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My Q6600 is considerably quicker than my Phenom II 955

Predator

Predator

Predator

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Woking
Having owned my Q6600 for almost two years now, I recently invested in a 955 3.2Ghz Black Edition for a dedicated server to run 2008 R2 DataCenter on for testing new products from my Technet subscription.

Had a quiet day yesterday so decided to do some benchmark testing between the two and was amazed by the results;

(Note: yes I know the clock differences are slightly different, but only marginal)

Q6600 @ (450x8)
Asus Rampage Formula
4GB OCZ 9200 DDR2 RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

AMD 3.2Ghz 955 @ 3.5Ghz (200x17.5)
Asus M4A785TD-M Evo
8GB OCZ Platinum 1600 DDR3 RAM
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Super PI (1M test)
Q6600 15sec
955 19sec

Sandra Utils Lite (Processor Arithmetic)
Q6600
Aggregate Arithmatic Performance 54.3GOPS
Dhrystone ALU 66.27 GIPS
Whetstone iSSE3 42.33 GFLOPS

955
Aggregate Arithmatic Performance 46GOPS
Dhrystone ALU 51.1 GIPS
Whetstone iSSE3 40.73 GFLOPS

I'm hoping someone will be able to explain why there is the noticable difference here and whether there's a simple explaination ie. FSB is higher on the Intel board etc. Seeing as I was considering selling my Intel setup, I'm now ofcourse having second thoughts!



Thanks in advance.
 
Well your Q6000 is clocked 100MHz higher than the Phenom for a start like you say but other than that, it's really just down to the chips architecture. Some programs like Superpi have always run much faster on Intel CPUs than on AMD but I'm certain that there are benchmarks out there that favour AMD.
 
Nothing to unexpected there?

The Q6600 at stock scores about 28.3 on the SSE test and your clocking by you Q6600 1.5* so, so multiple the base result and that'd give 42.45 which is pretty much bang on what you get.

The 955 does 39.8 at stock and you've clocked it by 100Mhz - so (3.5/3.4)*39.8 = 41 ish again pretty much bang on.

Not sure what you where expecting? In fact that's a dice demonstration that the SSE test is linear with respect to overclock
 
Phenom 2 comes into its own with gaming, also it's usually easier to get a Phenom 2 to 3.8-3.9GHz compared to a 65nm quad....and I would say that getting to 4ghz they are equally difficult...but at that clock I think the Phenom 2 would come out slightly ahead.

Untweaked NB speed and ram timings might be affecting your scores as well.
 
Thanks everyone for your comments. Forgot to mention the NB is set to 2200 and the RAM is 7-7-7-24 on the 955 board.

I think what I was really getting at was the fact how good the Q6600 is lasting seeing that I've had it almost 2 years and its still holding its own.

I've read so much about how good the 955 is, but my Q6600 is gonna stay around for a bit longer me thinks.

PS. since my first post, I tweaked the 955 up to 3.6 with only a minor voltage increase, so I completely agree how much easier they are to OC compared to the intel
 
Yeah people underestimate the Q6600 against the new Phenom 2s - partly because AMD has been pretty active at the grass roots level manipulating peoples views... lots of bias or slanted reviews, people on forums, etc.

The 940 for example clock for clock barely matches the Q6600 for gaming in many cases - despite a number of reviews to the contary... they only win stock clock for stock and anyone who runs a core 2 at stock is an idiot :P

In a number of SLI tests I've seen intel CPUs putting up massively higher numbers tho this might be due to problems with AMD SLI boards, etc.
 
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I've seen some tests that put the Phenom 2 slightly ahead at higher resolutions in gaming, whether this has to do with chipset or CPU or somethign else is another thing.

But yes, personally I'm totally unimpressed by the Phenom 2. Which is why I'll be moving to a Q9400 or Q9550 when I get some more funds. Yorkfields can easily get over 4ghz on air cooling while outperforming the Phenom2 clock for clock.
 
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Thing is it's pretty much the same architecture that was used all throughout the Athlon era, and while it was pretty damn good in it's day it's time for a change. Still, they must have got something right.

