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

[kettu]

I think the point he's trying to make is that the Phenom appears to handle a GPU bottleneck better is some cases. I don't think anyone's trying to say that the Phenom's more powerful than the i7.

That's the impression that I got though. Or that they were supposedly atleast equally powerfull.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

In gaming, much of i7s extras have no effect in games, and only its IPC shows, and not always, as sometimes certain games use AMDs arch better, but mostly its Intels arch and its IPC

 

[jennyh]

You just don't seem to be paying attention with what people are telling you. That test is done with a single gtx260... I can't understand how you might even for a second think that those bioshock numbers aren not GPU limited. Considering that overclocking the CPU had no positive effect...



Probably the first thing I agree with you in this thread. In my opinion you're just trolling though...

And what about the other test with the two 4890's? Or are we ignoring that now too because it goes against everything you have been saying? Maybe I need to quote it again?

We're witnessing something phenomenal. While in modes where one HD 4890 card is used, the results between Core i7 920 and AMD Phenom II 955 BE are identical, but in CrossFire mode with two cards, AMD Phenom II 955 BE dashes out huge increase of performance (45%) compared to i7 920. We ran the test few times, just to be sure, but alas results were consistent.

Is it getting through this time? When you see results like this it's no wonder intel gets accusations of buying reviews aimed at them.

 

[jennyh]

Actually scratch that - I'm just gonna take michaelmk86's advice that he was kind enough to PM me with earlier...

You are the biggest AMD fanboy I have ever see. You cannot admit that i7 is faster in gaming than the PII.

Here is a tip to help you with your fanboyism:

You go to your window, you open it up, stick your head out, and yell, as loud as you can, 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore that the i7 is faster in gaming than the PII' And then you keep yelling it. 'I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore that the i7 is faster in gaming than the PII '

LOL you intel fanboys crack me up. 😀

 

[kettu]

And what about the other test with the two 4890's? Or are we ignoring that now too because it goes against everything you have been saying? Maybe I need to quote it again?

We're witnessing something phenomenal. While in modes where one HD 4890 card is used, the results between Core i7 920 and AMD Phenom II 955 BE are identical, but in CrossFire mode with two cards, AMD Phenom II 955 BE dashes out huge increase of performance (45%) compared to i7 920. We ran the test few times, just to be sure, but alas results were consistent.

Is it getting through this time? When you see results like this it's no wonder intel gets accusations of buying reviews aimed at them.

What? That single datapoint somehow proves you right? You seem to completely ignore my posts by the way...

EDIT:
Are you sure though that they are not GPU limited? It is after all highest quality and pretty high resolution. And with single card they score 20 fps each where they are clearly GPU limited. Phenom II scales very well. Pretty much as well as one would expect. 65% increase. So I wouldn't even say this one datapoint goes in your favor. It has been established that sometimes i7 doesn't handle itself as well in GPU limited situations allready.

 

[jennyh]

No it doesn't prove me right, however it proves how little benchmarks can be trusted, especially ones that deviate wildly from the norm.

In all honesty, after reading through the latest intel crime novel how can you trust anything involving this company? How much would it take to bribe you personally to fabricate benchmarks and make an inferior product look better? Why is it that the older benchmarks seem to favour the phenom II more than the newer ones? Intel have very deep pockets and there is no doubt that they are sharing the wealth on many fronts.

 

[kettu]

No it doesn't prove me right, however it proves how little benchmarks can be trusted, especially ones that deviate wildly from the norm.

I wholeheartedly agree. What makes them even more untrustworthy is that many review sites tend to use built in benchmarks instead of actual gameplay when possible. Differences between i7 and pII seem to shrink when actual gameplay is tested. But all in all in my opinion i7 is a bit faster. That's where benchmarks as a whole seem to converge. As for future proofing? I don't think it makes any difference. They are still so close together that if one is unplayable in a game then likely the other one is also. I'm relatively certain that both of them will suffice untill next generation of CPUs in 2011.

