CrossFireX and the Phenom II X4 940 – Competitive or Not?
by Gary Key on February 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Left 4 Dead
This game is a blast and addictive to boot - provided you like killing hundreds of zombies while trying to take care of your teammates and sustaining high blood pressure rates. What we really like about Source engine games is their ability to run well on variety of systems. We enable all options, set AA to 2x and AF to 8x, and play back a custom timedemo of a complete game session from the Runway chapter within the Dead Air campaign.
This title also favors the Intel platforms. When comparing the Q9550 to the Phenom II 940 at 1680x1050 it holds a 7% average frame rate advantage in single card mode, 5% in Crossfire, and 20% in the overclocked settings even though the Q9550 only has a 7% clock speed advantage. Minimum frame rates for the Phenom II remain very competitive against the Q9550 until the processors are overclocked, but a 101fps minimum is still outstanding. The i7 continues to dominate the other two solutions in benchmark results.
Adding a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 15% and minimum frame rates by 18% for the Phenom II. The Intel Q9550 has an improvement of 13% in average frame rates and 30% in minimum frame rates. The Core i7 average frame rates improve by 16% and minimum rates increase 31%. Overclocking our processors resulted in an 17%~34% average improvement in average frame rates with the Core i7 benefiting the most.
No surprises here; the 1920x1200 results follow the pattern set at 1680x1050. All three solutions bunch together in the single card results and then spread out as we introduce CrossFire and overclocking into our equation. The Q9550 holds a 10% advantage over the Phenom II in CrossFire and 26% when overclocked. Minimum frame rates continue to be very good for the Phenom II in single card and CrossFire operation.
The Q9550 scores slightly better than the i7 in the single card and CrossFire mode as its 6% advantage in clock speeds (or perhaps the larger L2 cache) comes into play as we start to become more GPU limited at this resolution. The Phenom II has a 6% clock speed advantage over the Q9550 and a 12% advantage over the i7 that leads us to believe platform efficiency is a problem or the game engine optimizations favor Intel. We believe it is a combination of both.
Adding a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 13% and minimum frame rates by 42% for the Phenom II. The Intel Q9550 has an improvement of 24% in average frame rates and 40% in minimum frame rates. The Core i7 average frame rates improve by 24% and minimum rates increase 48%. Overclocking our processors resulted in a 16%~34% average improvement in average frame rates with the Core i7 benefiting the greatest.
Our game play experiences revealed no differences between the three platforms. Although the frame rates were lower with the Phenom II, it just did not matter in this game as minimum frame rates were at 60fps or higher in our tests.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
68 Comments
View All Comments
Myrandex - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
I agree that you would probably not see a difference at all, but you can get 6GB of Ram in a PhenomII system and still keep your Dual Channel Goodness:2 x 2GB & 2 x 1GB = 6GB in all 4 slots, operating at dual channel mode.
Jason
Goty - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
This is true, but then you run into the problems AMD's IMCs have when you populate all four DIMM slots.monovillage - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
Good review and thanks for doing the work, i look forward to seeing the power numbers. With 2 very similarly priced platforms and the premium (but not out of reach i7 920) I was glad to see the P2 940 give a good account of itself.duploxxx - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
not sure how you guys whant to run a review, but perhaps start a comparing review with competing price configurations.q9400 = p2 940 in price, so it's useless to throw in a q9550, it's 20% more expensive. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi...43%20401...
then trying to memic a same price range by choosing a very expensive motherboard while a same spec mobo kosts about 50$ less.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
so there is already a 10% price difference.
not to mention that a q9400 also has the same hard time getting above that 4GHZ border and is already shown in many reviews including yours that this was the marketing target against p2 940 then why the hell testing a q9550.
I call this review total crap and waste of time for readers and reviewers.
Just remove the first page on your review, with this kind of review you just prooven that you are not open for the best whoever it provides.
CPUGuy - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
Unless I misunderstand their intent, it appears to me that they clearly showed the PII 940 is better then a Q9550.Erif - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
I think the purpose of this test is to see if AMD's latest processors are fast enough for higher-end crossfire setups or not.As for comparing the performance of specific CPUs and their prices- Anandtech did that in their Phenom II review back in January 8 review.
Goty - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
If you're going to try and tear down someone else's article, you might want to check your spelling so you don't come off as a complete idiot.duploxxx - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
wow nice post, your added value is very high. Lets try some writing here and start with several languages, french, dutch, german, english, let's see how good you are at foreign languages.The fact remains that the platform is not balanced on price and marketing.
Spoelie - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
Total platform price was the same. The motherboard you linked1) was an open box, i.e. second-hand
2) had the 790GX chipset, while the motherboard in the review was the FX version. The feature set of this last one is more suited to running crossfire. Of course, you would have known that from actually reading the review instead of glancing at it.
In fact, it's a rather interesting comparison for the purpose: cpu with a little more grunt (Q9550) paired with a mainstream chipset (P45) compared to a cheaper cpu (940) paired with an enthusiast chipset (FX).
I presume the FX was able to provide a nice boost.
duploxxx - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
FX does not boost at all, unless you require the pci-e 2.0 16x bandwith which is already shown in normal CF setups that it is not required.here is another one.... board cost 100$ and although it is with the sb600, there is nothing wrong with it, the P45 is also a midrange board.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...