Phenom II 955 Versus Core i7 920: Gaming Value Compared

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[citation][nom]redgarl[/nom]Define demanding... unrar a file 5 miliseconds faster? Running Prime95?Seriously, I am using Cadence, Matlab, photoshop, Simulink and other extremely high demanding engineering software and they don't need this... so important power resources. You are speaking about 0.01% of the population who should invest into a server with dual cpu instead of a desktop.I was calculating coefficients for some numerical filters to be implemented into an equalizer on DSP, and I was doing that with a Core 2 Duo. Just go into any engineering school and you will see that most of the university still use Pentium D.The only real thing that matter for everybody (unless you are freaking rich) is the cost...[/citation]
You didn't goad anyone Cleeve, and you seem to fail as a tech, you can't talk about why a low HT and NB frequency was used, A decent tuned Phenom system will freakin run 2700+ and thats on just DDR2 and you had DDR3 on your hands. You 4-4-4 4g G.skill is available for less than what you paid or even a modest 5-5-5-15-24 PC9200 Kit could have been used. Your article is not what it could have been.
 
Should we send you some UT 3,COD4-Modern Warefare/COD W@W ,Grid ,Call of Juarez -Bound in Blood retail samples to test with ?
 
[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]Encoding video or audio would be the primary ones, not such a rarity in the home nowadays.Other than that, background tasks like AVG.The point is, at the same price point, why wouldn't you want that?At a slightly lower price point, IMHO, the Phenom II X3 is the best all-round choice, with a third core for the apps that can utilize multithreading, and cheap like borcht.[/citation]
That again speaks of not knowing. I mean, look, you have the ram at high speed and then cut its throat at the NB, numbers? I am talking about Benchmarks not posted settings, Rais the NB to 2600 and the HT to 2400 you will see at least 2-4% in any game that pushes the memory subsystem. Thats just a basic start and this kind of thing just keeps raising questions as to setup and it is anoyoing because the numbers are then "what could have been". Memeory ws ganged or unganged etc?
 
[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]Encoding video or audio would be the primary ones, not such a rarity in the home nowadays.Other than that, background tasks like AVG.The point is, at the same price point, why wouldn't you want that?At a slightly lower price point, IMHO, the Phenom II X3 is the best all-round choice, with a third core for the apps that can utilize multithreading, and cheap like borcht.[/citation]
Err, this is the quote that goes with my post above, I was distracted by the ever Goading Cleeve.
 
[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]Apology accepted.Dude, check the 1920x1200 results, the Phenom II did just fine as a gaming rig. What more did you want? How much could have been gained by lower latency, a higher HT... a percentage point, maybe two? Do you honestly think the spirit of the results would be completely diferent?Look, man. The Phenom II proved it's a fine gaming machine. It might not be the perfect AMD setup, but neither was the i7 a perfect Intel example. I think you might be exaggerating the impact of that in the grand scheme of things.[/citation]

Da this one...
 
[citation][nom]Cleeve[/nom]Encoding video or audio would be the primary ones, not such a rarity in the home nowadays.Other than that, background tasks like AVG.The point is, at the same price point, why wouldn't you want that?At a slightly lower price point, IMHO, the Phenom II X3 is the best all-round choice, with a third core for the apps that can utilize multithreading, and cheap like borcht.[/citation]

I was able to get real time AD/DA conversion on a DSP in real time for my electric guitar and still able to include effects and an equalizer... a processor is lightyears above a 8 years old DSP.

Seriously, that is my whole point, buying a platform at 300$ higher minimum price over the X3 (memory, motherboard and cpu) is... better for running AVG in a single card configuration?

What is interesting in computers is finding this sweet spot where the price is maximizing your investment and right now an i7 and a 955 really don't fit well into this category. The same with 4890 cards. Who needs more than two 4850 right now if they are running at 1080p and 60 or 30Hz refresh rate?

I am sorry, but benchmarking games to know which system is better for rendering anything about 75Hz is only for benchmarks with no pratical use.
 
This was a very good article IMO. It answers alot of questions regarding the P2 955 vs. i7 920 debate. Now, I have an i7 920 rig now (paired with Asus P6T, 3GB of Corsair DDR3, and 2x 8800GT) but before that, I had a Phenom 9850, and before that an Athlon X2 4400+. I'm not an Intel fanboy at all. Hell, i'm not an AMD fanboy either. I just try to buy wutever will get me the performance i'm looking for without requiring me to spend way more than I initially budgeted, and most importantly, actually being worth every penny that I spent on it...or in other words, being able to last a LONG time. And I have always loved that about AMD. Their hardware has always been able to get you damn good performance without pwn'ing your wallet. Sure, the intel hardware since the C2D has definitely performed better. But alot of times, the performance increase by going with intel instead of AMD just didnt' seem justified given the price i'd have to pay.

