High Performance Gaming on a Budget: Athlon II vs. Phenom II vs. Q9550S
Test Configuration
Test Configuration – Intel Hardware
- Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S (engineering sample reference 2.83 GHz and overclocked to 3.1 and 4.0 GHz)
- 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
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 (1GB, reference clocks) by BFG Tech
- Onboard SupremeFX-II (ASUS Rampage Formula motherboard daughter-card)
- 2 – 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives
- OCZ 850 watt power supply
Test Configuration – AMD Hardware
- Athlon II 250 X2 at 3.0 and 3.915 GHz (supplied by AMD) – Please note that this CPU was only tested with 4870-X2; not with GTX 280.
- Phenom II 550 X2 at 3.1 and 3.896 GHz
- Phenom II 720 at 2.8 and 3.486 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
- Nvidia GeForce GTX280 (1GB, reference clocks) by BFG Tech
- Onboard Realtek Audio
- 2 – 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 hard drives
- Cooler Master Silent Power 600 M, 600 watt power supply
Test Configuration – Software
- ATi Catalyst 9-6; highest quality mip-mapping set in the driver, Catalyst AI set to “Standard”
- GeForce 186.18; high quality filtering; optimizations off and LOD clamp enabled
- Windows Vista 64-bit SP1; very latest updates
- DirectX March 2008.
- 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
This review needs to be updated regarding ET:QW.
The results of the Phenom II’s frame rates were evidently overstated. We cannot go back in time to find out exactly why; however, when we set up the older drivers on a new install, the results are very
similar to what we are posting in our latest review:
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/?p=13034&page=12
My apologies for my error. Normally they would be caught with the very next driver testing.
Mark Poppin
November 22, 2009
It should be Athlon II X3 vs Phenom II X2, since they close in value
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