I7 920 vs Phenom II 965 with an ATI 5870.(Finally!)

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No, but this entire thread is about the i7 supposedly 'destroying' a Phenom II in gaming.

That just didn't happen, here or anywhere else. In non-gaming stuff? I dont really care tbh, but sure the i7 is better overall. Once again I'm not convinced it's so much better that it's worth the extra cost...but in gaming I'm *convinced* the i7 is not worth the extra premium.

Threads like this just reinforce my view that people simply do not look hard enough at the facts, and are far too willing to believe what they are being spoon-fed. What we have here is a prime example of a review suggesting the i7 as being much better than it really is in comparison to the Phenom II.

I've proven it using *their* figures - there is almost no discernable difference at all between both platforms in gaming. Nobody would be able to tell the blindest difference while playing any of these games on either platform.
 
Btw - If both were overclocked to say 3.8ghz?

The i7 would have an even bigger lead on Cod4 and FC2 (which nobody would be able to see). The end fps total would hardly be noticable in the other 2 games - maybe 1-2fps more in favour of the i7. That also would be pretty much unnoticable.
 
The only reason the i7 doesn't destroy the Phenom II in gaming is because of GPU bottleneck. Once GPUs get better you'll see Phenom II getting the hurt from i7. Especially considering the i7 has a 50%+ OC headroom compared to Phenom IIs 20-30% :).

I do agree Phenom II is better bang for buck, for now, but not when we start seeing some 5870 tri/quad setups me thinks.



I wouldn't call it superior... more like... 'good enough'.
 



Exactly my point. Thank you! When the video cards become more powerfull, they will need a more powerfull cpu to drive them. People talk about the price difference of going to an i7 as opposed to the phenom setup. That's BS IMO. If you want to get more potential out of a high end system using crossfire/SLI then The i7 would be the best choice. We're not talking about entry level gaming machines here, we're talking about the potential bottlenecks that could come from a CPU with all these "new" high end GPU's that are out, or coming soon. I don't know about the rest of you, but I want the cpu that will drive the power of my GPU/GPUs the most, and crossfire just so happens to be part of my upgrade path. If The phenom II 955/965 will hold me back when that time comes then I will need to look into another upgrade, most likely setting me back more than the original 130$ surplus I could spend on an current i7 setup as opposed to a current Phenom II setup.

PS: About the clockspeed differences in the link. I thought this was an enthusist/overclocking forum for the most part. Am I wrong? I thought that having similar clockspeeds would represent a more fair comparison here. Thats why I made the statement that I(me personally) thought that at the same clockspeed the i7 would dominate the Phenom II, with 5800/GT300 series cards, and I still stand by that. Especially when crossfire/SLI are introduced into the equation.
 




/thread
 


Well why not find benchmarks proving that? These benchmarks that were supposedly proof that i7 'dominates' phenom II just turned out to be nothing of the sort.

How do you explain the Phenom II winning in any game? If the i7 was so much better it should always be better right?

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3640&p=3

Honestly, the differences between these cpu's is so minimal that you'd be a lot better off buying the cheapest one for gaming. If you do a lot of rendering and video work? Get an i7.
 



Ok what about the future? When I do a build, I am building so that my PC will still be good to me in 2-3 years. Not just for the games at this moment. So if COD gives me over 60 fps that's fine, but if when Dirt2 comes out I get 35 fps, and then next year a game comes out that gives me less again. Then I look at reviews using the same GPU I have with the i7 as opposed to my PH II 955/965 and I see that "IF" I had bought an i7 I would of had an extra 15-20 fps. So then I'm back to the upgrade shop again, spending more money on another CPU to get me through for another year.

This is why we "NEED" an article showing any possible drawbacks if there are any. I dont want to waste money on a new CPU, until I have some evidence that the choice I make is the right one. With last gens GPUs I would agree with what you are saying, but now that the bottleneck is switching to the CPU again, it would be nice to know what will give me the most performance in the long run. Not just for the current games, on last gen GPUs.

@Cryslayer80. I f you are doubting that I actually own AMD/ATI hardware. Here is a link: http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=680572 This thread was started months ago, and if you read down through all the posts you will see that I have always had AMD hardware. In my first Build I used a 3800+, then I went to the X2 4800+, then to the X2 6400+, and now to the PH II x3 710. My Video cards were x-800, then the x1650 Pro(I know stupid upgrade), then the 1950 GT, and then to the 2 x 3870(would of been 2 x 8800gt, but my mobo was crossfire). Next will be a HD5850, then a new CPU(not sure what one yet, I'm at a crossroad), and then a second HD5850 when the prices drop. Just waiting for a full review comparing Crossfire and SLI on the PH II vs. the I7 at THE SAME CLOCKSPEED since I do intend to overclock whatever I get. I could care less about the stock speeds.
 