In all honesty, after reading through the latest intel crime novel how can you trust anything involving this company? How much would it take to bribe you personally to fabricate benchmarks and make an inferior product look better? Why is it that the older benchmarks seem to favour the phenom II more than the newer ones? Intel have very deep pockets and there is no doubt that they are sharing the wealth on many fronts.

I don't especially trust or distrust Intel. I know it's a company and it will look after its own interest. If evidence of this corruption comes to light then it is a different matter. As for older benchmarks looking bad and sharing wealth: I guess there might have been some hardware and/or software incompatibilities that were later solved. I remember seeing some very unflattering i7 benchmarks. They might have been paying atleast to people who code drivers to speed up their work. But I haven't seen any evidence that they started bribing reviewers. Besides that is a dangerous practice in a sense that there are pretty easy ways to replicate the results using same hardware and software. It isn't a prohibitive cost for say couple of friends even who are planning to upgrade their computers at the same time.

Not sure anymore if you're trolling or not. So: Apologies for the remark.

 

[Raidur]

71 fps on the Q6600
73 fps on the Phenom II 940
74 fps on the i5
75 fps on the i7

So we've hit a gpu bottleneck and that is holding back the i7? That is what you are trying to say isn't it? And with better gpu's we'll see better results right?

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3650&p=5

Crossfire 5850 equals Crossfire 5870. Far cry 2 is *cpu limited* at 75fps, not gpu. I think that's worth repeating with a quote from anand.

See that number 75fps? Now, we *know* this has to be a gpu bottleneck because we *know* that the 5870 is a superior card to the 5850. We also know by experience that those numbers should be higher than 75fps with two such incredible graphics cards.

Now look at those numbers again

71 fps on the Q6600
73 fps on the Phenom II 940
74 fps on the i5
75 fps on the i7

http://benchmarkextreme.com/Articles/HD%205870%20TriFire/P5.html

So... you mean when you OC the i7 to 4.2 you nearly have 100% increased max FPS compared to itself and phenom II? =P

 

[surda]

if phenom beats i7 in some games at high resolution doesn't mean that a phenom is faster than the i7, because GPU is casing bottleneck and is not able to keep up with the cpu, there for, cpu is out of the equation.

if you really wanna know the reason then lets break it into parts, Intel uses QPI to connect with the GPU memory controller inside north bridge at 4.8GT,while AMD uses HT instead, now during that operation there is a little favor going to AMD mobo than Intels which gives AMD system 1 or 2 more fps, now that doesn't mean that phenom CPU is faster, but the way their motherboard and GPU connects is a little different.

However if you still believe that phenom is faster than i7 at stock speed (or even overclocked phenom 965 losses to i7 at stock speed), then you should take a look at this where we have i7 alone vs phenom alone in applications.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-x4-965,2389-6.html

 

[one-shot]

Ok here is another way to look at those benchmarks.

Now, tell me truthfully - is the i7 worth ~$130 more based on these benchmarks? Because I will guarantee you that you would not notice any difference whatsover while playing, any of these games.

Yes

Some people only want the best regardless of price.

 

[one-shot]

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.

Here is a link. Now, before going to this link, keep in mind there are equally clocked CPUs with minimal variables. Clock for clock Yorkfield is faster than Deneb.


****Go to the end of the review which shows a Q9770 vs i7 965.**** Q9770 > PII 965

http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-multigpu-sli-crossfire-game-performance-review/7

i7 is a clear choice when faced with a CPU limitation when one wants maximum performance, even if FPS are over 60.

PS. I also do a lot more than just gaming.

 

[jimmysmitty]

http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Reviews/pii_965/10.html

I7 gets crushed by a 965 BE in Bioshock and Farcry 2. Now I dunno about you, but that Bioshock result doesn't look gpu limited to me.

That's right, the Core i7 920 could not beat the 3.4GHz Phenom II in any of our gaming tests. It could only match it in two games out of five.

There are other factors involved here. It's not a simple case of clockspeed or anything like that, there are other factors involved that lead to i7 failures in a lot of games - we've seen it in plenty of ocassions in the past especially with nvidia cards.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/geforce-gtx-280,review-31510-2.html

The really interesting thing about that old review - which caused a major amount of intel fanboys to get up in arms - is that the Farcry 2 results with the 4870 x2 were seen as being the 'proper' results...even though it was a driver issue holding the phenom II back. Do those results today and you'd have the phenom II ahead on the nvidia hardware and equal on the 4870x2.

