CrossFireX and the Phenom II X4 940 – Competitive or Not?
by Gary Key on February 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Call of Duty: World at War
While not our favorite Call of Duty game, World at War certainly improves upon the graphics quality of previous versions. We play through the first few minutes of the Semper FI level by following a repeatable course and capture our performance results with FRAPS. We set the various graphics and texture options to their highest settings with AA at 2x and AF at 8x.
This game is not particularly hard on either the GPU or CPU, but we do hit a hard cap at 94fps. At 1680x1050 the Phenom II platform is able match either Intel platform in single card and CrossFire mode, although minimum frame rates favor Intel slightly. When overclocked, the Phenom II is only about 2% slower in average frame rates but minimum frame rates are 20% lower.
Adding a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 12% and minimum frame rates decrease 2% for the Phenom II. The Intel Q9550 has an 11% increase in average frame rates and 4% in minimum frame rates. The Core i7 average frame rates improve by 13% and minimum rates decrease by 12%. Overclocking our processors resulted in a 2%~5% improvement in average frame rates with the Q9550 benefiting the greatest.
We have roughly the same performance results at 1920x1200 when comparing the platforms. The Phenom II is competitive with the Intel platforms in single card and CrossFire operation, though minimum frame rates in CrossFire mode trail the Intel solutions around 5% on average. Once we overclock the CPUs, the minimum frame rate is about 16% lower on the Phenom II compared to the Intel products.
Installing a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 27% and minimum frame rates increase 16% for the Phenom II. The Intel Q9550 has a 28% increase in average frame rates and 24% in minimum frame rates. The Core i7 average frame rates improve by 29% and minimum rates increase by 30%. Overclocking our processors resulted in a 4%~5% improvement in average frame rates with the Q9550 benefiting the most.
We did not notice any difference in game play quality at either resolution between the platforms after playing through several of the levels. Each platform offered a very smooth and fluid gaming experience. We thought the higher minimum frame rates on the Intel systems would be noticeable during the action scenes in the jungle, but we honestly could not tell the systems apart during testing.
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megabuster - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
If it's not too troublesome next time please include a few pictures of your hardware set up. :)none12345 - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
There are errors in the benchmark charts on page 9....and maybe other pages..In the first chart you have the overclocked 9550 CF at the top of the chart, yet if you look at the min and max frame rates it is NOT the top performer, the core i7 beats it with 5 more min frames and 12 more max frames. The overclocked phenom ii cf shoudl also beat it with 11 higher min frames tho 13 less max frames.
In the second chart, the clear winer by the min/max frames is the overclocked phenom ii CF, it had a 9 higher min fps and 6 higher max fps yet its rated lower then the core i7. It had 21 more min fps yet only 2 less max fps then the 9550 but was ranked way lower.
Your score or min/max numbers are fubar...something is really wrong with those charts.
Maybe some of the other charts are messed up too, but this page stood out like a sore thumb.
Gary Key - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
The charts are sorted by Average Frame Rates, unfortunately our engine does not allow multiple sorts on values. Let me see if I can do something different in the SLI article with an Excel chart, or I might just separate all the values into individual charts..7Enigma - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 - link
Gary, Let me just throw my opinion in to keep it sorted by average frame rates.That is probably the most important data point (next to possibly minimum) and so is a good way of ranking. I will thank you again and ask that all future reviews use your format of showing all 3 data points as it is very important in determining the better card for a specific game at a specific resolution/detail setting.
balancedthinking - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
The Phenom II massively gains gaming performance with an overclocked Nortbridge because it directly boosts the cache performance.Reviews like the one from the german site p3d showed an increase in gaming performance worth 300-500mhz core frequency for an overclock of only 400 mhz NB frequenzy!
The NB runs stock @ only 1800 mhz. Good overclocks are in the range of 2600 - 2800mhz. Imagine the performance that is missing in the OC results from anand!
That is why the Q9550 can pull ahead when overclocked, because due to architecture, the cache gets overclocked too wenn you raise the reference clock.
The Phenom II 940 offers great potential when tweaking the NB clock but you have to do it manually in contrast to Q9550!
So please Anand, redo the Phenom II 940 OC tests with the Northbridge frequency maxed out. Only that would be a fair comparison.
Gary Key - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
The NB frequency is at 2486MHz in these tests. I have it listed on page two now. I could not go higher and maintain this clock speed in Vista 64. Raising the NB speed to 2712 meant lowering CPU speed to 3842MHz. I test both values and our 3955/2486 combo performed the best.Kiijibari - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
Perfect :)Thx a lot.
Kiijibari - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
I agree, an info concerning the NB clock of the Phenom2 is missing.@anandtech: Please add it.
cheers
Kiiji
Kiijibari - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
From the article:"(17.5x226, DDR2-1205, 5-5-5-18)"
That means, that the NB was clocked with 2034 MHz, if nobody changed the default multiplier 9
CPUGuy - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
balancedthinking,Thanks for providing this tidbit of information regarding how cache is overclocked on the Intel vs AMD CPUS. If this review is based on what you said then it should be amended for re-testing.