In Theory: How Does Lynnfield's On-Die PCI Express Affect Gaming?

[cangelini]

What effect does integrated PCI Express have on gaming? Is Intel's LGA 1156 interface any better or worse than LGA 1366, with its QPI interface to the PCIe-rich X58 chipset? We run a battery of real world game tests to answer this theoretical question.

In Theory: How Does Lynnfield's On-Die PCI Express Affect Gaming? : Read more

 

[megabuster]

AMD better have something up its sleeves or it's instakill.

 

[rambo117]

AMD... your loosing your game...

 

[dirtmountain]

A PhenomII x4 920? ouch

 

[bucifer]

I do not agree with the choices made in this article. You don't buy 2*4870x2 and the you slam a x4 920. The choices do not make sense.

You should have used the best cpu(ex i7 920 oc@4GHz) to try to eliminate all bottlenecks and truly emphasize the limitations of x8/x16 pci-e lanes.

The rest of the testing was done to include the new i5 which is not bad but not relevant for the bottleneck. I know many people would like to see how i5+p55 handles the gpu power but it's a highly unlikely scenario that someone would actually but such powerful and expensive cards on pair them with a cheaper cpu and a limited platform.

I just think you should have tested things separately in different articles.

 

[radnor]

I know you used a 2.8Ghz Deneb for Clock-per-clock comparisons. MAkes sense. But a 2.8 Ghz Deneb is something really no unlocked. Ussually unlock versions go 3.5Ghz on stock VID, non BE PArts can reach 3.3Ghz safely.

A 2.8 Deneb/Lynnfield/Bloomfield have completely diferent prices. You are comparing a R6 vs a R1. I7 is the Busa trouting everybody else. Of course the prices are very diferent.

 

[cangelini]

Gents, if you want to see the non-academic comparisons, I have the 965 BE compared in two other pieces for more real-world comparisons!
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i5,2410.html
and
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-gaming,2403.html
Thanks for the feedback notes!

 

[bounty]

"Will Core i5 handicap you right out of the gate with multi-card configurations? The aforementioned gains evaporated in real-world games, where Core i7’s trended slightly higher, perhaps as a result of Hyper-Threading or its additional memory channel"

Well you answered will i5 handicap you without hyperthreading, x8 by x8 and dual channel. It will by 5-10% If you wanted to narrow it down to memory channels, hyperthreading or the x8 by x8 you could have pice the game with the biggest spread and enabled each of those options selectively. Would have been kinda interesting to see which had the biggest impact.

 

[Shnur]

Great article! But then again... I don't see why a 955 wasn't used in this scenario... since the 920 is thing that nobody uses. Already that we know that i7 is superior to AMD flagship in multi-GPU configurations you're taking a crappy AMD CPU, buying a 790GX doesn't mean you're going to cut on the chip... and you're talking about who's performing better in 8x lanes... from my point of view it's a bad comparison, and there should have been a chip that'll be actually able to take a difference between 1 card and two and the from 16x and 8x.
And thanks for the other linked reviews, but I'm not talking about comparing the chips themselves, I'm trying to figure out is 8x still good enough or I need to pay more for 16x?

 

[cangelini]

Shunr,
Thanks much for the feedback--again, this wasn't meant to be about the CPUs, but the PCI Express links. If you want to know about the processors themselves at retail clocks, check out the gaming story, which does reflect x16/x16 and x8/x8 in the LGA 1366 and LGA 1156 configs.
Hope that helps!
Chris

 

[Shadow703793]

[citation][nom]megabuster[/nom]AMD better have something up its sleeves or it's instakill.[/citation]
lol! do you mean instagib?

Joking aside, AMD needs something to counter this.

 

[Alkapwn]

There may be a slight flaw to your testing methodology on the i7 vs i5. You used an i7 975 against the i5 750. You clocked the CPUs to the same, 2.8 Ghz, but made no mention of the uncore speed. Uncore clock of the i7 975 runs @ 2.66 Ghz, whereas the i5 750 runs @ 2.16 Ghz. Since the PCI controller on the i5 is part of the uncore, answering the question "How Does Lynnfield's On-Die PCI Express Affect Gaming" against the i7 975 will only show skewed, or dare I say flawed, results.

If you're going to make an *apples to apples* comparison, the i7 920 would have been a better choice, as its uncore is clocked the same as the i5, and both run their cores at the same stock speeds. This would have presented a level playing field in both processor speed as well as uncore speeds.