The way I see it is, a CPU will hit two "walls" in it's lifetime. The first will come when it's stock speed is no longer adequate (Depending on what you use your computer for). At that point you can choose you get a new chip or if you have the know how, overclock. And the second and final "wall" will come when you have reached you OC limit and that speed is no longer adequate (depending on what you use your computer for). Now as far as gaming goes, I think that any of these new chips from intel and AMD are capable of handling the majority of the new GPU's that are out now. It just depends on how much of a nerd you wanna be about it. Personally, 60fps ain't gonna look any different than 80fps. In this article, we have the i7 @ 2.66ghz going against the PII 955 @ 3.2ghz in the stock speed tests, i7 @ 3.44ghz and the PII 955 @ 3.7 in the OC test, and the PII 955 paired with a 4890 CF and i7 paired with a lesser 4870 CF (Same brand and architecture though). Now I know the purpose of this article was to answer the budget based question "If you use the money saved by going with the PII 955 setup and apply it to the graphics subsystem, can the PII 955 system compete with the i7 system?". And Cleeve you definitely answered that question. Many kudos to you for taking the time to do so. But you also answered another question IMO. If you're going to spend $800+ on a gaming PC, the i7 920 is the way to. These systems where setup to be as equal as possible. The main differences to note is that the PII 955 stock speed is almost a whole 1ghz faster, the PII 955 was OC'd to a higher clock speed than the i7 (which could have been pushed farther), the the i7 was using a lesser graphics cards (4870's as compared to 4890's). Despite all of that, the i7 920 still came out on top in the majority of the tests. I'll admit, it didn't come out on top by that much at all at stock speed. But I swear, the sky clears up, the planets align and you get a small taste of nerd heaven everytime you OC an i7. It's kinda crazy how far ahead it pulled in some of the tests when overclocked.

But let's go back to what I was saying about the "walls". I used to build rigs with the sole purpose of gaming. So the only thing I based my purchases off of was gaming benchmarks. And based on those benchmarks, I went AMD everytime. AMD just had the better "bang for the buck". And until the i5's come out and we see what they can do & how much they cost, IMO, AMD still does have the better "bang for the buck" in the majority of the different price points. But in between the time that I went to my i7 920 from my Phenom 9850 BE, I have been using my PC for much more than gaming. And have gotten thoroughly introduced to the relam of 'real world' performance. When I saw benchmarks for the i7, i was very surprised at just how efficient these chips are. These show you exactly what the i7 architecture is capable of:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/phenom-x4-955,2278-2.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-975,2318-5.html

Simply put, the i7 is a beast. I know that it will be a long time before I have hit my first CPU "wall". At stock speed of 2.66ghz, which is seemingly low compared to the PII 955's 3.2ghz, it's a monster. And I also know that it will be a REALLY long time before I hit that second and final CPU "wall". The amount that you can OC the i7 and the performance gains from doing so are just crazy. Cleeve put it perfectly when he said, "AMD's got game, for sure, but if I have to make a choice between gaming and everything including gaming, I find it difficult to rationalize going with the Phenom II." And that has been my new determining factor when it comes to hardware upgrades. I want a fast PC period. Not just a fast computer when it comes to gaming. And I want it to last me for a LONG time. Now, i'm not saying that a PII 955 won't last you a long time. It's just that, by investing a little bit more money into the i7 920, the return on your invest will last much longer.
 
Ok, so I read all the comments and the article, what was the reason the I7 was not overclocked more? If we are talking about getting the most bang for our buck shouldn't that include the highest stable overclock we can achieve? I know I run mine at 4.2Ghz daily with just 1.27v vcore, so I know that THD didn't hit a wall due to voltage. I am just curious at why the low overclock, especially when 3.6Ghz seems to be the point where the cpu is no longer the bottleneck for gaming.

There is no doubt you can save some money by going AMD, but you could also save some money going with the C2D which is really what the AM3 should be compared too, not the I7, that is unless you want to throw the budget out the window. As far as the RAM goes, didn't Anandtech do a nice little article talking about how lower latencies trumped speed 90% of the time? So why not go with some 1333Mhz ram, downclock it to 1080Mhz with some nice low latencies and save about $40 on both systems.

Anyway, more interested in the reason behind the I7 overclock.
 
