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Phenom II and Core i7 scaling in games with HD5970

Uriel

Uriel

Uriel

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http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=869&p=12

Apologies if someone has already posted this. Legionhardware have published their results on performance vs clockspeed for these two CPU architectures with the HD5970.

Results are from 2GHz to 4GHz in 200MHz intervals. The Phenom II benchmarks include the 2 GHz and 4GHz i7 results for reference.

Don't know about you guys but for me, while all the synthetic benchmarks are an interesting reference it's gaming performance that matters. I'll look at Superpi and wPrime as a quick reference to see if my overclock had any benefit. For purchasing decisions I'll always look for gaming performance.

Unfortunately it's average rather than minimum framerates reported so this isn't quite as useful a reference as one might hope. Here's HardOCP's last CPU scaling article for reference: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/05/19/real_world_gameplay_cpu_scaling/. That shows exacly how the framerates fluctuate during gaming.
 
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The Phenom II X4 results were quite different to those recorded when testing with the Core i7 processors, though this was not necessarily a bad thing. When operating at lower clock speeds, the Phenom II X4 did not fair all that well, as we saw a sharp decline in performance. However when clocked at 3.0GHz and beyond, the Phenom II X4 really picked up the pace, and in many cases was able to outclass the Core i7.

In games such as Wolfenstein, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X, BattleForge and Far Cry 2 the Phenom II X4 processors were actually faster when clocked up near 4GHz! This is quite amazing as out of the 9 games tested, the Phenom II X4 series was faster than the Core i7’s in 5 of them. Although the margins were very limited, the Phenom II X4 was found to be faster, and had it just managed to match the Core i7 series with the Radeon HD 5970, we would have been impressed.
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lol :D
 
All the games were GPU limited at those settings so is it really a surprise the outcome was 50/50?

The 2ghz benchmarks are a better reflection of CPU power.
 
Saw both these articles a while back, made for interesting reading. Its all well and good benchmarking a phenom 2 at 4ghz but Judging by the phenom overclocking thread not many can get to 4ghz+ 24/7. Whereas d0 920's can do 4ghz very easily and can easily clear 4.2/4.3ghz on air.
The 2ghz results really tell the story, i7 920 really is a powerhouse and the Phenom's only reel it in once at about 2.8-3ghz. Thats a lot more clockspeed needed for the same performance. Has made me wonder how much voltage my 920 would need to run at 2ghz :)
 
2 GHz isn't really representative though. Who buys an i7 or PII and runs it at 2GHz for gaming?

What the legion hardware article seems to show is that the PII actually overtakes the i7in several games, clock for clock, when you reach higher clockspeeds. As stated I have my doubts that this is true in practice. I think minimum framerates might tell a different story. Additionally, there's the aspect that some of the games are GPU limited.
 
It is the minimum framerates that often don't get shown. The P2's do overtake the 920 in a few games at high clocks (sure there are some that would argue 4ghz is not that high for an i7) but its by 1-3fps which is next to nothing in it. The games the i7 is faster at its considerably faster and more like to have min framerates above 60fps.
 
Uriel said:
2 GHz isn't really representative though. Who buys an i7 or PII and runs it at 2GHz for gaming?
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But when games start using the CPU more the i7 will be less of a bottleneck.

What these benchmarks don't show is the CPU utilization, the i7 will probably be 50% utilised and the Phenom 75% yet both getting the performance, meaning the i7 still has twice as much power to give whereas the Phenom only a quarter.

Also I would've preferred they used a vendor neutral graphics card such as GTX295 SLI, as you don't really know what optimizations may exist when using an ATI graphics card on AMD motherboard.
 
mmj_uk said:
But when games start using the CPU more the i7 will be less of a bottleneck.

What these benchmarks don't show is the CPU utilization, the i7 will probably be 50% utilised and the Phenom 75% yet both getting the performance, meaning the i7 still has twice as much power to give whereas the Phenom only a quarter.

Also I would've preferred they used a vendor neutral graphics card such as GTX295 SLI, as you don't really know what optimizations may exist when using an ATI graphics card on AMD motherboard.
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yea cpu scaling game benchmarks are pointless when they dont tell you the cpu usage.
 
I also don't get why they never OC nb/ht for phenoms, there isn't much diff in performance when jumping from 3.8-4ghz but bumping your HT from 2000 to 2700 certainly gives a lot more.

I wish I had a half decent gpu right now, could put some benchs of my 555 and see how it does with minimum frames.

Anyone wanna lend me theirs 5850/5870 for a few days ? ; )
 
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