 |
 |
 |
||
|
|
||||
 |
|
|
| Introduction and Specifications | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
AMD is launching a three-pronged attack on the desktop CPU space today, with the introduction of three new quad-core Phenom X4 processors. One of the processors, the new Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition, is AMD's latest flagship desktop CPU. The other two, however, are somewhat surprisingly "green", low-power quad-cores dubbed the Phenom X4 9350e and Phenom X4 9150e.
Strictly from a technical standpoint, the new flagship Phenom X4 9950 and more power-friendly Phenom X4 9350e and Phenom X4 9150e processors are essentially identical. They are all based on the same core and have very similar feature sets. They only differ in their rated clock speeds and associated power ratings. |
| Vital Signs and Overclocking | ||||
As you saw on the previous page, the new Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition and Phenom X4 9350e physically look just like all current Phenom processors. They utilizes the same packaging and 940-pin Socket AM2+ configuration.
We know many of you are wondering just how much clock speed headroom these new Phenoms have left under their hoods, so we spent some time overclocking our chips using a Gigabyte 790FX-chipset based motherboard. Because the Phenom X4 9950 is a "Black Edition" processor, its multiplier is unlocked and can be increased for east overclocking. The X4 9350e, however could only be overclocked by altering the HT frequency, which requires much more work.
|
| Our Test Systems and SANDRA | |||||||||||||||||
How We Configured Our Test Systems: When configuring our test systems for this article, we first entered their respective system BIOSes and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High performance Defaults". We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and set memory timings for either DDR2-1066 (AMD) with 5,5,5,15 timings or DDR3-1333 with 7,7,7,20 timings (Intel). The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows Vista Ultimate was installed. When the Windows installation was complete, we updated the OS, and installed the drivers necessary for our components. Auto-Updating and Windows Defender were then disabled and we installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drives, and ran all of the tests.
SiSoft SANDRA's various benchmark modules reported scores right in-line with logical expectations. The higher-clocked Phenom X4 9950 was faster than any other AMD quad-core CPU and the lower-clocked X4 9350e finished behind the other AMD-based quad-cores, and they both trailed Intel's quad-core offerings by significant amounts in the processor arithmetic and multimedia tests. In the memory bandwidth tests though, the new Phenoms shot to the head of the pack with peak bandwidth of greater than 10GB/s for both. |
| PCMark Vantage | ||||
We ran a handful of processors and platforms, including the new Phenom X3 8750, through Futuremark’s latest system performance metric built especially for Windows Vista, PCMark Vantage. PCMark Vantage runs through a host of different usage scenarios to simulate different types of workloads including High Definition TV and movie playback and manipulation, gaming, image editing and manipulation, music compression, communications, and productivity. Most of the tests are multi-threaded as well, so the tests can exploit the additional resources offered by a quad-core CPU.
The new Phenom X4 9950 and 9350e performed just as expected in the PCMark Vantage suite of benchmark tests. The 9950's higher clock speed make it the fasted AMD CPU released to date, but the 9350e has trouble hanging with any of the competing offerings tested here. |
| LAME MT and Kribibench v1.1 | ||||||||
In our custom LAME MT MP3 encoding test, we convert a large WAV file to the MP3 format, which is a popular scenario that many end users work with on a day-to-day basis to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content. LAME is an open-source mid to high bit-rate and VBR (variable bit rate) MP3 audio encoder that is used widely around the world in a multitude of third party applications.
In this test, we created our own 223MB WAV file (a hallucinogenically-induced Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to the MP3 format using the multi-thread capable LAME MT application in single and multi-thread modes. Processing times are recorded below, listed in seconds. Once again, shorter times equate to better performance. Our custom LAME MT benchmark heavily favored the Intel processors, whether running in single- or multi-threaded mode. The Phenom X4 Black Edition put up the best numbers of any AMD processor, as expected, and the much lower-clocked 9350e trailed by a decent margin.