Seems like you picked just the perfect amount of money to spend on this one. If you shift the budget up, I bet i7 will begin to win hands-down, consistantly. If you shift the budget down, Phenom II starts to take the win, since it can drop significantly more in cost, whereas the i7 will have to lose a lot of its graphics power.

Think of it this way, if you had to make each system $100 cheaper, what would you end up with? Core i7 with only one HD 4870, and Phenom II with a cheaper mobo/ Phenom 940/ 1066DDR2 RAM, and still a pair of HD 4890's. Only one lost more than 5% performance.

Excellent budget, and very well done. Thanks!
 
[citation][nom]sohei[/nom]really tom ...with the money remain is not necessary to buy another pairs of gpu's you can buy a nice case or video camera or a phone or 200-300 condoms...the pc is not everything ...ooo let's put all our money in intel 920 to play prototype ...and after 6 months you loose 40% from pc value ... 10x toms for a good advice ....you realize that with this kind of articles you play with peoples money?[/citation]

You vote this guy down????

This is the best comment I have read so far - I voted you up. Most of the truth about these 2 cpu's in supposed competition, is HIDING behind the fact that they used 2 grafx cards.

How can you intelligent people see what the processors are doing BEHIND the 2 grafx cards???? Look at the results of the test in LEFT FOR DEAD - that's as close to the truth as this testing gets - it's cpu limited - think about it.

The results are all identical - so the cpu's are all identical - it's not the grafx holding the result back.

That's what I mean - this test report is meaningless. Unless the cpu performance itself is brought forward !!!! - by using only 1 grafx card.

There's more also.
 
Since this is really a head to head SBM article, maybe the formula of the SBM could be adjusted so we can get more exposure to these topics. Here's my suggestion. As a rule, back to back systems for any given price point should explore alternatives to the previous build. The prices generally don't shift so much for radical platform changes except after initial launch when product choices are minimal and demand is high. Then the conclusion article can cover the last article head to head with the current one.

I'd also like to see a formula for setting the price points. Start with the lowest priced acceptable CPU and build a balanced system around that. Consider it the minimum price to pay for an adaquate machine. Then calculate the price. Use that as the next months budget to build the alternative based system. If there is extra money or short to maintain balance, adjust the following systems budget. To start all this off, the first round should be a dual core, tri core, and quad core setup. Then the next month would be the competitions dual core, a high end dual core to compete with the tri core, and lastly the other sides quad core. Continue to use the reader input in developing the next round systems/budget.

The downside to this is I have really enjoyed the purpose built systems like the portable box and HTPCs and it would screw up the flow to add those in. Maybe when there is stability in prices and no product launches are expected, squeeze the special builds in there.
 
I have to disagree with you batman on your $800 budget is the line for PhenomII to i7. This build was a $1,300 build. An AMD PhenomII x4 940 gaming build at $1,000 would outperform an i7 $1,000 gaming build hands down due to the cost difference. There's really very little benefit from going to a P2 955 over a P2 940 in any gaming benchmark.
 


You really dont get it do you? If you only have one card, all the results would be GPU limited and you would never see the CPU limitations. Now as for L4D, as the CPUs are in FACT not identical, points more to the limit of the software engine, not the hardware.
 
Nice review. Confirmed what was already known, an i7 can combine with present and future vid cards to give the best overall performance. And that reassurance costs $100 or so atm.

But is the glass half empty or half full? If the price point happened to be $1400 on test day, and we put 2x4890 in the i7 system . . . where would AMD have gone (rhetorical question)?

OTOH, since AMD's reason for existence atm is price/performance, its absolutely expected that AMD should win at all but the highest levels when ANY price but a "max" price is the build point.

The only hope is that AMD can continue to make enough money with this strategy to remain a super-strong competitor to Intel.

Otherwise, the price of computing will go up for me and for all of us.
 
[citation][nom]sohei[/nom]i read at least 10 reviews from different sites before a buy something ..and for me is more important the opinion of end user, about a product ....if 1000 people says the p2 x3 is great in games with similar performance with a 250 $ intel i will buy p2x3 and tom articles has no value for me because they are 5 people and they don't use a cpu like an end user ... they use a cpu just for rating and i spent my own money not their money ......open your eyes[/citation]
NICE RESPONSE :) Not only that, but in this test, the PhII 550 DUAL CORE !!! would get similar results!

This is so funny. This really displays the gross incompetence and the bias of this site. It's a coverup. The truth is hiding behind the use of the 2 grafx cards. The 4800 Radeons are masking the actual cpu performance - the comparison of the cpu's is invisible. This is such a joke.

But o so nicely written as if to APPEAR as full disclosure.

Welcome to the world of BENCHMARKETING.