Some here are enthusiasts/overclockers. Most are not, in my opinion. But anyway, there's room for both :)



You're right, if you want the most powerfull gaming machine, you should buy Intel. It's going to be more expensive but you get what you pay for. Though you need atleast 2 GPUs to notice any difference. Even then the difference is limited to most demanding titles I think. There's no difference for actual gameplay when you average 100 frames/second against 80. Like one poster said AMD is good enough. For me the most cost effective solution is to lower the game settings if a game works poorly. Though until now I haven't needed that with 720BE + Radeon 4850 both running at stock speeds for the games I play.

But I 100% agree with you: We do need reviews that show any drawbacks. Informed consumer is a smarter consumer.
 
Ok try this :-

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=102&p2=99

965 BE vs an i7 965 EE. With both as close together on clocks as is possible without overclocking, the results are as follows.

Fallout 3 Phenom II - 87.7 fps
Fallout 3 I7 965 EE - 89.9 fps

Left4Dead Phenom II - 126.1 fps
Left4Dead i7 965 EE - 132.7 fps

FarCry2 Phenom II - 53 fps
FarCry2 i7 965 EE - 75.8 fps

Crysis Warhead Phenom II - 81.4 fps
Crysis Warhead i7 965 EE - 87 fps.

Only Farcry 2 shows any appreciable gain, however the reason for that is anand bench using the benchmarking tool and it has always hugely favoured intel over AMD. In fact, the farcry 2 benchmarking tool is plastered with the intel logo...

Don't forget - this i7 965 EE is probably running even higher on clock speed than the 965 BE because of turbo.

So, ask yourself honestly - if both these cpu's were at 3.8ghz, do you really believe the story would be much different? Except for the farcry 2 bench, the i7 EE at *faster clock speed* never beats the 965 BE by more than 10%.
 
What about crossfire/Sli? That is my main concern with the 5800 series, and the GT300 series. Having a strong enough CPU to push them for a few years, without possibly needing an in between upgrade. Then what happens to that 130$ savings?
 
I dont believe any cpu you buy now will really be enough in 2 years time. Good enough for most people yes, but not so good that you won't be looking to upgrade again.

Let's say you save $130 or so by buying the Phenom II. Sell the 965 BE in 6 months time and buy a 6-core Thuban. $130 + whatever you get for the 965 BE will probably be enough to get you a 6-core, and Thuban will be faster than any desktop cpu currently available.

Buying an i7 920 for higher cost now when you can get a cheaper Phenom (I wouldnt buy the 965 BE btw, just get a 945 or 955 BE and overclock it) and use the cash you saved to buy a Thuban doesn't make a whole lot of sense. 9 months ago fair enough, now the i7 920 just looks overpriced because we know faster cpu's are coming.

It's all about price performance and no matter how hard you look you will not find any intel winning on price/performance. Buying intel is about being at the top and paying for it - unless you are very well off chances are you cannot afford to do that constantly.

If you want to remain near the top on a constant level (like myself, I have two pc's that I need to keep very close together in performance), the easy and cheapest way is going AMD. I could be using an i7 right now, but all that would be is a constant drain trying to keep up at the top. If I want faster than i7 I'll buy Thuban in 6 months too. Will Thuban be faster than i9? Probably not, but it'll be cheaper I guarantee that.
 
Hmm, I'd take that $130 price difference with a large grain of salt, since I live near a Microcenter and they usually have the i920 on sale for $200. That's over half the price difference right there. And since the i920 is being discontinued in favor of the 2.8GHz i930 early next year, you can bet the etailers will be discounting the i920's to clear out inventory.

Another point - you don't have to populate a 1366 board with 3 banks of memory - it'll run on just one or two banks, although it won't be in tri-channel mode without all 3 banks being populated. So yes a better comparison would have been an equal amount of similar memory, esp. since in a gaming scenario, tri-channel has not shown any significant benefit.
 
Yes the $130 difference looks a bit off to me.

However, it's probably more if doing what sincreater is looking to do and overclock both chips to 3.8ghz. For that all he needs do is get a 945 or 955 BE, that is at least a saving of what $60 or so compared to an i7 on the chip alone.
 
Why is everybody avoiding the SLI/Crossfire issue? lol. Could it be that no one has concrete evidence of what will happen with each of the CPU's in question when it comes to the latest video cards. I think we need a write up of some sort, to settle this. C'mon we need articles about stuff like this, not write ups on how good/bad your old dvd drive is. :pt1cable:
 
It's probably because anyone buying an AMD system would not get 4x 5870's (or over 1k worth of video cards) which defeats the purpose of an article....

