Phenom II X3 720BE & CrossFire X Performance - Does it Compete?
by Gary Key on March 28, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
FarCry 2
This title has beautiful graphics, an open ended environment, and is fun to play... but traveling between missions tends to get repetitive. If you dial up the graphics options, the game rewards with you some fantastic visuals courtesy of the Dunia Engine. The game also features the most impressive benchmark tool we have seen in a PC game. We set the performance feature set to Very High, graphics to High, and enable DX10 with AA set to 2x. The in-game benchmark tool is utilized with the Ranch Small level and we report an average of three test runs.
Two things still hold true about this game. It favors the Intel processors, and once you provide enough GPU horsepower, the performance of the i7 platform is untouchable. If you wanted to pick a single benchmark and show a large disparity in gaming performance between the Intel and AMD platforms, this is the one to use. Does that mean the game play experience on the Phenom II platform is bad, certainly not, in fact it is very good. However, you can run higher resolutions and/or quality settings on the i7 platform and improve your game play experience without affecting performance.
In the 1680x1050 single card and CrossFire test, the 720BE trails the X940 by 4% on average even with a clock speed disadvantage of 7%. The 720BE does hold an L3 cache per core and Northbridge speed advantage but clock speed is still important in the game. Adding a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 7% and minimum frame rates less than 1% for the 720BE. Once we overclock our 720BE, average frame rates increase 14% and minimum frame rates 19% over stock CF numbers.
At 1920x1200, the benchmarks reveal nothing new between the platforms. The Phenom II processors are competitive with a single card configuration with the 720BE only trailing the X4 940 by 3%. As we start to become CPU/GPU limited the 720BE trails the X4 940 by less than a 1% in the CrossFire tests. Adding a second card to the 720BE system for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 14% and minimum frame rates by less than 1%. Neither Phenom II competes with the Q9550 in either average or minimum frame rates. The i7 is just stupid fast in these benchmarks compared to the other systems.
When it comes to game play experience and not benchmark tests, all three platforms behaved in a similar manner at our specified settings. We did not notice any advantages with the improved frame rates that the i7 offers over the other two platforms. However, with the i7 we could change the graphic settings to Very High and increase AA to 4x and still experience very good game play. It was as if nothing changed except now we were looking at the savannahs of Africa in a much better way. These same settings were not always a pleasant experience on the other two platforms during heavy action scenes, but the game remained playable for the most part.
Increasing Northbridge Speed for Performance Improvements
One of the quickest ways to extract additional performance on the Phenom II (also Phenom) platform is to increase Northbridge speeds. We are working on a separate article covering the advantages and disadvantages of this setting. Our initial results are positive for applications that heavily depend on memory throughput and low latencies. We thought it would be interesting to see what would occur if the Northbridge speed was raised from a stock 2GHz level to 2.8GHz on our 720BE processor in Far Cry 2. This is worst comparative game title for our AMD Phenom II processors today, so let's see if we have any performance improvements at 1680x1050.
At stock processor speeds with a single video card there is a 2% increase in average and minimum frame rates. We did not expect much as the data pipeline is not under a lot of stress at this point. As we move to our CrossFire X configuration at stock CPU speeds there is a 3% increase in average frame rates and 8% in minimum frame rates. Now it gets interesting as we overclock our CPU to 3.8GHz and are able to feed the data pipelines in a proper manner, at least we thought so. By increasing our NB speed to 2.8GHz, the average frame rates increase 11% and minimum frame rates increase 9%. We have noticed similar results at 1920x1200 in this game and in other applications.
All that required was a simple increase in CPU/NB VID from 1.200V to 1.375V with this particular CPU. Some CPUs will require additional voltage and/or improved cooling to clock up the Northbridge speed to this level. In our experiences to date with the Phenom II processors, all of our samples have hit 2.8GHz with 1.375V to 1.425V on good air-cooling.
