ATI HD 5870 Scaling Performance: X58 vs P55 Showdown
by Gary Key on September 29, 2009 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Resident Evil 5
We utilize FRAPs to track minimum and average frame rates using the Fixed benchmark in Resident Evil 5. The median test score out of five benchmark sessions is used for the reported results.
Once again, our single card results at x8 are trailing the x16 results, even when overclocked. Minimum frame rates are about 3% better on the X58 platform at both stock and overclocked settings than the P55. The P55 holds a slight advantage when overclocked in average frame rates and trails by 1% at stock speeds.
Resident Evil 5 CrossFire Scaling – Average Frame Rates
| ATI HD 5870 CF Scaling | Resident Evil 5 | Resident Evil 5 4.2GHz |
| Intel Core i7 920 (X58) | 16.4% | 49.3% |
| Intel Core i7 860 (P55) | 17.5% | 47.1% |
At stock speeds, the P55 has a 1% scaling advantage over the X58 but trails over 2% when overclocked.
Resident Evil 5 CrossFire Scaling – Minimum Frame Rates
| ATI HD 5870 CF Scaling | Resident Evil 5 | Resident Evil 5 4.2GHz |
| Intel Core i7 920 (X58) | 20.9% | 67.8% |
| Intel Core i7 860 (P55) | 26.2% | 65.5% |
Minimum frame rates favor the P55 in our stock clock speed results by about 5%, but trail the X58 around 2% when overclocked.
Company of Heroes - Tales of Valor
We utilize FRAPs once again to track a custom demo in one of our favorite RTS titles.
The single card results at x8 is trailing the x16 results by 3% at stock and 1% when overclocked. Minimum frame rates are less than 1% better on the X58 platform at both stock and overclocked settings than the P55 while average frame rates are up to 2% better.
CoH: Tales of Valor CrossFire Scaling – Average Frame Rates
| ATI HD 5870 CF Scaling | CoH: Tales of Valor | CoH: Tales of Valor 4.2GHz |
| Intel Core i7 920 (X58) | 28.1% | 41.8% |
| Intel Core i7 860 (P55) | 21.1% | 44.9% |
At stock speeds, the X58 has a 7% scaling advantage over the P55 but trails almost 3% when overclocked.
CoH: Tales of Valor CrossFire Scaling – Minimum Frame Rates
| ATI HD 5870 CF Scaling | CoH: Tales of Valor | CoH: Tales of Valor 4.2GHz |
| Intel Core i7 920 (X58) | 19.5% | 59.7% |
| Intel Core i7 860 (P55) | 14.8% | 55.3% |
Minimum frame rates favor the X58 in our stock clock speed results by about 5% and right over 2% when overclocked. We did not note any differences in actual game play.
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GeorgeH - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link
Wow, you're totally right:Lynnfield: 12-28 min FPS
X58: 8-26 min FPS
Talk about a crippled platform!
We all already know that you're a moron, but in the future please try to make it less obvious. Thanks.
philosofool - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link
The result of this test is really clear to me: if you are even remotely close to on a budget, P55 w/ a great card is the way to go. The $100 you save on a P55 mobo invested into graphics will get you way more than the same invested in X58 and a $100 cheaper graphics card. If money is no object, get X58. Perhaps more importantly, once we're dealing with cards and games that drop things well below the 60Hz refresh rate of our monitor, the additional bandwidth in X58 will probably make an even smaller difference.The fears regarding the integrated PCIe controller on Lynnfield are wildly exaggerated.
strikeback03 - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
I'd say a $100 difference in motherboards is largely an exaggeration depending on exactly what features you are looking for, the power consumption differences are far more interesting to me.Now if we could only find out whether 8x PCIe would be a bottleneck for a SATA3 card.
UNHchabo - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
In terms of theoretical bandwidth, there's plenty in a PCIe slot. The SATA 6Gbps standard gives about 600MB/s of effective bandwidth, and PCIe 2.0 has 500MB/s per lane. This means that with PCIe 2.0, your motherboard slot is only limiting your card's performance if you give one lane per port.yacoub - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link
Sure, and the power consumption savings are a nice plus. Then consider that 90+% of us don't even care about CF/SLI because we only ever one run GPU card, and there's really no reason to bother with X58 over P55.ekoostik - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link
Agreed. Really enjoyed reading this on my new single-GPU powered 860 sitting silently next to me.yacoub - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link
"Does that mean the integrated dual x8 PCIe 2.0 logic on Lynnfield is a poor choice compared to the dual x16 PCIe 2.0 sporting X58, absolutely not based on our initial tests."The comma after "X58" should be a question mark and "absolutely" should be the beginning of a new sentence. ;)
the zorro - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link
almost 10% penalty because of the lynnfield crippled northbridge.its not just that but in the more interesting part of the game when there is more congestion, lynnfield stutters.
if you are going to buy a new spanking 3.72 tflops directx ati card don't commit the mistake of using lynnfield.
Griswold - Monday, October 5, 2009 - link
You're an idiot regardless of what you buy - so it evens out.DominionSeraph - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 - link
"x58 is 1fps faster than lynnfield!!" as he sits behind his 33ms input lag, 3 frame ghosting, 60Hz LCD using a 600dpi mouse on a free mousepad.