Phenom 2 920 and 940 Benchmarks

[baldinie]

Ok, so there are now a few reviews and benchies of the new Phenom 2 920, 940 (priced aroud £165 +VAT and £260 + VAT respectively) but i cant find any mention of them in here? why not? all too busy with christmas?
Firstly I'm not pro intel or AMD, and I dont have a current top end gaming rig, still choosing parts, and so I'm only interested in pure performance and price.


http://209.85.135.104/translate_c?hl=en&sl=el&tl=en&u=http://www.hwbox.gr/showthread.php%3Ft%3D3189%26garpg%3D22&usg=ALkJrhhAVRywzzzsxF0VpXI8X7JEqSsMWA

There's the link to the review, its translated so its not in perfect english. But as you can see, in GAMING benchmarks (the thing I'm sure most of us here really care about) the Phenom is not being "raped" by the i7's at all as some people have being saying. In fact, when the CPU's are pushed a bit and the res is jumped up to 1680x1050 the phenoms give the i7 a bloody nose. And more importantly, the Core2's aint exactly being brushed aside by their new replacements.

Given the set up cost for an i7 system (£200 mobo, £300 6g RAM tripple channel, and £200 for the 940, £400 for the 940) it begs the question what are hte i7's for, did intel not steal enough technology from AMD to make the i7 surpass its old guard, or did intel just do too good of a job on the Core2's and rush out the i7? I dont know. but what i do know is that tne phenom 2 920 is a bloody good upgrade for anyone with an AM2 mobo. And people building a new rig (without spending stupid amounts of money) now have a real choice. AMD, cheap mobo, cheap RAM, good performance. vs i7, expensive mobo and RAM, and very similar gaming results!

YES, the i7's are miles ahead in most of the synthetic test, but so what?! its like have a car with 500bhp that goes the same speed as a car with 250bhp, it may make more noise, but you're going to get there in the same time. The synthetic test show nothing meaningful, i dont even get why they're still used?! (does anyone? other then intel's PR department) AMD have always done crap in synthetic tests. But just look at the CAD and gaming results, the i7 and phenom 2 go head to head, and AMD even takes the lead in Far Cry 2, GTA 4, crysis warhead, and devil may care 4. SO well done AMD, and consider that thats all using an existing set up, not the custom set up that intel pushed out for the i7's, all the tripple channel crap really doesn't seem worth it, specially as DDR3 is already over priced.

One other thing i'd like to ask is, whats the point in the i7 940? its twice the price of the 920 (literally) but has almost no gain over the 920? as too with the phenom 2 920 and 940, an extra £100 for a 1-2 fps...not worth it in my books.

Anyway, just thought i'd throw my tupence worth in. If you're an intel fanboy, PLEASE dont go bleating at me, i just say what i see. AND YES, the q6600 is still in there holding its own on a mid range set up and only costing £140. (which is also a pain for the i7's)

all in all, i think any decent rig atm with a good AMD phenom 9950 or x2 7750 (mentioned because its new and only £55) or 6000. or an intel with an e8400 or q6600 is not lookin old yet and really isn't being over shadowed by anything that intel or AMD have released recently.

thanks for reading.

 

[rangers]

apart from video encoding i dont see the point in i7

 

[perez8434]

I can honestly say that to mainstream buyers like me or even gamers i7 offers no real motivation. I mean come on...i want to be able to zip my 4.5mb folder faster? The people who really use it are usually those who work with rendering and it always help in those who use photo shop or edit websites for a a job. Yes not a hobbie a job. This is only the case if you want the best also because is not essential to have it for a job either. I know i've heard i7 shines in high res and multi set up GPU's but i just cant see may people putting 3 cards on sli or something. At least not me...Still i want it so badly though. Anyone barely has it so i want one but my money grows on trees so it is ok.

 

[spathotan]

Already been posted about 5 times now.

 

[rangers]

well one more wont make a difference

 

[spathotan]

I suppose. Unless roadrunner comes in here and pumps up his i7.

 

[rangers]

NOOOoooooo

 

[Huttfuzz]

LOL good one spathotan

 

[WR]

Rendering, photo editing, and encoding are certainly not the only tasks that justify an i7. For pretty much anything that doesn't bottleneck at the GPU or storage, the i7 is at least modestly faster than the Yorkfield. You'll find exceptions, but at the CPU level, they're about as common as Conroe losing to the A64... doesn't make A64 better overall, nor did it stop people from buying more A64s.

Some synthetic benchmarks only confuse the uninformed reader. So a CPU scores low in Sisoft's memory bandwidth. That's a weakness but not a problem on its own; the question you have to ask is whether the CPU is doing anything to compensate. Good caching? For predictive (common) workloads, good caching is better than good mem bandwidth. Unusually low latency? For highly random workloads, low latency (over)compensates for low sustained bandwidth.

