Higher Clock Speeds, No TLB Issues and Better Pricing: The New Phenom
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 27, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Gaming Performance
Supreme Commander
Supreme Commander is a popular RTS (Real Time Strategy) title that can be very CPU dependent. Our benchmark involves playing back, as fast as possible, a 4-person match and recording the simulation time for the replay in seconds.
We ran Supreme Commander at 1920 x 1200 with High fidelity presets, v-sync was disabled.
Here's one area where AMD needs pure clock speed to keep up, even the old X2 6400+ is able to outperform the latest Phenom processors. As long as you have two cores you're golden in Supreme Commander, but AMD's K8 and Phenom architectures are clearly slower under Supreme Commander.
Crysis
The most demanding FPS on the market right now is Crysis, and we couldn't resist using it as a benchmark. We ran at 1024 x 768 with Medium Quality defaults and used the game's built in CPU benchmark.
More than anything you're going to be GPU limited with Crysis, but in terms of how well these CPUs handle the workload given to them by the game - Intel continues to take the cake here.
Oblivion: Shivering Isles
Our Oblivion benchmark is the same one we use in our GPU reviews. Oblivion can vary from being CPU limited to GPU limited depending on the scene, we picked one that was GPU limited to illustrate that even with a wide array of CPUs when you're GPU limited, the differences can be little if anything:
Half Life 2 Episode Two
Half Life 2 is obviously more CPU limited these days, and we continue to see that Intel is ahead of the pack when it comes to pure CPU gaming performance.
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ap90033 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
What!!!! How darest though speak such blasphemy!AMD is your king! Bow to PHENOM!!! :) LOL
sorry feeling a little silly today.
hvypetals - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Why are the Intel core 2 duo's outperforming the intel quad core cpus?Is it because the games cant see beyond a dual core?
ap90033 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Thats why I got the E8400 and clocked it to 3.6 ghz, it was cheap and it does very well for gamers....ap90033 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Oh wait I could have saved 20 bucks and got a much slower AMD. Crap...ap90033 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Then I would have had an AWESOME slow CPU instead of a CRAPPY much faster CPU....Roy2001 - Monday, March 31, 2008 - link
Wow, that's superb logic!fitten - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
Most games can't "see beyond" one core, much less two, three, or four.nycromes - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
This is what I expected from AMD and from all of you here making comments. It has always astounded me that people will act like these chips are the equivalent of a 500mhz chip compared to Intel's chips. Its like saying my car has 375hp and yours only has 370, my car is soo much better than yours. The difference is there, but for most people, the difference is quite negligable.The differences amount to almost nothing depending on application. Sure there are better parts out there, but competition drives markets to innovate and will bring down prices. Oh how awful. The intel fanboys can ride their high horses still, but AMD releasing better products benefits us all. Try taking your heads out of that little box and looking at the big picture.
I like to see AMD working on new products and hopefully they can get more competitive. We all need to be hoping for this so we don't see slowdowns in development and skyrocketing chip prices. I mean, look at the GPU industry compared to a few years ago and tell me that the situation is great for consumers. More competition = happier consumers. nuf said.
ap90033 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
you are right, and you obviously dont game. Intel=FPS=FTWmark3450 - Thursday, March 27, 2008 - link
What a complete strawman. Look at the data, the best Phenom chip is getting beated by the q6600 by 20% in real world performance, not the 1% in your idotic horsepower strawman attack.Yes everyone understands that the lack of competion isn't good. The reason people bitch at AMD is that they want AMD to have a competative offereing, but that data clear says they don't. They know because of that there isn't going to be any competition in the CPU market for a long time. Yes that isn't good, but sticking your head in the sand and denying the reality of the situation doesn't help.