Now what about Left 4 Dead? Its Source which is very CPU dependent (I have seen people with GTX285 getting worse than a HD2900 because their CPU was a slow end dual core) yet the normal and OCed Phenom have no differences. In fact aat high res for that game its all the same. CoD5 WaW they are all the same FPS at 1900x1200.....


Maybe we should compare low end FPS again like they did with Phenom. The low end FPS really matters. Anyone else remember that when Phenom came out and couldn't beat Kentsfield?

And what about the other test with the two 4890's? Or are we ignoring that now too because it goes against everything you have been saying? Maybe I need to quote it again?

We're witnessing something phenomenal. While in modes where one HD 4890 card is used, the results between Core i7 920 and AMD Phenom II 955 BE are identical, but in CrossFire mode with two cards, AMD Phenom II 955 BE dashes out huge increase of performance (45%) compared to i7 920. We ran the test few times, just to be sure, but alas results were consistent.

Is it getting through this time? When you see results like this it's no wonder intel gets accusations of buying reviews aimed at them.

Are you serious? You use one set of benchmarks that are obviously GPU bottle necked and want to use another?

Just as I said. You only use one that proves your point. Any others cannot exist because its not true, right?

BTW, Intel does pay people in its software division to work with software companies to optimize their drivers and software for Intel products. nVidia does it, ATI used to do it and AMD sure as hell should do it.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Unless its on a graph, the low end fps means nothing, as it could just be, and often is, just a low spike
With graphs, yes, its maybe more important than average, and certainly highest

 

[jimmysmitty]

Unless its on a graph, the low end fps means nothing, as it could just be, and often is, just a low spike
With graphs, yes, its maybe more important than average, and certainly highest

I was just showing how people jump back and forth. When Phenom first came out and couldn't keep up in games with Kentsfield the same people took the low FPS as a way to say it meant Phenom was better for gaming. Its all about twisting results to your favor.

That's why I don't believe in one set of testing. It should be performance per watt/dollar/cycle. A overall instead of just one. For overall CPU you can't use just gaming but for gaming you need per cycle/watt/doallr to get a true view of the performance.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Agreed, and using graphs is needed badly as well in benches, as it shows actual fps continuations, instead of simple low/high numbers

 

[sincreator]

Well I finally got my HD5870. Now here is some bench results from Unreal Tournament 3. Phenom II x3 710 at 3.45ghz. Tell me what you think is happening. Looks like a bit of a bottleneck to me, but is it CPU, or GPU?

The benchmark started at 11/9/2009 10:19:56 AM

System Information
Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate
System memory: 4095 MB
CPU: AMD Phenom(tm) II X3 710 Processor
CPU speed: 3450 MHz
Graphics card: - 0 MB ATI HD5870 1GB
Benchmark Information
Benchmark type: Flyby
Demo: vCTF-Containment
Motion Blur: Disabled
Hardware Physics: Disabled
Anisotropic filtering: 16×



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Resolution: 1920×1080 (HD WideScreen)
Score = 151 FPS
Score = 152 FPS
Average score = 151 FPS

Resolution: 1280 × 720 (Custom)
Score = 156 FPS
Score = 154 FPS
Average score = 155 FPS

BTW: 3DMark06 does the same thing. 18,300 at 1920x1080 and 1280x720. I'm assuming this would be a CPU bottleneck. Am I wrong?

 

[smithereen]

Certainly looks that way. Change your CPU clock and see what happens.

 

[eijiyuki]

If ANYTHING this article gave me the idea that the Phenom II X4 965 is a serious competitor for your money. You save almost $100 for an AMD high end CPU for almost the same performance as a i7 920. $100 in which you can spend on a better GPU or sound card /speakers etc.

 

[jennyh]

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=869&p=0

According to the most recent set of benchmarks there, the Phenom II beats the i7 at 4ghz with a 5970. That basically leaves no excuses left for buying an i7 just for gaming.

