CrossFireX and the Phenom II X4 940 – Competitive or Not?
by Gary Key on February 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Call of Duty: World at War
While not our favorite Call of Duty game, World at War certainly improves upon the graphics quality of previous versions. We play through the first few minutes of the Semper FI level by following a repeatable course and capture our performance results with FRAPS. We set the various graphics and texture options to their highest settings with AA at 2x and AF at 8x.
This game is not particularly hard on either the GPU or CPU, but we do hit a hard cap at 94fps. At 1680x1050 the Phenom II platform is able match either Intel platform in single card and CrossFire mode, although minimum frame rates favor Intel slightly. When overclocked, the Phenom II is only about 2% slower in average frame rates but minimum frame rates are 20% lower.
Adding a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 12% and minimum frame rates decrease 2% for the Phenom II. The Intel Q9550 has an 11% increase in average frame rates and 4% in minimum frame rates. The Core i7 average frame rates improve by 13% and minimum rates decrease by 12%. Overclocking our processors resulted in a 2%~5% improvement in average frame rates with the Q9550 benefiting the greatest.
We have roughly the same performance results at 1920x1200 when comparing the platforms. The Phenom II is competitive with the Intel platforms in single card and CrossFire operation, though minimum frame rates in CrossFire mode trail the Intel solutions around 5% on average. Once we overclock the CPUs, the minimum frame rate is about 16% lower on the Phenom II compared to the Intel products.
Installing a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 27% and minimum frame rates increase 16% for the Phenom II. The Intel Q9550 has a 28% increase in average frame rates and 24% in minimum frame rates. The Core i7 average frame rates improve by 29% and minimum rates increase by 30%. Overclocking our processors resulted in a 4%~5% improvement in average frame rates with the Q9550 benefiting the most.
We did not notice any difference in game play quality at either resolution between the platforms after playing through several of the levels. Each platform offered a very smooth and fluid gaming experience. We thought the higher minimum frame rates on the Intel systems would be noticeable during the action scenes in the jungle, but we honestly could not tell the systems apart during testing.
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jrch2k8 - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
first of all, nice article. i mention it cuz im upgrading my pc this month and this article make my choice clear XDi will go for a AMD plataform, my god nice move from these guyz, i think p2 is the best price/performance cpu around (maybe ill wait for p2 925 for ddr3).cuz i7 is a really expensive upgrade.
i went to new egg and add to my cart 1 cpu, ram, and 2 radeon hd 4850 using mid range components nothing top notch
intel i920 6gb ddr3 tc roughly 1108$ :(
intel 1940 "" "" roughly 1350$ :( :(
amd p2 920 4 gb ddr2 dc nice 673$
amd p2 940 "" " " nice nice 713$
amd p2 940 "" "" 4870 CF 800$ XD
that is a hugeeeee money diff for a 30% perf diff at most and with that extra bucks put a nice air cooling and OC so ... and you dont need to worry too much in near future like with intel and their insane socket change every 2 weeks (i know 775 have been for a while but even if is the same physical socket every mobo/chpset need a specific cpu number so is like changing the socket anyway)
and with linux and not winbloat vista perf is going to be hell better and winxp in my other hd ofc for some game that doesnt work with wine XD
ssj4Gogeta - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
Most mobos support Core 2 Duo, Quad, and Pentium dual core processors (i.e., all core-based processors). So I don't think it is a valid argument.raystormer - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
first of all to me the fx chipset is old compared to the new 790gx /w 750southbridge chipset plus it supports crossfire which u mention the 790fx is suppose to be better,don;t know how u came to that conclusion furthermore something about those scores do'nt seem right...cause i have seen beachmarks with the phenon 2 smoking the i7 920 @3.6...so u trying to tell me that @3.9 it performs slower bull$%#@ssj4Gogeta - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
the i7 was also overclocked. read the article.BLaber - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
What was the Phenom II's North Bridge Uncore part) speed set to when oc to 3.9Ghz in above article.TDMFHK - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=802&...">http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=802&... how the PII is on top in their test (i know other video card etc etc... but how ??????????).Something is fishy with this FarCry2.Goty - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
You really can't compare the two sets of results since the system specs aren't the same.m4dd0g - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
Any chance of seeing how the phenom acts with 6gb RAM like the top intel box? Not sure why you had different memory configs there, I understand its DDR3 v DDR2 but why more of it?Goty - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
The i7 supports triple-channel DDR3 while the other processors support dual-channel DDR2, so the normal memory configurations are 3GB or 6GB for the i7 and 2GB or 4GB for the C2Q and PHII.Getting 6GB on the PHII system would be a little dumb because you'd have to go with 3x2GB DIMMs (just like the i7 box) and then you wouldn't be able to operate in dual-channel mode.
I highly doubt the performance difference between 6GB and 4GB of RAM is noticeable anyway.
niva - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
I've been wondering the same...Even more bothersome is that they chose 4gb for the DDR2 system which makes no sense, for an equivalently priced system you can afford 8Gb of RAM on the AMD system easily and gain a significant boost out of the extra RAM. So if any one of these systems should have a disadvantage in RAM it should be the intel system but whatever.
I'm running an original phenom with 8 gigs, the chip with the errata which I've never seen manifest. I'll buy one of these phenom 2 chips after I get back from my trip to Russia in March though and actually do a slight OC on it as it seems to take it so well.
Cheers!