Performance Meets Value – Core i7 vs. Penryn vs. Phenom II

by · November 21, 2009

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4 Responses

  1. bimmerboy79 says:
    November 22, 2009 at 10:30 pm

    very thorough and informative, i glanced over it but i will read it later. looking at the graphs and conclusion good stuff look forward to seeing more cpu’s put to the test.

  2. BFG10K says:
    November 25, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    The almost constant flat-lining from the different processors yet again proves the GPU is by far the most important factor for gaming.

  3. k00giking says:
    December 12, 2009 at 11:25 pm

    I agree that the cpu bottlenecks that people talk about so much are very very overblown.

    But they still do matter in gaming. Of course not as much as a video card but they are still very important.
    The games you tested are older games. They don’t take use of more than 2 cores decently.

    Just about every recent release however is coded to use more than 4 cores. And there are some very LARGE performance differences even when playing at good resolutions and high settings. Recent Source games, Capcom games will make use of more cores because the engines they use have been updated for multi core support.

    I’m going to show a couple of examples.

    Reisdent Evil 5
    http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,690488/Processor-benchmarks-with-Resident-Evil-5-Core-i7-reigns-Phenom-strong-Update-Lynnfield-results/Practice/

    A 2.4GHz Q6600 beats a 3.0GHz e8400

    The 3.1GHz Phenom II X2 550 gets 54.2FPS and the Phenom II X4 945 @ 3.0GHz gets 81.5

    The settings were at 1680 x 1050 all settings max.

    DiRt 2

    http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,700780/Dirt-2-CPU-benchmarks-with-DirectX-9-and-DirectX-11-Phenom-doing-well-quad-cores-rule/Practice/

    Max Details @ 1680 x 1050

    62% increases for Quad Cores over Dual Cores

    e8400 @ 3.0GHz gets 37FPS

    Q9650 @ 3.0GHz gets 63FPS

    Dragon Age Origins

    http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,698761/Dragon-Age-Origins-CPU-benchmarks-75-percent-boost-for-quad-cores/Practice/

    e6600 @ 2.4GHz gets 28FPS vs the Q6600 @ 2.4GHz that gets almost double the fps at 49FPS.

    The infamous Grand Theft Auto 4

    http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,669595/GTA-4-PC-CPU-benchmark-review-with-13-processors/Reviews/?page=2

    Prototype

    http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,688240/Prototype-CPU-Benchmarks-System-Requirements-and-Screenshots/Practice/

    Left 4 Dead 2

    http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,699110/Left-4-Dead-2-CPU-benchmarks-Phenom-II-very-strong/Practice/

    ARMA 2

    http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,687620/ArmA-2-tested-Benchmarks-with-18-CPUs/Practice/

    Batman Arkham Asylum

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/batman-arkham-asylum,2465-9.html

    All of these games has been tested with high settings at decent and very common gamer resolutions like 1680 x 1050.

    There are lots and lots more but I don’t feel like posting any more links. I think that I’m able to make show my point with these games. Just about every recent release comes with great quad core support. I’d be more surprised if a recent game didn’t come out with quad core support.

  4. apoppin says:
    December 13, 2009 at 12:02 am

    Thanks for you comments. Let’s look, one at a time at each of your examples:

    RE5, they do not test with AA or AF and only at 16×10. Of course, the bottleneck is shifted to the CPU.

    Dirt 2, same issues. I test everything with 4xAA/16xAF. The author agrees with me:
    ” In most systems, especially with DirectX 11, the graphics card is the limiting factor. ”

    Prototype. Ph II 940-X4 is barely 3 FPS behind i7. Watch that difference disappear at 19×12 and with faster clocks.

    L4D. As with with all Source engine games, the practical difference is minimal. Again, they do not test with AA/AF – which is silly.

    ARMA2, I also test; except that I use the highest details and with different results.

    Batman AA. Here is what THG concludes:
    “We now see that a dual-core Phenom II CPU at 2.5 GHz can handle a minimum frame rate of over 40 FPS. This means that even a sub-$100 CPU should be able to deliver excellent performance with Batman: Arkham Asylum.” Dropping the CPU core speed to 2.0 GHz; why don’t they go to 1 GHz to make a point?

    GTA4. They test at 10×12. Ridiculous. Enough said.

    You may like Part 2 of my review. It is greatly expanded to include the same 3 CPUs and also now with Ph II 550 X2 and Ph II 955 X4. I am also now testing with HD 4870-X2 and HD 4870-X3 TriFire to up the graphics ante.

    It takes me a few weeks to run over 1,000 benchmarks on 17 games for 5 CPUs at three clock speeds and at two resolutions for my upcoming article. –Look for it December 21st.

    My test games are certainly not old. However, look for me to add Dragon’s Age: Origins, Left4Dead, Wolfenstein, Borderlands, Dirt2, and CoD MW2 in the coming weeks.

    Quad core is becoming more useful for brand new games. Eventually it will be necessary. But not yet.

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