Thank you.

 

[CookYouAll]

Sad, AMD losing again, again & again..

 

[tkgclimb]

Why did they use a 790gx platform not a 790fx, doesn't the FX have more pci-e bandwith, and does better supporting multi gpu configurations? or am I about to buy the wrong mobo.

 

[rambo117]

[citation][nom]tkgclimb[/nom]Why did they use a 790gx platform not a 790fx, doesn't the FX have more pci-e bandwith, and does better supporting multi gpu configurations? or am I about to buy the wrong mobo.[/citation]
did you read the whole article? its explained here:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i5-lynnfield,2379-3.html

 

[tkgclimb]

[citation][nom]rambo117[/nom]did you read the whole article? its explained here: http://www.tomshardware.com/review [...] 379-3.html[/citation]

Yeah I read it, but it really doesn't make sense even though the i5 has only 16x bandwidth I don't think they should limit AMD to only 16x also.

But good article,

weird how the the PHenom scales so badly in crsfr still using the same amount of bandwidth as all the rest of the CPU's

 

[spearhead]

i dont find it strange that PHII seems to scale alot less here. PHII was clocked back to 2,8GHZ otherwise the results would have been much more even when benched vs a stock clocked i5 750. This benchmark brings out the clock advantage of the architectures. But it dousn't smell like real world preformance to me. never the less scores above 60-75 FPS are above noticeble. fewer then that would also not hurt tough since a few frames are always being prerenderd. That is why i cannot justify I7 920 any longer for anything less then a multiple solution. never the less i5 750 is going to be priced quite near the PHII 955 just a few tens more expansive, with some luck AMD considers dropping the price a bit more. Over all I5 750 is a good awnser VS the phenom 955 and 965. And while both offer there own advantages such as intels clock advantage it would not run as near its physical limits as a stock phenom II dous whe your into overclocking. But AMD on the other hand is still a bit cheaper and will bring out a 6 core istanbul based 32nm cpu somewhere next year which will work on every current decent AM3 board. core i5 still be the current winner when your aim is to overclock

 

[Ciuy]

so it sucks

 

[suitaoli]

what aboutthe Hyper threading in i7 Bloomfield benchmarks, disable or enable?

 

[suitaoli]

[citation][nom]suitaoli[/nom]what about the Hyper threading in i7 Bloomfield benchmarks, is it disable or enable?[/citation]

 

[Guest]

so let me get this straight...you took two almost exactly the same architectures and ran tests where the extra bandwidth of the memory of one don't matter and where both had sufficient PCI bandwidth and you're shocked that they performed the same clock for clock? seriously? You guys are fucking geniuses!!! STOP THE FUCKING PRESSES TWO SIMILAR ARCHITECTURES PERFORM SIMILARLY should be the title of this article

 

[doron]

It's really surprising to see the same 2.8ghz on such different architectures.

It would be a lot better (and easier) to first eliminate this variable by performing thorough exams of all these architectures and then choosing the right cpu speeds in each of them.

In addition, as Alkapwn already said, it's also strange that you've decided to choose the core i7 975 which sports a faster "uncore" speed than the more mainstream oriented 920 and 750, which in my opinion really throws the i7 comparison out of the window.

The choice of the q9550 is fantastic since it's a capable cpu which is also abit faster than the other chips in terms of mhz, but the phenom 920?? That's simply wrong. The phenom II's are about 10-20% slower than their intel counterparts, so choosing the 940, which is also priced about the same as the rest of the bunch would makes things more precise in terms of platform comparison.

 

[wuzy]

If multi-GPU scaled @100% per GPU added then I would consider it as an upgrade path. Clearly it's not and that makes multi-GPU a very small niche for users(i.e. very bad $/performance ratio).
It means X58 + LGA1366 caters a very small niche of gamers. It was designed as a professional workstation with native 6-core in mind in the first place anyway. Somehow Intel have managed to marketed it to gamers on a large scale.

 

[scurvywombat]

I would've preferred an AMD 965BE @ 3.4ghz and overclocked

 

[erikstarcher]

Most(not all) of you people here seem to forget that this test was not a cpu to cpu comparison, so stop worrying about which cpu was used. It was not about cpu speed. It was about 2x8 or 2x16 pci-e performance on different platforms. Don't read the article looking cpu to cpu, look at it from one to two video cards. Then see if that difference is the same percentage from platform to platform. That is what was trying to be shone here.