AMD's Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 13, 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:
While the Phenom II X4 965 BE is able to roughly equal the Q9650 in performance, it's unable to come close to any of the i7s. In our Lynnfield preview we found that without Lynnfield's aggressive turbo modes, a 2.66GHz i5 750 would still be faster than the Q9650 so it doesn't look like Lynnfield will tip things in AMD's favor here either.
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 clearly an area where the i7 920 can't use Hyper Threading to its advantage. The 965 BE is second only to the i7 965.
Once more, other than the i7 processors you can't touch the 965 BE. Depending on how well Lynnfield's turbo works, AMD could even be competitive against the entry level Core i5.
POV-Ray 3.73 beta 23 Ray Tracing Performance
POV-Ray is a popular, open-source ray tracing 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.
More of the same, the 965 BE is the fastest non i7 processor on the block. Even Lynnfield may find it difficult to significantly outperform the Phenom II flagship here.
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.
All of the DDR3 Phenom IIs are actually slower in our Blender test, but it doesn't matter since the app seems to heavily favor Intel CPUs.
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Roland00 - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
The 200 dollar price isn't a mail in rebate, Micro Center a small computer store chain with about 30 stores market itself as a computer builder destination. They lose about 80 dollars on the processor to get you into the store and hoping to sell you enough other stuff (or assembly or warranties) to make up for their loss leader.steelicon - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
ROTFLMAOBBQ! Agreed! They get you in more ways than one, either it's the Processor itself, the Chipset, the DDR3 or all of them combined. Good thing we have another choice of platform!steelicon - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
Will this run on an old AsuS Crosshair NV590A-SLI motherboard? I surely do hope so...grimpr - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
A really fast CPU, some minor tweaks to the K10 architecture and AMD stays "current", but the TDP's are ridiculous, 140W!!, for non existing gods sake! at 95W TDP and at the same price they would be excellent purchases to Intels Lynnfields. Clearly they are positioned at gamers,a crowd long lost to AMD. For uses other than happy jerking at intel compiler optimized benchmarks and moronic SuperPi's with analyzing miniscule FPS differences at games, the AMD Phenom II 905E at 65W TDP is an excellent buy. Something about the 45nm SOI manufacturing of this chips from AMD makes us wonder...FireSnake - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
You really need to grow up with this 140W and take a very close look at the power consumption table ;)JimmiG - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
It's not like the 140W TDP happened by accident or took AMD by surprise. 120 - 140W has been the target TDP for high-end CPUs for a long time. At this targeted TDP, AMD found a 3.4 GHz chip could be produced with decent yields. Some thought, research and design goes into the launch of a new CPU even if it's just a 200 MHz clockspeed bump.Don't worry, we'll not see a 160W or 180W CPU any time soon since 140W is a sensible target. Modern heatpipe coolers, mobos and PSUs have no trouble with them.
If you think the difference between a 65W and a 140W CPU is too much, you must live in a very dark house or apartment since each light bulb consumes almost that entire difference.
PrinceGaz - Friday, August 14, 2009 - link
My lightbulbs consume between 12 and 20W of power each as I long since left behind inefficient incandescent bulbs.hyc - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
You guys are reading way too much into that 140W TDP spec. Look at the loaded power consumption results, the 965 is 223W vs 220W for the 955. So it's using a whopping 3W more than the 955, BFD.Griswold - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
Some people seem to miss the T for Thermal in that figure indeed.hyc - Thursday, August 13, 2009 - link
Ah, so which part of the Laws of Thermodynamics did you skip in school?You can't emit more power out (thermal or otherwise) than you took in.