General Application Performance

SYSMark 2007 is an application benchmark suite that plays back real world usage scenarios in four categories (E-Learning, Video Creation, Productivity and 3D), using the following applications:

Adobe After Effects 7
Adobe Illustrator CS2
Adobe Photoshop CS2
AutoDesk 3ds Max 8
Macromedia Flash 8
Microsoft Excel 2003
Microsoft Outlook 2003
Microsoft PowerPoint 2003
Microsoft Word 2003
Microsoft Project 2003
Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9 series
Sony Vegas 7
SketchUp 5
WinZip 10.0

Performance is measured in each individual category and then an overall score is reported.

We don't see a huge performance increase thanks to Nehalem, we're looking at an average boost of 7 - 12% at the same clock speed as Penryn. The Core i7-965 managed a 7% performance advantage over the QX9770, while the i7-920 pulled 12% on the identically clocked Q9450.

The biggest performance boost is naturally in the 3D suite, the rest of the applications are showing 5 - 10% performance boosts at the same clock.