Core i7 vs. Penryn vs. Phenom II with HD 4870-X2 & TriFire
Test Configuration
Test Configuration – Intel Hardware Core i7
- Intel Core i7 920 reference 2.66 GHz and overclocked to 3.5 and 3.8 GHz); Turbo (21X multiplier for 3.97 GHz of a single core) is on.
- Gigabyte EX58-UD3R (Intel X58 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire 16x+16x).
- 6 GB OCZ DDR3 PC 18000 Kingston RAM (3×2 GB, tri-channel at PC 16000 speeds; 2×2 GB supplied by Kingston)
- ATi Radeon HD 4870-X2 (2GB, reference clocks 750/900) by VisionTek
- ATi Radeon HD 4870 (1GB, reference clocks 750/900) by ASUS
- Onboard Realtek Audio
- 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drive
- OCZ 850 watt power supply
Test Configuration – Intel Hardware Penryn
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S (engineering sample reference 2.83 GHz and overclocked to 3.5 and 4.0 GHz; supplied by Intel)
- ASUS Rampage Formula (Intel X48 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire 16x+16x).
- 4 GB OCZ DDR2 PC8500 RAM (2×2 GB, dual-channel at PC 8500 speeds)
- ATi Radeon HD 4870-X2 (2GB, reference clocks 750/900) by VisionTek
- ATi Radeon HD 4870 (1GB, reference clocks 750/900) by ASUS
- Onboard Supreme FX-II (ASUS Rampage Formula motherboard daughter-card)
- 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drive
- OCZ 850 watt power supply
Test Configuration – AMD Hardware
- Phenom II 550 X2 at 3.1 GHz and overclocked to 3.5 and 3.9 GHz
- Phenom II 720 X3 at 2.8 GHz and overclocked to 3.5 and 3.9 GHz
- Phenom II 955 X4 at 3.2 GHz and overclocked to 3.5 and 3.9 GHz
- Gigabyte GA-MA790X-UD4P (latest BIOS, PCIe 2.0 specification; CrossFire 8x+8x).
- 4 GB OCZ Fatal1ty DDR2-PC8500 RAM (2×2 GB, dual-channel at PC 8500 speeds)
- ATi Radeon HD 4870-X2 (2GB, reference clocks 750/900) by VisionTek
- ATi Radeon HD 4870 (1 GB, reference clocks 750/900) by ASUS
- Onboard Realtek Audio
- 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives
- Silent Power 600 M, 600 watt power supply (supplied by Cooler Master)
Test Configuration – Software
- ATi Catalyst 9-10; highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver, Catalyst AI set to “Standard”
- Windows Vista 64-bit SP1; very latest updates
- DirectX August 2009.
- All games are patched to their latest versions.
- vsync is off in the control panel and is never set in-game.
- 4xAA enabled in all games and “forced” in Catalyst Control Center for UT3; all in-game settings at “maximum” or “ultra” with 16xAF always applied
- All results show average, minimum and maximum frame rates except as noted.
- Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
- Vista 64, all DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths
Nice thorough testing. I think you should consider adding some GTA4 benchmarks to either this or future testing.
Thank-you. Perhaps in future I will add GTA4.
I have switched from Vista 64 to Win 7 64 and I am definitely adding a few new game benchmarks to my benchmarking suite after I am done with my CES articles. The only one that is certain AtM is L4D to replace Lost Coast.
Oh yeh for your charts you also have the 720 listed for all the AMD processors, when I’m sure you meant to say the 550 and 955. I mean I was able to figure out which is which by the X2, X3, and X4, but others might not.
You’re right and thank-you for pointing it out. It is somewhat funny that we all missed it, if quite embarrassing to me.
As soon as I catch up with my other articles on CES and GF-100 Fermi, I will redo those charts. I had a lot of trouble with the site and HTML errors and after they were fixed, this article got really hurried up for publication so as to be published before I left for CES.
The Phenom II CPUs are always in the same order (as determined by X2, X3, and X4):
550-X2
720-X3
955-X4