Even most people with an i7 would not consider 4x 5870's

And when both CPU's are at 4.0ghz on x2 CF with 5850's/5870's, both CPU's probably still won't bottleneck the graphics cards.
 


Dude, it's not just hardware that's changing, it's software. The CPU is not becoming the bottleneck you make it out to be(of course, it's still possible for a CPU to be a bottleneck, but we're talking about the high end CPU's here, not the low end ones).Over the next few years, parallel programming will become more and more common. When given multiple cores, a multithreaded application will be faster than a single threaded one. You keep saying the CPU's should be compared at the same clock speed, but that's not looking at the big picture. Clock speed isn't what it used to be. I am ALLOWED to say a stock i7 920 vs a stock 965 BE is a fair comparison, and that overclocking the i7 920 to the same frequency as the 965 BE isn't. It's like if I was comparing a Honda Civic to a semi-truck in a drag race, and then turn around saying hahaha the semi got killed by a Civic. Sure the semi has a lot more power, but it also weighs a heck of a lot more.

Again, you gotta look at the BIG picture. What it comes down to is the end user's demands. If I get 150 fps, and you get 200 fps, the 33% extra fps you get means nothing to me because I can't tell the difference. To me, it's the same. Oh wait, I have to consider the future you say? Dude, honestly, we're talking about current high end CPU's, not low end ones. A computer with a 965 BE will live for a respectable amount of time. It's only a matter of time before today's fastest machines become obsolete. Eventually, there will be new CPU's, new motherboards, new video cards, new DirectX's, new memory, new SSD's, etc, etc, etc, and they too will also become obsolete.
 



Yeah actually they will bottleneck current GPU offerings.(Or atleast the i7)

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5870-crossfirex-test-review/15 Fourth paragragh down.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5870_CrossFire/27.html

This is why I want to see a crossfire review with both CPUs. Who knows, maybe the scaling will be better with a Phenom II. After all the 5800 series and Phenom II's are made by the same company, so you never know. If so then I will just get a 955/965 and OC the hell out of it. If it hits a wall alot sooner than the i7, then I will seriously consider the i7 setup. That's all I'm trying to say.
 
If you want to see some proof of i7 superiority in games to Phenom II its easy. Look up some low resolution benchmarks for the two. That takes out the GPU bottleneck somewhat (some games less than others) and shows you the CPU's true power in gaming. Don't forget to look at some with OCed i7 to see some real impressiveness. This gap will be seen between i7 and Phenom II in the future at higher resolutions, but not any time too soon.
 
Low resolution benchmarks show how a cpu copes at low resolution and nothing else.

We've already looked at an OC'd i7 - the 975 EE in fact, and it's barely even 5% better than the 965 BE in most games. I wouldn't call that impressive for a cpu that is quite a lot more expensive. Anandtech's benches show games at different graphical settings and they all come up with similar results. There will be no future gap increasing between the phenom II 965 and i7 either because the i7 is what it is, ie between -5% and 10% faster than Phenom II in most games depending on setup.
 

You keep going on about this, and with the LGA1366 CPUs, you're full of it. The Phenom 965 runs at 3.4GHz. The i7 965 runs at 3.33GHz 99% of the time. I think that I've seen mine hit 3.46GHz once, and I had to specifically disable almost every process and load it heavily with a single thread before it would do so. Realistically, the i7-965 can be considered to have a max turbo of 3.33, since it almost never hits the single-core turbo value. Because of this near impossibility of hitting more than a single speed bin up from standard clocks, turbo has relatively little effect on the 1366 i7s, and you can fairly safely neglect it in comparisons.

 
Could that be because the i7 965 has a stock of 3.2ghz while the 975 has a stock of 3.33ghz?

965 EE turbo is 3.33ghz, 975 EE turbo is 3.476ghz, so this 975 EE is indeed operating at faster speeds than the 965 BE. Not so impressive is it?
 
I don't thing you can go wrong either way depending upon your 'personal preference' but the article kinda screwed up and did AMD a favor ...

Testbed

In order to maintain a level playing ground, comparable hardware was used across both testbeds and thus minimising the likelihood of a bias.
Click to expand...

It's not really comparable hardware ---- that's the cheapest AM3 motherboard he could have selected. Turns out it makes one heck of a platform (for single vid card, anyway).

i7-920 / Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R combo: $448 AR

Phenom 965BE / Gigabyte GA-MA770T-UD3P combo: $246 AR
(The 955BE combo is $231 (!) AR)


Something like the MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 would be more 'apples'.

I understand the guys are across the pond but they cannot be relevant until they have an Egg :kaola:
 


Then why is it nearly every time I've seen a reviewer tell why they use the low resolution is so they can tell the difference in performance between the CPUs (and this is between a number of CPUs, not only the i7 and Phenom II)?
 
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