For this next batch of tests, we ran Kribibench v1.1, a 3D rendering benchmark produced by the folks at Adept Development. Kribibench is an SSE aware software renderer where a 3D model is rendered and animated by the host CPU and the average frame rate is reported. We used two of the included models with this benchmark: a "Sponge Explode" model consisting of over 19.2 million polygons and the test suite's "Ultra" model that is comprised of over 16 billion polys. The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition performed well in the Kribibench tests, besting the Core 2 Quad Q6600. The Phenom X4 9950e finished somewhere in between the triple-core 8750 and higher-clocked Phenom 9600. |
| Cinebench R10 and 3DMark06 | ||||||||
Cinebench R10 is an OpenGL 3D rendering performance test based on Cinema 4D. Cinema 4D from Maxon is a 3D rendering and animation tool suite used by 3D animation houses and producers like Sony Animation and many others. It's very demanding of system processor resources and is an excellent gauge of pure computational throughput.
This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders a single 3D scene and tracks the length of the entire process. The time it took each test system to render the entire scene is represented in the graph below, listed in seconds.
Once again, the new Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition was the fastest of the AMD-built processors, but it couldn't compete with the Core 2 Quad Q6600 or the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 though. The Phenom X4 9350e also trailed all of the competing offerings in the single-threaded test and finished right in between the tri-core X3 8750 and quad-core 9600 in the mult-threaded test.
According to 3DMark06's built-in CPU benchmark module, the Phenom X4 9950 is a tad more powerful than a Core 2 Quad Q6600 - the QX9650 can't be touched though. And once again, the Phenom X4 9350e came in between the tri-core X3 8750 and quad-core 9600. |
| Gaming: Crysis and F.E.A.R. | ||||
For our next set of tests, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with Crysis and F.E.A.R. When testing processors with Crysis or F.E.A.R., we drop the resolution to 800x600, and reduce all of the in-game graphical options to their minimum values to isolate CPU and memory performance as much as possible. However, the in-game effects, which control the level of detail for the games' physics engines and particle systems, are left at their maximum values, since these actually do place some load on the CPU rather than GPU.
Our gaming benchmarks mirror much of what we have seen up to this point. The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition proved to be AMD's most potent CPU to date in both the F.E.A.R. and Crysis benchmarks. The lower-clocked Phenom X4 9350e, however, trailed its higher clocked competition. |
| Total System Power Consumption | ||||
|
Before we bring this article to a close, we'd like to cover a few final data points. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power our test systems were consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you an idea as to how much power each configuration consumed while idling and under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not just the power being drawn by the motherboards alone.
The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition and X4 9350e couldn't be more different from a power-consumption perspective. As expected, the higher-clocked X4 9950 with its 140 watt TDP consumed the more power under load than any of the other processors we tested. The 65W Phenom X4 9350e, however, was much more power friendly and consumed only slightly more power than a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4600+. Also note, that with a different motherboard, the AMD power consumption scores would likely be even lower, as the early revision Gigabyte 790FX motherboard we used for testing consumes more power than some other 790FX-based products. |
| Our Summary and Conclusion | ||||
Performance Summary: Summarizing the performance of the Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition processor is a relatively easy matter. The Phenom X4 9950 is the fastest desktop CPU to be released by AMD to date. Due to its 2.6GHz core clock speed, the X4 9950 is roughly 4% faster than the X4 9850 across the board. In comparison to Intel's offerings, the Phenom X4 9950 is about on par with the Core 2 Quad Q6600, trading victories depending on the test. The new Phenom X4 9350e is a little harder to categorize. As expected, due to its relatively low clock speed, the X4 9350e finished behind AMD's other quad-core offerings. It was, however, faster than the higher-clock tri-core Phenom X3 8750 in most multi-threaded benchmarks. In single-threaded applications though, the X4 9350e's 2.0GHz core clock resulted in comparatively lower performance.
The new Phenom X4 processors being released by AMD today will appeal to two totally different types of consumer. The Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition is an obvious candidate for AMD enthusiasts looking for the best CPU AMD has to offer. It's 140 W TDP means it is only suited to higher-end motherboards that can supply the necessary power, but anyone looking for a Black Edition should be pairing it with an appropriate enthusiast-class or professional series motherboard anyway.
|
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