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strikeback03 - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
What is the need for a 9400M in a carPC? How much GPU does it take to run a front end?tshen83 - Sunday, March 29, 2009 - link
If you haven't figured out by now, both Intel and AMD flush higher TDP CPU parts down the consumer's throats, and save the really good CPUs(performance per watt) for the data centers in the 2P space.My original post was meant to tell Gary Key, the author, that his "paid" assertion that "Phenom is competitive as a gaming platform" is flawed, because all gaming benchmarks are GPU bound. It means CPU can be a lot weaker before it will show up on the FPS charts.
There is no reason to save 30 dollars to get the X3 at all because the X4 is just a dinner bill away from the X3. Have some mac and cheese for dinner and you would have had enough money to get the Phenom x4 920.(Not that it is a smart choice at 125W TDP, but surely beats the X3 by far.)
There are actually far better AMD CPUs to get than the Phenoms. AMD Shanghai 2376s are at the same price now, and allows scalability to 2 Socket and takes only 75W TDP also. Tyan S2912G2NR board is 60 dollars at newegg to support two Shanghais. Phenom x4 is the CPU that didn't make the "Shanghai" grade, and got flushed down to unsuspecting consumers. x3 is a castrated x4. You get the point.
BTW, i7 920 will get far better longevity as a platform than any AMD processor right now. Nehalem-EP would likely bankrupt AMD for good this time(In fact AMD is already broke a few times if it wasn't selling blood to the Dubai oil suckers) Your argument that Phenom IIs will outlast Socket 775 is correct, except in the case of AMD going belly up, then, you are stuck with a 125W TDP heater that's half the speed of the i7-920.
Good luck, I am taking off for the day. Get ready for tomorrow, when Nehalem-EP will be revealed, and it will put AMD out of its pathetic misery.
moriz - Sunday, March 29, 2009 - link
some bold assertions. care to prove any of those?out of the three tech giants (Intel, nVIDIA, AMD), AMD currently has the best platform: only AMD can deliver the complete package using only their products. this will be a pretty big advantage down the road, and i think Intel and nVIDIA both know this.
therefore, AMD is not going away.
7Enigma - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
Don't feed the TROLLS.tshen83 - Monday, March 30, 2009 - link
Only AMD can deliver the complete "CRAP" package to idiots pretty much. Let's see, the CPUs aren't as good as the Nehalems. The GPUs get their butts kicked in GPGPU modes. It takes AMD's 800 Stream processors to fight Nvidia's 240. Talk about freaking copy and paste engineering.In the enterprise market, IT managers will soon realize that the glorious AMD days(HP DL585) are gone, and 8 Socket Nehalem-EX will be a 128 thread monster with 1-2TB of ram(128 FB-DIMMs), killing off Itanium(HP Superdome) along the way.
"AMD is not going away". Really? I have AMD's tombstone marked June 2010, with Hector Ruiz's name on it too. The Global Foundry spinoff dollars won't even last them 3 months.
Hacp - Sunday, March 29, 2009 - link
Does the Opteron have unlocked multipliers? I'm thinking no!Repr - Sunday, March 29, 2009 - link
so far the E8x00 series have been the most wanted choice for gaming machines (in the netherlands at least). however after checking a few price comparison sides i found out that the x3 720 is cheaper then the E8400. i would wonder how the tripple core would fight up against the intel dual core.hansmuff - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
Thanks for the article.I do have a request: for those games where you use timedemos or other recorded input files, would you be willing to link to them in the article?
It'd be nice to compare one's own machine to those benchmarked.
Thank you!
7Enigma - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
My guess is they want to keep them closed so "optimizations" don't take place that would give an unfair advantage to one side or the other.Roland00 - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
This article was near perfect in what I am looking for in a price for your buck comparison. Showing the difference between cpus at different frequencies, with/without cross fire, and showing the minimum frame rate in an easy to read manner. To top it all off you had real analysis in the text.Well I am glad to know the X3 PhenomIIs are comparable with gaming, with a nice oc and sometimes needing Crossfire.
Then again at the price an X4 PhenomIIs are you may just want to get an X4 PhenomII
Currently newegg has the x4 920 at 164. It has a promo code for 30 dollars ( AMD32530 ). Making the cpu $134 with free shipping and most places no tax.