 

[roofus]

low fps stability determines overall game quality. who in here has said that before?
having had both, the i7 is more powerful and definitely the ticket for multi-gpu but the p2 delivers a better gaming experience as far as i am concerned. there is no wrong answer but the right answer is solely dependent on what hardware configuration you want to support. why banter with all the fantard crap when it is so simple? no wrong answer, simply preference.

 

[OvrClkr]

^^ you hit it right on the money =)

Or you can say "WHO CARES!!!!" as long as it plays my games at my desired settings w/o any lag.... Whats next, my i9 beats your 965 at pac-man cause I got 900FPS and you got 750FPS??? ..... this whole FPS argument has been blown out of proportion

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Minimum fps are useless unless theyre expressed on a graph, to show how long those minimal fps are.
If theyre just quick temporary dips,, we wont notice them, but on a graph, we can discern how long they actually last.
Having a few fps can matter in games, going from non playable stutter on occasion to smooth play, again, depending on game.
Or, going from no AA usage to say 4x AA.
There is no certain claim, no absolute here, but needs refining to see the differences, and per game at that

 

[AMW1011]

So in conclusion to this thread. Core i7 is not worth the price for gaming ONLY and Core i5 and Phenom II are better deals for gamers who don't do a lot of hardcore CPU stuff with the Intel party having a slight lead with nVidia cards and the AMD party having a slight lead with AMD cards. Then Core i5 does most CPU stuff a bit better than Phenom II, but Phenom II costs less. Also Core i5 can utilize both SLI and Crossfire, but Phenom II does its best with AMD cards, especially in crossfire. Oh, and Unicorns aren't real!

Woopty -****ing doo.

I am so glad you all argued about that, despite that it was obvious. Next you will be telling me that expensive RAM is only worth it for a few tasks!

Please just lock this one up tight.

 

[yannifb]

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=869&p=0

According to the most recent set of benchmarks there, the Phenom II beats the i7 at 4ghz with a 5970. That basically leaves no excuses left for buying an i7 just for gaming.

Wow, scaling from 3 ghz on for the i7 is pitiful... a 2.0Ghz i7 and a 4.0 Ghz i7 had only about a 4fps difference most of the time. And for gods sake why the hell doesn't the writer realize that while a 2.6 ghz PII is equal to a 2.00 Ghz i7 in some tests (even though at 2.2ghz the PII is usually only 2-3 FPS behind) at 3.2 Ghz + a PII is equal to or better than a 4.0 Ghz i7 (most of the time). And the conclusion to the PII part really ticked me off, he said:
Even though the phenom II at 3.0 ghz and up performed greater or equal to an i7 at similar speeds, we doubt someone would pair a $600 gfx card with a budget cpu.

WTH!!!!?? So even though performance is exactly the same or better than the i7's at high clocks, the PII isn't a high end chip just because its not overpriced?

Reviewers have gone downhill... they think no one is smart enough to look at the graphs...

 

[AMW1011]

Wow, scaling from 3 ghz on for the i7 is pitiful... a 2.0Ghz i7 and a 4.0 Ghz i7 had only about a 4fps difference most of the time. And for gods sake why the hell doesn't the writer realize that while a 2.6 ghz PII is equal to a 2.00 Ghz i7 in some tests (even though at 2.2ghz the PII is usually only 2-3 FPS behind) at 3.2 Ghz + a PII is equal to or better than a 4.0 Ghz i7 (most of the time). And the conclusion to the PII part really ticked me off, he said:
Even though the phenom II at 3.0 ghz and up performed greater or equal to an i7 at similar speeds, we doubt someone would pair a $600 gfx card with a budget cpu.

WTH!!!!?? So even though performance is exactly the same or better than the i7's at high clocks, the PII isn't a high end chip just because its not overpriced?

Reviewers have gone downhill... they think no one is smart enough to look at the graphs...

He was referring to the fact that the i7 920 is a more elite chip because, in everything outside of gaming, it is untouched. I see your point, but I think it was a sound conclusion just not explained well.