Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S: A New 65W Quad-Core
by Anand Lal Shimpi on January 27, 2009 8:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Fallout 3 Game Performance
Bethesda’s latest game uses an updated version of the Gamebryo engine (Oblivion). This benchmark takes place immediately outside Vault 101. The character walks away from the vault through the Springvale ruins. The benchmark is measured manually using FRAPS.
Gaming performance here is pretty well clustered around the mid 80s.
With the GPU being the big driver of power consumption here, the CPUs themselves all use a similar amount of power. The variance between similarly clocked CPUs is normal between runs.
Peak power tells a similar story:
The energy efficiency graph is, however, unexpected. The Fallout 3 benchmark is a fixed time test; in other words, it takes the same amount of time to complete regardless of the system. With all benchmarks taking the same amount of time, total energy consumed should be dependent solely on average power. We’ve already seen that average power is pretty similar between the systems, so we should see some pretty even results here right?
Wrong.
While all of the Core 2 Quads consumed around 2800 - 2900J of energy the Core i7s used 2625J and 2479J for the 965 and 920, respectively. Remember that a feature of Core i7 is the ability to completely cut power to one of the cores if it’s not being used. This feature is thanks to Intel’s power gate transistors, which aren’t used in the Core 2 Quads. In a game where all four cores aren’t taxed, Core i7 can pull ahead in energy efficiency despite using a similar amount of power to the rest of the contenders.
The i7-920 actually uses less energy in this test than the lowest power quad-core Penryn we have on the chart.
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UltraWide - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
why was a normal 95W TDP Q9550 not included???Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
I didn't actually have a 95W Q9550 available (Gary has the one we used in our Phenom II review). I provided the Q9650 and the Q9450 so you can get an idea of where the Q9550 would fall.Take care,
Anand
StraightPipe - Thursday, January 29, 2009 - link
I've got to agree with UltraWide.The news is Intel just came up with the S-line of procs.
But the test doesnt compare any S to non-S CPUs...
Isnt that what really matters? the perfomance and power consumption difference between the 95W and the new 65W is what I want to see.
anandtech02148 - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
finally nice to see the pick and choose Anandtech bench, need to take it out of beta, save me a trip to tomshardware.Calin - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
Those processors are perfect as replacements in servers already validated for the 95W version of the same processor. While buying i7 would be better, maybe the i7 servers weren't validated (remember the 3 years of support for business-related hardware lines)danchen - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
looking at the numbers, it doesn't look like its worth the extra money.Its like buying an "environmentally friendly" car - high initial investment, takes many years to get an ROI.
perhaps if you're the type who runs your computers 24/7, it may actually save you some bills in the long run.
rpsgc - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
Or... you could just undervolt your current CPU. Voilà.BTW, what is the default Vcore of these processors?
WillR - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
Depends on the model, but I assume you mean the likes of the Q9550. Those are 1.22V.http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?... shows a few.
lucassp - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
"the publicly available x264 codec (open source alternative to H.264)"firstly x264 is only an encoder, and doesn't have an encoder included. x264 is an Open Source implementation of the H.264 standard. it's not an alternative to it.
lucassp - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 - link
sorry for the mistake, I meant to say it doesn't have a decoder included ;)