heavy, multithreading workloads such as movie-quality rendering, simulations, and scientific analysis.

16 threads
Computationally intensive tasks such as digital content creation and 3D rendering benefit from more threads, but the 16-threads score is less relevant for estimating practical gaming performance.

8 threads
Modern DirectX 12 games make better use of multithreaded performance beyond 4 cores. The gaming performance of a CPU usually correlates most closely with the 8-threads score. This score also has a high correlation with the 3DMark Time Spy CPU score.

4 threads and 2 threads
Older games developed for DirectX 9 are often bottlenecked by the CPU on modern gaming PCs. The frame rates of popular esports titles, such as DotA 2, League of Legends, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, usually correlate most closely with the 2-threads and 4-threads scores.

1 thread
The 1-thread score is a fundamental measure of the processor's performance. For games and real-world use cases, however, the multithreaded scores are usually a better indicator of practical performance.