AMD's Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 13, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Performance
To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.
The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.
Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.
Intel's architectures are definitely favored in our Photoshop test; the 965 BE can't outperform the cheaper Q9550.
DivX 8.5.3 with Xmpeg 5.0.3
Our DivX test is the same DivX / XMpeg 5.03 test we've run for the past few years now, the 1080p source file is encoded using the unconstrained DivX profile, quality/performance is set balanced at 5 and enhanced multithreading is enabled:
Our lighter encoding test puts the 965 BE above all of the Core 2 Quads and just behind the i7 920.
x264 HD Video Encoding Performance
Graysky's x264 HD test uses the publicly available x264 codec (open source alternative to H.264) to encode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
The 965 BE manages to pull ahead of the i7 920 in the first pass of our test, however the second more strenuous pass clearly goes to the i7. Compared to the Core 2 Quads however, the 965 is without an equal - it's better than the Q9650.
Windows Media Encoder 9 x64 Advanced Profile
In order to be codec agnostic we've got a Windows Media Encoder benchmark looking at the same sort of thing we've been doing in the DivX and x264 tests, but using WME instead.
Slightly faster than the i7 920 again? Hooray for AMD.
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Roland00 - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
The 200 dollar price isn't a mail in rebate, Micro Center a small computer store chain with about 30 stores market itself as a computer builder destination. They lose about 80 dollars on the processor to get you into the store and hoping to sell you enough other stuff (or assembly or warranties) to make up for their loss leader.steelicon - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
ROTFLMAOBBQ! Agreed! They get you in more ways than one, either it's the Processor itself, the Chipset, the DDR3 or all of them combined. Good thing we have another choice of platform!steelicon - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
Will this run on an old AsuS Crosshair NV590A-SLI motherboard? I surely do hope so...grimpr - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
A really fast CPU, some minor tweaks to the K10 architecture and AMD stays "current", but the TDP's are ridiculous, 140W!!, for non existing gods sake! at 95W TDP and at the same price they would be excellent purchases to Intels Lynnfields. Clearly they are positioned at gamers,a crowd long lost to AMD. For uses other than happy jerking at intel compiler optimized benchmarks and moronic SuperPi's with analyzing miniscule FPS differences at games, the AMD Phenom II 905E at 65W TDP is an excellent buy. Something about the 45nm SOI manufacturing of this chips from AMD makes us wonder...FireSnake - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
You really need to grow up with this 140W and take a very close look at the power consumption table ;)JimmiG - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
It's not like the 140W TDP happened by accident or took AMD by surprise. 120 - 140W has been the target TDP for high-end CPUs for a long time. At this targeted TDP, AMD found a 3.4 GHz chip could be produced with decent yields. Some thought, research and design goes into the launch of a new CPU even if it's just a 200 MHz clockspeed bump.Don't worry, we'll not see a 160W or 180W CPU any time soon since 140W is a sensible target. Modern heatpipe coolers, mobos and PSUs have no trouble with them.
If you think the difference between a 65W and a 140W CPU is too much, you must live in a very dark house or apartment since each light bulb consumes almost that entire difference.
PrinceGaz - Friday, August 14, 2009 - link
My lightbulbs consume between 12 and 20W of power each as I long since left behind inefficient incandescent bulbs.hyc - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
You guys are reading way too much into that 140W TDP spec. Look at the loaded power consumption results, the 965 is 223W vs 220W for the 955. So it's using a whopping 3W more than the 955, BFD.Griswold - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
Some people seem to miss the T for Thermal in that figure indeed.hyc - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
Ah, so which part of the Laws of Thermodynamics did you skip in school?You can't emit more power out (thermal or otherwise) than you took in.