Funny also - the oclox method for the i7 is not even mentioned - but the PII is detailed - and it is a limiting oclox. Hype it with a NORTH BRIDGE and you will see i7 go fizzle.

but yeh, even the dual core could do this bs with 2 4890's - very nice little trick being so open and honest.

And the the conclusions = patronizing. and then the tests are abandoned for personal opinion about UNSPECIFIED "APPS" - comments like = o, yeh I would buy an i7 anyway = so what was the test for - hmmmmm?

Hey - you can apologize for that goof next month - LMAO AT YOU :)
 
Very good follow up article, very interesting results, especially if you are looking for a specific "point" for your gaming rig (resolution settings).

For everyone saying what if you did, or why didn't you do this. If you can do it for one system, you can do it for the other system, EXCEPT for what Don pointed out in the conclusion that most seem to have missed.

AMD board = crossfire
INTEL board = crossfire or sli

INTEL i7 = DDR3 Limited MBs
AMD 955 =DDR2 or DDR3 Many MBs

This article was to the point, you take a system for what it is, compare it to the closest possible setup and take the price difference and add it in to your video subsystem.

You can go hundreds cheaper with either AMD or INTEL (except i7) the options are limitless and writing up an article to compare any and every possible situation .... well good luck with that, you will NEVER get it completed before the next TECH upgrade is released.

To jab at people crying about the "overclocking," NOTHING is guaranteed, you may get lucky and end up with an i7/955 that reaches 4.2ghz, or you may end up with a bad pick that only goes +200 over its stock.

Personally if I want to get as high as possible, im going to stick my whole computer in the freezer with a few cords coming out the back. Or better yet, buy myself a liquid nitrogen plant. :)

Anyway good job cleeve on taking thousands of feedback and showing that some people can actually go back on thier own mistakes.
 


I like the specific point being resolution settings. I ammend my SBM suggestion to not be based on price month to month, but resolution blocks. The price will just be a statistic on what is needed to get the job done. I'd still refrain from duplicating systems article to article as there is more than one road to the same goal and both should be explored. Even if it takes every other article to explore both options.
 
[citation][nom]dirtmountain[/nom]I have to disagree with you batman on your $800 budget is the line for PhenomII to i7. This build was a $1,300 build. An AMD PhenomII x4 940 gaming build at $1,000 would outperform an i7 $1,000 gaming build hands down due to the cost difference. There's really very little benefit from going to a P2 955 over a P2 940 in any gaming benchmark.[/citation]

Oh, no you misunderstood what I was saying. I was saying that IF you were planning on spending $800 or more. If would totally be worth it to wait, save up the extra money, and go with an i7 920 rig. My i7 build cost me about a little over $1200. But I know it's worth it cause i'm going to be set for a LONG time. But yea, I don't even think you could build an $800 i7 rig without serious skimpin' on other key components. At that price range AMD owns. For now at least. We'll see how things play out when the i5's are released.
 
[citation][nom]bpdski[/nom]This still isn't a good test. If you've got the money to buy an SLI mobo and dual video cards, the i7 is for you. If you're looking for a budget gaming system, I think the AMD wins. What you want to look at is a single card system. You can buy a Phenom II X3 for $120 and a 770 mobo for $80. This makes your core components $300 less than the i7. In this situation, if you spend $100 on a 4770 card for your i7 system, you could spend $400 on a 4870 X2 in your AMD system. In this scenario, I imagine the AMD wins easily. In reality, I would just put a 4890 in the AMD system and have a great gaming machine for about $200 less.[/citation]
Well said, however, the propaganda barrier prevents this logic from reaching the enchanted masses caught in the iron hypnotic grip of spintel benchmarketing. It is so off the scale that people can't possibly condider that the original Ph II was a threat to i7, and that 955 is capable of smoking it.

This article hides the truth behind dual video cards. and different oclox tweaks. 955 is crippled yet still "hangs in there" - which is a sad summary also.

The Left for Dead test shows the reality through cpu limitation - but people can't see thru the enchantment of the marketing spin. So they throw money at the king of antitrust. and the idiot masses prevail thru their support of ignorance. and the voice of reason is unheard. It's an old story about the human condition really. People do not want to see their sleepy state. I did not create that; I just announce it - again.
 
Why didn't the article overclock the video cards? 4890 has much more oc headroom than 4870, so I'm sure the phenom II benchmarks would end up a lot closer to the core i7.

Also, I think most core i7's can oc to around 3.8 ghz. This just seems like a half hearted attempt at a true comparison, since neither systems were overclocked to anywhere near potential.
 
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