The Lynnfield Preview: Rumblings of Revenge
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 29, 2009 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering Test
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores:
There are three key takeaway points here.
1) Hyper Threading allows the i7-920 to outperform the entry level Lynnfield by nearly 18%.
2) With HT disabled, the $196 Lynnfield is faster than the $316 Core 2 Quad Q9650. It's a true replacement for Penryn in the lineup.
3) Intel could release an even slower Lynnfield and, by enabling HT, offer a chip faster than all other Penryn and Phenom II based processors in the market.
Cinebench R10
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
The single threaded Cinebench test shows us just how powerful the Nehalem core is. Remember, we're looking at single-core performance here.
Without an aggressive turbo mode, the 2.66GHz Lynnfield sample is faster than a 3.0GHz Penryn. Even at 2.13GHz Lynnfield is able to perform like a 2.5GHz Penryn. This is a very flexible core.
These results also give you an indication of exactly how strong the dual-core Nehalem derivatives will be in notebooks late this year and into 2010.
Crank up the thread count and feel the frustration brew. The entry level Lynnfield won't have Hyper Threading enabled, and thus it'll only outperform the Phenom II 955 by 3.4%. Had Intel enabled the HT switch, Lynnfield would not only be 16% faster than AMD's best but it would also be only 5% slower than the i7-920.
POV-Ray 3.73 beta 23 Ray Tracing Performance
POV-Ray is a popular, open-source raytracing application that also doubles as a great tool to measure CPU floating point performance.
I ran the SMP benchmark in beta 23 of POV-Ray 3.73. The numbers reported are the final score in pixels per second.
We see a similar story in POV-Ray.
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ssj4Gogeta - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
There's always the dual-core Nehalem Clarkdale for the mainstream market. And I think they'll launch lower clock Lynnfields too, like Anand said.I think Intel did a good job by separating its high-end processors from the mainstream ones and launching them as a different series. So now instead of having one $1200 extreme part, we have 3 high-end parts, with the lowest priced one a very affordable option for geeks who are on a budget.
ssj4Gogeta - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Congratulations Intel, you've created a beast.What is AMD going to do now? I don't think they have any new cores ready for launch this year. If Lynnfield offers the same performance as i7 920 for Phenom II prices, AMD will either have to bump up their clock speeds ridiculously, or lower their prices yet again. Things aren't looking good for AMD. Lynnfield turns out to be better than I expected.
And I HATE Intel and their tick-tock. Actually I can't decided whether to hate or like it. It's good that they're advancing our planet's technology at a really fast pace so we'll be prepared when aliens attack. But which damn processor do I buy??? They launch a new series every year, and a new stepping every few months. Which one to buy? WHEN to buy??? My parents won't buy me processors every 6 months!
MadMan007 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
You could always do what people did back in the day - upgrade when your current hardware no longer does what you need it to do. I know, crazy right!?Griswold - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Its only a crazy concept if daddy is paying for those upgrades all the time - you and the rest of us know its the right thing to do. :]Jaramin - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Looking at AMD's roadmap, I fear this is going to hurt a lot :( If the pricing is good, it could confine AMD into the lower mainstream segment.Hyperion1400 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
That remains to be seen. Don't Istanbul heading for market at around the same time as Core-i5. There has been little information leaked about Istanbul and no performance numbers have come to light. So, as of now, it is impossible to predict how competitive AMD's offerings will be. Not to mention we have Magny Cours to look forward too in 1H 2010.ssj4Gogeta - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
But Istanbul is just a 6-core Opteron. In other words, a server chip.Hyperion1400 - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
As was Barcelona and Shanghai. But, that didn't seem to stop them from releasing them on the main stream market.Spoelie - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
but costs would be too prohibitivePhII is already similar in die size as bloomfield, and is forced to be priced lower for competitive reasons.
You think AMD won't be hurting if it sells an even larger die to compete with a smaller-than-bloomfield die, in a market where having more than 6 cores is questionable value at best?
No, only thing amd can do is crank up clock speeds, try to get 3.4 and 3.6ghz models out the door
Spoelie - Saturday, May 30, 2009 - link
Oh and up the uncore clock on them as well, preferably 2.4ghz, but might make them look worse in power consumption comparisons