SYSMark 2007 Performance

Our journey starts with SYSMark 2007, the only all-encompassing performance suite in our review today. The idea here is simple: one benchmark to indicate the overall performance of your machine.

SYSMark really taxes two cores most of the time, giving the edge to Lynnfield and its aggressive turbo modes. Lightly threaded or mixed workloads won't do so well on the Phenom II X6.

SYSMark 2007 - Overall

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.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 - Retouch Artists Speed Test

Performance here is good, but even Photoshop doesn't make consistent enough use of all six cores to really give the Phenom II X6 the edge it needs here. It's faster than the Phenom II X4, but not faster than the Core i5 750.

AMD’s 890FX Chipset & The Test Video Encoding Performance
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  • Eeqmcsq - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link

    Hey, found a typo, on the AMD Turbo page:

    "While mainstream CPUs are down at 65nm". I think you meant 65w.
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link

    Thank you! Fixed!
  • falc0ne - Thursday, April 29, 2010 - link

    :O) lol
  • Rick83 - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link

    there's also an "i7 670" in one of the charts on the first pages, which should clearly be an i5.
  • msc_chandu - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link

    nm refers to nano-meter and 65nm is a technology node. So, the processor manufacturing has been rolling down. For example, 250nm to 130nm to 90nm to 65nm to 55nm etc...

    It is not a typo and was mentioned correctly. :)
  • DaCentaur - Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - link

    Chandu naanna, if you take a look at the context, i.e. the sentences before and after the "wrong" sentence, you should be able to understand why it should be "W" instead of "nm".

    "High end desktop CPUs now spend their days bumping up against 125 - 140W limits. While mainstream CPUs are down at 65W. Mobile CPUs are generally below 35W. These TDP limits become a problem as you scale up clock speed or core count."

    Ardhamainada? :D
  • creathir - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link

    As usual Anand, the article was great and really helped with figuring out where I am taking my wife's next computer. I was tempted to go AMD this time around for her next PC, but after reading this I believe I will stick with an Intel solution. Thanks man!

    - Creathir
  • webmastir - Tuesday, April 27, 2010 - link

    yup. agree...very informative article. thanks!
  • pow123 - Wednesday, May 5, 2010 - link

    You would have to be insane to pay $1000 for a chip that may be good for gaming. at $199 with slightly lower performance its a no brainer. When I build a system, I don't care if the frame rates etc is 10 to 15% better. Who cares ; the chip is fast and I have not problems playing high end games. I have no special setup and it does everything that my friends I7 can do. Good for me I get more pc for the buck . Go ahead and go broke buying just a motherboard and cpu when I can get a modern motherboard a cpu, 6gigs of ddr3 1600, a 1tb hd and a dvdrw. More for me.
  • abd-jbr - Friday, June 18, 2010 - link

    i compared intel and AMD from almost AMD start ( K6 II ) CPU , i believe that AMD did not change their Policy much : they still offer more for less , with one different , in that time the market was also different from today , now a days , you can easly found all the hardware you need and it's compatible and works with AMD ,
    it's accurate Say : it's not about absolute Perf , it's about pref at a given price
    and in this , i think AMD wins .

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