Higher Clock Speeds, No TLB Issues and Better Pricing: The New Phenom
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 27, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
3D Rendering Performance
3dsmax r9
Our benchmark, as always, is the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 test but for the purpose of this article we only run the CPU rendering tests and not the GPU tests.
The results are reported as render times in seconds and the final CPU composite score is a weighted geometric mean of all of the test scores.
The Phenom X4 9850 is once again within 7% of the Q6600 and it's around 11% cheaper, we'd say AMD has a competitive part here. Looking at the Core 2 Quad Q9300 however, we see that if Intel can get its 45nm availability issues solved AMD would have to respond with even better pricing in order to make the X4 9850 as attractive as it is today.
Cinebench R10
A benchmarking favorite, Cinebench R10 is designed to give us an indication of performance in the Cinema 4D rendering application.
We see more of the same under Cinebench: the Phenom X4 9850 comes close to the Q6600, but the Q9300 comparison isn't nearly as close.
POV-Ray 3.7 Beta 24
POV-Ray is a popular raytracer, also available with a built in benchmark. We used the 3.7 beta which has SMP support and ran the built in multithreaded benchmark.
Under POV-Ray the two quad core Intel solutions are a bit much for Phenom to handle, the performance gap widens to over 25% between the Q6600 and the Phenom X4 9850.
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ap90033 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Amen brother, I had the Athlon 64 when it ruled, but now i have E8400 since it smokes AMD's best...So I guess I am an AMD/Intel Fan BOY!!!
No offense but this artlicle had a very strong slant towards AMD, even though Intel destroys their newest and best with a 1+ year old chip. Dont you find that the least bit odd....? If anyone is sounding like a "Fanboy" I would say it would have to be you Mr. Crusader for AMD. LOL
Dude when you get to where I am you will see, it doesnt matter what the fluff is, get the FACTS and decide with your dollars there... Sheesh...
AssBall - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
I thought it was a very well written article. I didn't get any OMGAMDFTW out of it like you apparently did. Your "Man" would not be up already if AMD wasn't still churning these new procs out. Good luck finding those special Intel prices then.Olaf van der Spek - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
> We get the impression that there are some speed paths that could be optimized on the current B2 and B3 Phenoms that simply aren't because of a very sensible thought process.I'm wondering why those speed paths haven't been fixed before the first launch. Certainly it wasn't good for AMD to only introduce them at low clock frequencies.
Visual - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
It's really disheartening for a "fanboy" like me to see AMD beaten all over the board again.I may very well build a system or two with AMD parts because of the 780G chipset and its great budget video performance, but for a full-blown performance system i'll certainly go with Intel now.
AMD better hurry up with their 45nm tech, its way overdue.
Griswold - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
"AMD better hurry up with their 45nm tech, its way overdue."You're right, Intel has been selling 45nm parts for like a year now... oh wait, no they havent.
If you meant overdue as in they need it to (hopefully) achieve higher clock speeds and lower power consumption in addition to lower production cost, then you got that right.
If they keep their schedule with 45nm, they will have narrowed the gap between process shrinks vs. intel a bit again - which is good. But things like that dont happen overnight.
MoonRocket - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Can anyone identify the case on the 3ghz where are you page?Looks interesting.
AmberClad - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
It looks like the CoolerMaster Stacker 830 to me.dnz - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
We musn't forget how great an overclocker the Q6600 is. My system is running at 3.2GHz (8x400) and I'm using cheap DDR2-800 RAM. The Q9300 may have some advantages but overclocking it is going to require some VERY expensive RAM.Griswold - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
First you'll need an good mobo that can deliver high FSB for these 45nm quads. RAM is secondary (can always use a divider if needed).ui5200 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Maybe this will cause intel to finally release the latest Dual and Quad core chips (oh like the E8400 that's been 'out of stock' for months)? Or is this another paper launch ?