AMD 890GX SB850 Chipset Debut: Phenom II X6 Ready

Name: AMD 890GX SB850 Chipset Debut: Phenom II X6 Ready - Page 7
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, March 02, 2010, 12:01 AM EDT

3DMark06's built-in CPU test is a multi-threaded DirectX gaming metric that's useful for comparing relative performance between similarly equipped systems. This test consists of two different 3D scenes that are processed with a software renderer that is dependent on the host CPU's performance. Calculations that are normally reserved for your 3D accelerator are instead sent to the CPU for processing and rendering. The frame-rate generated in each test is used to determine the final score.

Futuremark 3DMark06

Synthetic DirectX Gaming

The new Core i5 661 just missed the mark set by the Core 2 Quad Q9400, according to 3DMark06's CPU built-in CPU benchmark, and trails the rest of the pack. Not bad considering it's got half the cores of all of the chips.

The results from 3DMark06's CPU performance module test a similar story to Cinebench. The 890GX-based boards finished slightly ahead of the older 785G, but their margins of victory were not very big.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

Synthetic DirectX Gaming

3DMark Vantage's CPU Test 2 is a multi-threaded test designed for comparing relative game physics processing performance between systems. This test consists of a single scene that features an air race of sorts, with a complex configuration of gates. There are aircraft in the test that trail smoke and collide with various cloth and soft-body obstacles, each other, and the ground. The smoke spreads, and reacts to the planes as they pass through it as well and all of this is calculated on the host CPU.

Surprisingly, 3DMark Vantage tells the exact opposite story of 3DMark06. Here, both 890GX-based motherboards put up the exact same score, which happened to be a bit lower than the 785G. Again though, the delta is less than a single frame per second.

Tags: AMD, Radeon, Phenom, Athlon, Chipset, AM3, IGP

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com