Core i7 vs. Penryn vs. Phenom II with HD 4870-X2 & TriFire
3DMark06
3DMark06 still remains the number one utility used for a system benchmark. We find that it is mostly useful for tracking changes within a single system. There are four “mini-games” that it uses for benchmarking graphics, as well as two CPU tests. The scores are weighed and added together to give an overall “score” and there is a further frame rate breakdown possible with these mini-games that we are charting for you.
Above is a scene from 3DMark06. These tests will still give your PC a real workout even though its default resolution is only 1280×1024. Here are the results of our 3DMark06 benchmark comparison using the benchmark at its default settings:
We can see that adding a HD 4870 to the HD4870-X2 in CrossFire-X3 does not make a lot of difference over just using the X2. And, if the synthetics are anything to go by, Core i7 “wins” by a significant margin. Now let’s check the mini-games which are used to benchmark graphics performance:
Here we can see that HD 4870 Tri-Fire does not scale too well over CrossFire. In fact, in quite a few of the individual runs, the Tri-Fire configuration is slower. This is often a function of drivers and you will see successive versions of Catalyst address them with varying success as performance trades back and forth. However, practically, as though we were ‘playing’ the 3DMark06 mini-games, we note the frame rate rankings and note that all five of our CPUs scale with their core clock increase. If they were games, they would all be quite playable and they would all give satisfactory performance. So, let’s move on to our second synthetic benchmark, Vantage.
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