Benchmark Results: Content Creation And Productivity
Our Photoshop and 3ds Max benchmarks readily take advantage of multi-core CPUs. Naturally, then, AMD's FX-4170 again slides right past the Core i3-3220 in both metrics. Again, Intel's Core i5 serves as a reference point for what a true quad-core chip based on Ivy Bridge can do, and really, the FX does impressively well.
FineReader is well-threaded also. However, more on-die resources don't seem to help AMD at all (nor does the higher clock rate). Perhaps there is an issue with branch prediction hampering the Bulldozer module concept. In any case, the FX-4170 loses to a dual-core Core i3-3220, which in turn is decimated by Intel's Core i5-3550.
We know that the latest version of WinZip has optimizations for threading, though we've seen those kick in most aggressively on platforms with OpenCL support (specifically those with AMD graphics). An older version like 15.5 is still largely single-threaded, which hurts the FX. WinRAR and 7-Zip are better able to take advantage each processor's architecture, and we see the FX and Core i3 perform similarly, for the most part.