The problem is when Joe the Reader takes an awesome Whetstone FPU score to mean the chip will load web pages faster, run games smoothly, decompress files sooner, and multitask better. Synthetic benchmarks are not invalid for being synthetic; they're invalid for representing overall performance at tasks that involve more than is tested by the benchmark. Other than that, they are very useful for understanding current processors so as to optimize programs for them.

 

[azxcvbnm321]

Intel released i7series because they can. It's just something to show how far ahead of AMD they are just in case some people still think the race is close. Yes, it's like the unnecessary 360 slam dunk in basketball as the clock runs out. There really isn't a point to it other than to show off and taunt the opposition.

It's shameful that AMD can't even offer a midrange CPU that beats Intel on value! For the first time in many many years, the best bang for the buck is with Intel's Q6600 or E8400. There is no reason for any mainstream person to get an AMD anymore, only the ultra poor budget computer buyer will buy an AMD as they are better in the sub $100 market.

And if you think these prices are high, wait until Intel regains its monopoly status. Some of you might be too young to remember the good ol' days when the top of the line Intel chip cost thousands, like the x486 running at 33mhz. Don't be surprised if a midrange mainstream chip will cost you $300+, after all, someone should profit from the spoils of war. The traitors who left Intel will have to pay for their disloyalty.

 

[zedx]

Why do they use such less memory in these benches? A usual system would have 4GB/ 6GB of RAM. It might make some difference in rendering etc benchmarks and perhaps also in games. Does the speed make that much of a difference ? Should DDR2 1066 2GB be preferred over DDR2 800 4GB?

 

[yipsl]

I can honestly say that to mainstream buyers like me or even gamers i7 offers no real motivation.

Newsflash: AMD fan defends i7 for gaming:

Reports are that an i7 setup with two 4870x2's and a 30" LCD monitor is quite good for gaming. That's not mainstream gaming, mind you, but it's still gaming.

I'll be curious to see if the Phenom II 3.0 part overclocked can unlock two 4870x2's capabilities the way i7 can. I'm always interested in the kind of performance I'll never be able to afford; mainly because it drives tech forward such that the parts I can afford would have been considered a high end rig not too many months ago.

Well, at least my GPU, if not the CPU and monitor. :lol:

 

[V3NOM]

i7 is also needed for high performance GPU setups... the core 2's bottleneck three GTX 280's for example. core i7's do not. or at the very least, bottleneck LESS... but for 99% of us gamers, i7 is out of reach and unnecessary.

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

Ill ask this once, and once only, where were all of you when I said current cpus were bottlenecks for current gpus? Its a whole new story now? I had a battle on my hands, and now the truth comes out? And like I said, next gen gpus will be way faster than the improvements we see in i7 as well, so what then? If you tinker with P2s settings, theres no reason why we wont see similar perf from P2, as far as multi gpu setups go. i7 may be ultimately a bit faster, but again, maybe not. Need more info first. This isnt aimed at you Venom, but Im seeing this said more and more, just like I said I would heheh

 

[babak1982]

i did some overclocking on Phenom 2 940 with a Zalman air fan.here are the results:
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=472608

before overclocking, 1M super pi took 23 seconds long and after that,it took 18 seconds.

at this speed CPU was very sensitive,but at 3.8Ghz,it was stable and i could play Call of Duty : world at war without any problem.

results for crysis at default speed is:
GPU test: 1600x1200, very high setting,AAx2 ,vsync enabled = 19.85fps
CPU test 1: 1600x1200, very high setting,AAx2 ,vsync enabled = 20.48fps
CPU test 2: 1600x1200, very high setting,AAx2 ,vsync enabled = 14.16fps

 

[V3NOM]

why did AMD use the intel naming scheme for the phenom II's? 920 940? and nvidia mobo naming? 780 790?

 

[B-Unit]

Because 'PhenomII 10800' didnt fare well in focus groups.

 

[WR]

Ill ask this once, and once only, where were all of you when I said current cpus were bottlenecks for current gpus?

I was here, but has anything changed in the 1-2 months? My response was two-fold:

1) Games should be programmed to tax the GPU and spare using the CPU as a crutch, and on the other side, GPUs should be designed to handle all heavy game functions. But idealism is not necessarily reflected in reality... though in most modern games, we do find heavy use of the GPU.

2) For single-card setups with mainstream quads, even at low resolution, there was considerable GPU bottleneck, as there should be, before we get into optimizing the code.

If you have tri-SLI 280s or Xfire 4870x2's, then I fail to see the complaint about midrange CPUs? You can afford the i7, or that SS cooled Yorkfield.

And like I said, next gen gpus will be way faster than the improvements we see in i7 as well, so what then?

If that is true, as you state so factually, doesn't it justify the i7 for a present future-proof system (if you can afford it) despite the current disappointment in gaming performance, for which the GPU is mostly to blame?

Or you could bank on such GPUs taking a year to appear, in which case you might hang on to a 775/AM2 system and overhaul your rig when Westmere comes out. But we'll have to same issue about future-proofing.

If you tinker with P2s settings, theres no reason why we wont see similar perf from P2, as far as multi gpu setups go. i7 may be ultimately a bit faster, but again, maybe not.