Time to stop thinking 'if it ain't broken don't fix it' and start thinking 'if it ain't broken then start again'.
 
Q6600 is still an awesome CPU though, that's why it's still holding its own.
The synthetic tests we've seen in here aren't very good comparisons though.
 
Hasn't the consensus been for a while that phenom 2 marks amd finally catching up with the intel core 2 range? I'm a bit surprised that a 65nm quad beats it, would have hoped it would match the q9550 at equal clocks. Oh well.

I'm curious about the argument that intel is always better than amd at pure calculation, and amd takes the lead in other things. All the processor does is calculation, so I fail see why this is good for amd.
 
if it was stock vs stock maybe but if were talking overclocked to the same it would probably be about the same but the p2 might edge a little on modern games.

the only route i would go is i7 if not just wait.
 
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Not clock for clock it doesn't... take the first graph there...

955 @ 3.2gig = 46fps
Q6600 @ 2.4gig = 39fps

Bump the Q6600 upto 3.2gig (~33% increase) (which it will do easy even on a nForce board) and your looking at ~50-51fps... so clock for clock its actually faster. (If you check the numbers for the other CPUs you can see this scaling is close to 1:1 fps/mhz).
 
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the good points of a 955 is youll get it to higher clock easier 3.8-3.9 ware as not many hardly any q6600 owners will get anywhere near that. add in the support for "newer"cpus to come 6 core and maybe higher clocked versions then it is not bad.


if you already own a decent quad then unless you can ofload it for a very reasonable price and pay not much difference it isnt worth swopping yet or for any platform (i5/i7/am3) maybe six months at least just for a split second here or there or few frames per sec.
 
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~>Dg<~ said:
the good points of a 955 is youll get it to higher clock easier 3.8-3.9 ware as not many hardly any q6600 owners will get anywhere near that. add in the support for "newer"cpus to come 6 core and maybe higher clocked versions then it is not bad.


if you already own a decent quad then unless you can ofload it for a very reasonable price and pay not much difference it isnt worth swopping yet or for any platform (i5/i7/am3) maybe six months at least just for a split second here or there or few frames per sec.
Click to expand...

I'd agree the 955 is easier to get to ~3.8gig but not many run much above that... Q6600 on most boards (other than nForce boards or really old ones like 965) will generally do 3.6-3.8gig with a few hitting 4gig... but its a lot harder to get above 3.6gig... but they are old CPUs now... and still clock for clock faster in most cases despite what the reviews appear to show... if we take the benchmarks from that link above as an example they are faster enough clock for clock to make up for the 100-200MHz or so difference in top end OCing.

LinktoInsanity said:
:mad:
Click to expand...

Maybe being a bit harsh - but most of the core 2 line will do a +25% overclock easy without having to touch the voltages on 99% of motherboards out there... and a lot are good for ~50% overclocks with only minor voltage adjustment.
 
Rroff said:
Maybe being a bit harsh - but most of the core 2 line will do a +25% overclock easy without having to touch the voltages on 99% of motherboards out there... and a lot are good for ~50% overclocks with only minor voltage adjustment.
Click to expand...

My stock heatsink just won't clip in properly with the 4th pin so I daren't run it higher than stock. It reaches 57-59 when on load, and I'm sure my previous E8400 (also on stock HSF) ran cooler and it was a C0 aswell!
 
Ick I hate the stock cooler pins - the bottom always bends apart and doesn't keep it firm :(

My next case is deff. gonna have to be one with the window in the motherboard tray so I can easily bolt on a cooler.
 
Predator.

Your results are not surprising.
Clock for Clock the core 2's are faster than P2's.
This is the reason so many reviews shy away from clock for clock comparisons.

We as enthusiasts know we can clock the q6000's up to 3Ghz + easily and can draw our own conclusions.

Most PC's though aren't overclocked and the higher stock clock speeds of the P2's keeps them in the game.

Also the disparity in performance between the Core 2 and the P2 is most marked in the area your benchmarks tested, number crunching.
 
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