AMD's Phenom Unveiled: A Somber Farewell to K8
by Anand Lal Shimpi on November 19, 2007 1:25 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
3D Rendering Performance
We'll start off our look at 3D rendering performance with the latest version of Cinebench, we ran the single and multi-threaded benchmarks and reported the scores below:
Single threaded performance goes to Intel, highlighting a theme you've probably already noticed thus far: Core 2 is far more efficient per clock than Phenom. AMD would need to be at around 2.8 - 2.9GHz to equal the performance of the Core 2 at 2.4GHz in this particular benchmark, even the Phenom 9900 can't cut it.
Looking at the multi-threaded results we see that AMD does gain some ground, but the standings remain unchanged: Intel can't be beat. We can actually answer one more question using the Cinebench results, and that is whether or not AMD's "true" quad-core (as in four cores on a single die) actually has a tangible performance advantage to Intel's quad-core (two dual-core die on a single package).
If we look at the improvement these chips get from running the multi-threaded benchmark, all of the Phenom cores go up in performance by around 3.79x, while all the Intel processors improve by around 3.53x. There's a definite scaling advantage (~7%), but it's not enough to overcome the inherent architectural advantages of the Core 2 processors.
3dsmax 9
As always we have our 3dsmax 9 test, using SPECapc's 3dsmax 8 benchmark files. The numbers we're reporting below are strictly the CPU rendering composite scores:
Here the Phenom 9900 is basically as fast as the Core 2 Q6600, unfortunately for AMD the 9900 doesn't launch until next year and it will launch at a price greater than the Q6600. AMD needs help cutting prices fast if it expects Phenom to remain competitive in the eyes of everyone who doesn't own a Socket-AM2 motherboard.
Lightwave 9.5
We see a similar story in our Lightwave benchmarks, the Phenom 9900 at best can equal the performance of the Q6600 but at worst it looks like AMD needs another 200 - 300MHz to catch up to Intel's cheapest quad-core:
POV-Ray
The POV-Ray benchmark is quite possibly the least kind to AMD out of the group:
Intel's Q6600 is 20% faster than AMD's fastest Phenom due out in Q1, it's 30% faster than Phenom at the same clock speed, and 35% faster at the most competitive price point.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
124 Comments
View All Comments
Iketh - Wednesday, November 21, 2007 - link
damn where is the rating system??!!strikeback03 - Wednesday, November 21, 2007 - link
If you read the graphs, you will see they are testing total system power draw. Typically they test at the wall with a Kill-A-Watt meter, though this article does not explicitly state that.Assuming the other components were the same between systems, this number then shows the difference in Processor + chipset power consumption between the platforms.
Barcelona is the name of the server processor, ( http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3099">http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=3099 ) is one test. Intel power consumption is pretty much screwed by use of the FB-DIMMs.
cyborgtrader - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
The comments on this topic were great. AMD really let us down on this one. I trade Intel stock, but only buy AMD chips and today I am so dissapointed. I hope AMD read these reviews and get their act together. Patience is a virtue, so I am going to wait for another review after better yeilds have been produced. Guess I can tuck my cash back into my wallet.mmmm, Maybe AMD was joking with this chip. Could Santa be delivering the real Quad? With this reveiew we better hope so.
ct
eye smite - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link
I hope all of you choke on your comments. You're completely judging amd on pre production samples that will all mature and give more accurate benchmarks by the time they hit stores. No it's not a core 2 killer but amd never planned for it to be. They laid out a road map some time back and are following it as best they can with the resources they have. It's the first native quad core, intel can't say that. It's brand new, so it's full potential hasn't been seen and probably fully developed yet. You gobshites are just like the rest of America I have to live with everyday and want it NOW. You sound like a bunch of 2 yr olds screaming mine mine.strikeback03 - Wednesday, November 21, 2007 - link
Anand stated that AMD has promised availability by the end of the week, so unless they shipped him below-average samples to test, this is indeed representative of what will hit stores at first. AMD may or may not have planned it as a Core 2 killer, but if Intel outperforms them on speed and power usage at the same prices, who is gonna buy AMD? Being the first native quad-core is an interesting Trivial Pursuit fact, but it won't win many sales unless performance goes up or price goes down.Screammit - Wednesday, November 21, 2007 - link
All we can do as consumers is make educated choices based on the information we can get.Your arguement is "wait and see," which is not a bad position to take, but this is the first TANGIBLE evidence of what AMD can do with its new chips, which most of us have been waiting over a year for. The information we have right now says that the current best AMD quad core chip can't compete in performance with the slowest intel based quad core, which if our information is correct, will cost the same.
By comparison, you can see the first time Anand got a hand on a test sample of Conroe, the results eventually foreshadowed real world performance:
casket - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link
I wonder what happened on this test?http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/19/the_spider_...">http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/19/the_spider_...
Iketh - Thursday, November 22, 2007 - link
the same way cpuz showed the phenom as single-channel memory, this sandra test is probably showing the result from 1 of the memory controllers... thus both channels together are undoubtedly pumping out 10000+, which makes a LOT more sensesdmock - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link
So apparently AMD's chips have higher memory bandwidth for integers and FPs. But so what if it ain't faster?stmok - Monday, November 19, 2007 - link
I've waited for Phenom as a potential upgrade to my current three systems (Socket 754 Semprons, AMD64).