If 3dmark Vantage-CPU or any of numerous core benchmarks is indicative of future game challenges, or if we look at present games where the bottleneck is artificially shifted to the CPU, the Phenom is, as many have indicated, between the Kentsfield and Yorkfield, nowhere near the i7.

But this is expected, isn't it? The P2 was originally on 65nm, and this is mostly a die shrink to 45nm, so its homologue is the Yorkfield, not the 45nm-originating i7.

Nowhere do I say this is certain - just likely - but as well, nowhere should you say with surety that newer GPUs will bottleneck present CPUs. What if DX11 triggers more game thread offloading to future GPUs?

 

[JAYDEEJOHN]

First of all, read this, as it debunks i7 as THE solution for multi card setups, and even higher gpus. http://www.madshrimps.be/?action=getarticle&number=1&artpage=3852&articID=895

You do realize what my link means , dont you? I knew this all along, and yet its swept aside. We all knew that scaling on P1 would be killer, but they had to reach higher freqs. Well, now they have, plus higher potential of what we previously had having better HT clocks as well. So, to say its "just" a shrink is ignoring alot of things, potential here.

Simple answer is, theyve tuned thier system now, they elimanted the cold bug, allowing for better freqs where needed, and ultimately scale much much better than Yorkies or Kents. Will they reach i7s perf? Probably not in everything, but things alot of people care about, theyll be priced right, and close enopugh in perf, it wont matter.

If youve kept up on hydra, and hydra type products, youll see that the cpu may have a much greater impact on gaming than previously seen, as we dont know the impact of multi cards using this setup (which I believe AMD also has their own solution for). Im following this closely, as this may be something of a deal breaker in many ways

So, to all those that simply think this iteration is simply a die shrink with higher clocks, look deeper, as we will see more perf than whats been seen in the past, beyond simply clock for clock

 

[perez8434]

Newsflash: AMD fan defends i7 for gaming:

Reports are that an i7 setup with two 4870x2's and a 30" LCD monitor is quite good for gaming. That's not mainstream gaming, mind you, but it's still gaming.

I'll be curious to see if the Phenom II 3.0 part overclocked can unlock two 4870x2's capabilities the way i7 can. I'm always interested in the kind of performance I'll never be able to afford; mainly because it drives tech forward such that the parts I can afford would have been considered a high end rig not too many months ago.

Well, at least my GPU, if not the CPU and monitor. :lol:

Hun? AMD fan? Wait how the heck? Ok...im starting to think this website is full of little kids or something..whatever but to me i7 is real expensive. if you were talking about me being an amd fan i just go with the fastest but i7 is not being fair on my wallet so i go with seconds. Yes! i have an intel. Also i like Gaming but i personally think having 2 4870's x 2 falls in the enthusiast level more than gamer. At least to all my friends it does.

I posted something about AMD here once but it was playing around since people here freak out when they hear the worrds AMD is better. I know is not but i dont know people are just weird and i enjoy seeing them get mad over simple phrases that have no meaning to me what so ever. Just saying in case you though maybe i don't know lol.

 

[blackpanther26]

I have a question. so Would I gain more performance with an i7 920 with my 2 Radeon's 4870 in crossfire or the Phenom II?

 

[perez8434]

Yeah i7 hands down i'm guessing. But is not worth the money if you ask me. Phenom II is enough.

 

[amdfangirl]

I have a question. so Would I gain more performance with an i7 920 with my 2 Radeon's 4870 in crossfire or the Phenom II?

Kinda close. No point in upgrading.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Newsflash: AMD fan defends i7 for gaming:

Reports are that an i7 setup with two 4870x2's and a 30" LCD monitor is quite good for gaming. That's not mainstream gaming, mind you, but it's still gaming.

I'll be curious to see if the Phenom II 3.0 part overclocked can unlock two 4870x2's capabilities the way i7 can. I'm always interested in the kind of performance I'll never be able to afford; mainly because it drives tech forward such that the parts I can afford would have been considered a high end rig not too many months ago.

Well, at least my GPU, if not the CPU and monitor. :lol:

Thats the thing though. A lot of sites are not showing multi GPU setups when testing these CPUs. That doesn't give a full spectrum since multi GPU setups have been getting pretty common these days. You can CF/SLI anything now, even the cheap cards.

I suppose. Unless roadrunner comes in here and pumps up his i7.

Yea but the biggest difference is the fact that he has one and we don't. He has the experience with the CPU. All we have are results from some sites. Same goes with Phenom II. We don't have anyone here who actually has their hands on one.

Roadrunner may be a bit off, but he has a Core i7 so he can truly say how well it performs.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I have a question. so Would I gain more performance with an i7 920 with my 2 Radeon's 4870 in crossfire or the Phenom II?

Not sure yet. I haven't seen any results from any site for multi GPU setups for Phenom II. I know Core i7 does great with multi GPU setups.

So Phenom II may do as well or it may not. We have to wait and see.