Microsoft Excel 2007

Excel can be a very powerful mathematical tool. In this benchmark we're running a Monte Carlo simulation on a very large spreadsheet of stock pricing data.

Microsoft Excel 2007 SP1 - Monte Carlo Simulation

The Excel test is peculiar in its results. It must be one of the few situations where Bloomfield's memory bandwidth advantage is seen as even the Core i7 870 can't outperform the i7 920. The Core 2 Quad Q9650 does well thanks to its large 12MB L2 cache, as does the Q6600 with a beefy 8MB cache.

Sony Vegas Pro 8: Blu-ray Disc Creation

Although technically a test simulating the creation of a Blu-ray disc, the majority of the time in our Sony Vegas Pro benchmark is spend encoding the 25Mbps MPEG-2 video stream and not actually creating the Blu-ray disc itself.

Sony Vegas Pro 8 - Blu-ray Disc Image Creation (25Mbps MPEG-2)

Hyper Threading is good for about 4% here, giving the 920 the slight edge over the Core i5 750.

Sorenson Squeeze: FLV Creation

Another video related benchmark, we're using Sorenson Squeeze to convert regular videos into Flash videos for use on websites.

Sorenson Squeeze Pro 5 - Flash Video Creation

The i5 750 pays the HT penalty, taking another 20 seconds to render our test video than the i7 920. It is still faster than the Phenom II X4 965 BE at a much lower cost. The Core i7 870 comes close but can't beat the i7 975.

3D Rendering Performance Archiving Performance
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  • Ben90 - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    Was reading it pretty casually thinking it was just a preview because i didnt think the NDA lifted yet.... then i saw a next page... looked at the tab and it has like 20 pages OMGOMGOMGOMG!!! ITS OUT LOL....Im gonna try really really hard to read the article before i go to the gaming performance though...prolly wont make it
  • Lashek - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link

    you compare it to the Q6600 a lot in the text, but no comparison with an overclocked Q6600 is made in the benches...
    If you have figures of an overclocked Q6600, could you add them? all over the web these question are asked but business leaders who own these web sites dont want to challenge a overclocked core 2 duo,and quads,or is it politics?
  • coldpower27 - Thursday, September 10, 2009 - link

    You will have to compare an overclocked I750 or i860 to the Q6600 as that would only be fair, no sense doing a stock vs overclocked comparison.

    It is well known you can equal todays stock performance by overclocking to some degree, but if your going to compare overclock then you need to overclock both processors.

    Q6600 will be destroyed by i750 and i860 if you compare perf/watt however.
  • Joshaze - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link

    Anand,

    When testing World of Warcraft what processAffinityMask value where you using?

    The default value for this variable does not take advantage of all cores on the Core i7 processors.

    Here is the article discussing the CVAR: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi...">http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topi...

    The value should be 255 for 8 cores and 15 for 4 cores.

    If not, any chance you could retest using the above values and report back on any changes?
  • Googer - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link

    The lack of PS2 is a real deal killer for me, I have a beloved IBM Clicky Model M keyboard (1391401) and I will not give it up for anything. I know PS2-usb keyboard adapter exist but they just don't work very well.

    I am not alone, there are tens of thousands of vintage keyboard lovers out there and the IBM Model 1391401 is one of the more popular ones among keyboard aficionados.

    Kind of sad that a 20-30 year old keyboard still works as well as they day it was made, new cheaper keyboards are less acuurate, uncomfortable, very flimsy and are poorly made. You would be lucky to get 5-6 years out of 'some' of these newer $90+ keyboards.

    Save PS2, keep it alive. PS/2 has less lag than any USB keyboard I have tried. There are a lot of great keyboards still in use. There is no shortage of real estate on the back IO shields, so there should be no reason not to include a PS/2 port..
  • MamiyaOtaru - Thursday, September 10, 2009 - link

    Seconding this. USB is incapable of providing n-key rollover for keyboards. PS2 can. Not everyone needs that, but I won't do without it.
  • Zoomer - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link

    I saw at least one PS2 port on these motherboards. What are you talking about again? Yes, they seem to be shared with the PS2 port for mice, but mice work the same on USB anyway.
  • Taft12 - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link

    This is probably the most off-topic post I've seen on this site. Fortunately for all of us, your rant is invalid and you never have to say anything about this ever again:

    http://www.syba.com/index.php?controller=Product&a...">http://www.syba.com/index.php?controller=Product&a...
  • boogerlad - Tuesday, September 8, 2009 - link

    where't ta152h now? That idiot is finally done trolling.
  • snakeoil - Wednesday, September 9, 2009 - link

    all the results of this review are biased because they were made with turbo enabled, that's at least 600 mhz overclocking.
    to be fair you must compare this results against a phenom 2 overclockded at least 600 mhz
    people is not stupid.

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