AMD Athlon II X4 620 & 630: The First $99 Quad Core CPU
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 16, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering Test
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores:
Offline 3D rendering should be another safe haven for the Athlon II X4. Core count matters and that's what AMD delivers. At $25 per core the Athlon II X4 620 is faster than even the X3 720. It's of course faster than any dual-core CPU in its price range, including the more expensive E7500. Intel's Core 2 Quad Q8200 is around 6% faster but costs 60% more.
Cinebench R10
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
Single threaded performance is where the Athlon II X4 suffers the most. It's competitive but still slower than cheaper dual-core CPUs. This is the classic trade off for all pre-Lynnfield quad-core CPUs, you give up single threaded performance for multi-threaded performance. Luckily for AMD, Intel's Core 2 Quads suffer the same fate. While the Athlon IIs find themselves at the bottom of this chart, the Q8200 is the slowest chip here.
Turn up the thread count and the Athlon II shines once more. Again, the 620 is about the same speed as the Q8200, but slower than the Q8400. Just where it needs to be.
POV-Ray 3.73 beta 23 Ray Tracing Performance
POV-Ray is a popular, open-source raytracing application that also doubles as a great tool to measure CPU floating point performance.
I ran the SMP benchmark in beta 23 of POV-Ray 3.73. The numbers reported are the final score in pixels per second.
At this point I couldn't write a more competitive position for AMD. The Athlon II X4 continues to do very well in our 3D rendering tests.
Blender 2.48a
Blender is an open source 3D modeling application. Our benchmark here simply times how long it takes to render a character that comes with the application.
Our Blender test has traditionally favored Intel architectures, and here we see the first signs of the Athlon II X4 not being able to keep up. The Phenom II X3 720 and Core 2 Quad Q8200 are both faster, but compared to Intel's similarly priced dual-core offerings AMD is still quicker.
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silverblue - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
Except for you I suppose?Imagine you own a car with a turbocharger. When you accelerate, the turbo just happens to kick in. Is it illegal for the manufacturer to have put the turbo in there in the first place?
I agree it's not a completely parallel analogy due to the fact that a turbocharger provides a free power boost from otherwise wasted energy, but the point is that it's a part of the design and people have, and always will, accept that.
How are the Lynnfield's results false? It clearly states in the nomenclature that the Lynnfield possesses a turbo mode designed so that the processor operates at a higher clock speed for a stated number of cores dependent on the load being imposed upon it. Imagine if a new SIMD instruction set appears and only AMD processors can use it, and software is accelerated as a result - is this illegal?
I feel my intelligence slipping away as I try to reason with you.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
turbo overclocking is just overclocking, nothing else.overclocked results are illegal if you try to present them as stock speed results.
you can call overclocking 'banana' if you want, but still that banana is illegal
Kaleid - Saturday, September 19, 2009 - link
There is nothing illegal about it. Repeating it doesn't make it so.silverblue - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
But they haven't! Why can't you see this?Let me put it another way. In single core mode, with turbo enabled, the i5 750 is clocked at 3.2GHz. The Phenom II X4 965 BE is STILL clocked at 3.4GHz and it STILL loses. And guess what, add turbo to more cores and they all slow down, thus making the 965 BE look even worse in most situations as its clock speed gap increases even further.
I've read over those 3.8GHz results. No turbo mode (not illegal, then!). i5 still wins most of the benches. Granted, some of the tests are Intel-optimised applications, but a) it's not Intel's fault that AMD optimisations are lacking from specific programs, and b) in games with no specific optimisations for either architecture, the Lynnfield is still going to win because even with turbo enabled, the i5 750 is STILL clocked lower than the 965 BE and it's STILL equalling or beating AMD's strongest CPU.
End of.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
don't fool yourself by over-thinking to justify an illegal activity.turbo overclocking is just overclocking.
and phenom 2 955 beats core i5 750 at stocks speeds, that is lynnfield without overclocking.
lynnfield is a failure, because when overclocked to 4ghz temps are almost 100C. and power compsumption skycket.
phenom 2 overclocked to 4ghz is cool at 55C.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
if you overclock phenom 2 955 the same 600 mhz that lynnfield is overclocked, it wipes and mops the floor with lynnfield 750.strikeback03 - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
Umm, check your numbers again. Unless you want to claim a 955 at 3.8GHz would perform differently than a 965 at 3.8 GHz. See here: http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3639&am...">http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3639&am...All the 3.8GHz numbers are clock-for-clock, with no turbo (and no HT since the 750 doesn't have it) and the only test where the 965 tops the 750 is the Lightwave3D portion of the multitasking test. The 750 does beat the 965 in the overall multitasking test.
the zorro - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
as you can see, at stock speed, when lynnfield 750 has turbo overclocking off, then phenom 2 965 annihilates lynnfield.look at all the tests.
strikeback03 - Friday, September 18, 2009 - link
Well, yes, a 965@3.4GHz does beat a 750@2.66GHz, AMD's architecture isn't that far behind in most cases. But the only ones likely to leave the clocks stock are OEMs, who will also leave the turbo mode which seems to be the bane of your existence turned on. In stock configuration for both processors and looking at only the tests Gary conducted in the above article, the 965 carries advantages of 10%, 19%, -8%, -2%, -6%, 7%, and 12% over the 750. Using pricegrabber, Newegg has the best prices for each right now, at $199.99 for the 750 and $245 for the 965BE. This is a 22.5% difference in price, the performance gain is not that high in any of the tests. This is also ignoring all the tests in Anand's i5/i7 launch article, the majority of which the 750 topped the 965 in.mdk77777 - Thursday, September 17, 2009 - link
You buy a new Computer every five minutes?Really, I5 750 started shipping like a few days ago.
Competitive product, but requires a new MB.
Declare the end of the war after 1 Second of battle doesn't make much sense.