AMD's Fall Refresh: New Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs Balance Price and Performance
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 21, 2010 2:52 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- AMD
- Phenom II X6
- Athlon II
3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering Test
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores.
The 1075T comes close to its competitors in the 3dsmax test, while the Phenom II X4 970 definitely falls short.
The quad-core Athlon II X4 645 does much better than the dual-core i3 530 (and by extension the 540). The same holds true for the Athlon II X3 450 vs. the Pentium G6950.
Cinebench R10
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
Single threaded performance is AMD's weakest point. Even at 3.5GHz the Phenom II X4 970 can't keep up with a turboed Core i5 750. If you run a predominantly single threaded workload, Intel will typically offer you better performance than AMD.
Turn up the thread count however and the value proposition shifts to AMD. The Phenom II X6 1075T gives you more for your money in a heavily threaded app than the Core i7 860, and the Phenom II X4 970 is a smidge ahead of the i5 750. The Athlon II X4 645 and Athlon II X3 450 both do very well.
I've started running Cinebench 11.5 in preparation for an update to Bench, some of the initial results are below:
The default benchmark is heavily threaded. As a result the scores echo what we just saw.
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Tanclearas - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Once again, I believe the biggest release AMD could make is the platform. I ended up going with a Q6600 a few years ago when I would have loved to choose AM2+. I have been happy with the Q6600, but I spent a lot more on it than I really wanted to at the time. I could have put together a system using a CPU that cost $200 less, then upgraded one or two years later with a significantly faster CPU.Fast forward to 2010 and the situation is quite similar. I would love to pick up an AM3+ based system with a Phenom II X4 and be ready for whatever AMD has coming. I would build that system right now, and AMD would be getting 2 CPU sales (unless things went horribly, HORRIBLY wrong with BD).
iuqidids_sm - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Is there any news about the 95W x6 cpu's, particularly the 1055? Apparently its on sale outside US, but I can't seem to find it from US based retailers. Thanks.Lolimaster - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
Why don't you use 3DMax 2010 instead of an ancient version from 2005. Enough with the bias.Maybe because in this updated version Phenom II X6 perform better than any i7 quad?
bji - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
I read alot of benchmark reviews. "This benchmark favors Intel" is a line I read quite frequently, and I always assume it's because compiler writers and/or software developers consciously choose to optimize for Intel chips (which makes sense since it's the larger part of the market). "This benchmark favors AMD" is not something I think I've ever read, at least not in a context that led me to believe that it's due to specific optimizations targeted at the processor. Why would 3DMax 2010 perform relatively better on Intel than 3DMax 2005 did? Is it because the newer version has been better optimized for Intel?In that case, is it more valid to use a newer version or an older version? I guess we want our benchmarks to reflect the non-benchmark software that will run on the platform, so I suppose that if most software is Intel-optimized, Intel-optimized benchmarks make sense. If not, then not.
I personally use Linux almost exclusively and I feel pretty confident that the GNU compiler toochain that is used for this operating system is not more optimized for one processor vendor than another - at least not intentionally, anyway.
In the for-money world of Microsoft and Intel with their backroom deals and shady business practices, however, I can't say for sure.
Lolimaster - Tuesday, September 21, 2010 - link
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/desktop-cpu-cha...flyck - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
I would expect Anand to have some form of moderation on this forum?Taft12 - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link
You would think they would with this new forum software, but alas....lwatcdr - Friday, September 24, 2010 - link
Slashcode does.Why do we have to waste time reading dumb stuff like this?
I agree.
but alas....
hacksquad - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
I hope you stop using intel's new cpu's cause it contain AMD technology which is x86-64/AMD64 :PStaples - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - link
I think it would be more helpful if you gave percentages when overclocking in addition to ran clock numbers. It managed 4.0GHz does not mean as much as it achieved a stable overclock of 25% vs the other processor which managed a tiny 10%. Makes comparing things a lot easier.