AMD Shanghai/Deneb Review Thread

[iocedmyself]

can u ask you a Crysis or crysis warhead DX9 benchmark ?

1605 x 1050 or 1280 x 1024 in enthusiams for warhead or high for Crysis
AA 0x

it's the most important test

Have to reinstall it and then i'll bench dx9 and 10. Though i have to say that i don't consider DX9 very accurate measurment as ATI 4800 cards do vastly better in DX10 where Nvidia is more geared towards DX9.

[Zucker2k]

Have to reinstall it and then i'll bench dx9 and 10. Though i have to say that i don't consider DX9 very accurate measurment as ATI 4800 cards do vastly better in DX10 where Nvidia is more geared towards DX9.

Thanks iocedmyself, great work you're doing here. That first score at 3.6Ghz didn't look pretty for the phenom II though, as it was 22% percent i7 (no one in their right mind would turn HT on for gaming, that anomally is well established), vs Phenom II 70%. Am I the only one noticing that huge gap? Are you sure no other process was stealing huge cpu cycles? Good job man, keep up the good work.

[Lightman]

Thanks iocedmyself, great work you're doing here. That first score at 3.6Ghz didn't look pretty for the phenom II though, as it was 22% percent i7 (no one in their right mind would turn HT on for gaming, that anomally is well established), vs Phenom II 70%. Am I the only one noticing that huge gap? Are you sure no other process was stealing huge cpu cycles? Good job man, keep up the good work.

Simple explanation:

GTA IV can spawn 3 threads which can utilize CPU fairly well. For that reason Single, Dual and Triple-Core will show CPU utilization close to 100%!
Quad-Core will be utilized in 75% assuming no other thread is using it and GTA IV will extract everything from remaining 3 cores.
Six-Core CPU will hit max. 50% utilization.
8 cores/threads can be utilized 37% by GTA IV!
Now Core i7 is not hitting close to theoretical 37% and the reason for that can be either HT lowering utilization or GPU saturation (in other words CPU too fast for a given GPU).

Is that clear enough?

[Zucker2k]

Simple explanation:

GTA IV can spawn 3 threads which can utilize CPU fairly well. For that reason Single, Dual and Triple-Core will show CPU utilization close to 100%!
Quad-Core will be utilized in 75% assuming no other thread is using it and GTA IV will extract everything from remaining 3 cores.
Six-Core CPU will hit max. 50% utilization.
8 cores/threads can be utilized 37% by GTA IV!
Now Core i7 is not hitting close to theoretical 37% and the reason for that can be either HT lowering utilization or GPU saturation (in other words CPU too fast for a given GPU).

Is that clear enough?

Are you sure those settings are maxing the GPU? I don't think those settings are very gpu-bound. In any case, your last statement takes nothing from what I said; if the i7's HT is the culprit, meaning the cpu is taking a negative hit, the results are still better than the PHII And if the gpu is maxed, then are you saying it takes only 22% of the processing power of a Ci7 at 3.6ghz to max the a 4870x2 with GTA IV? Or are you leaning towards the unknown?

[ajaidev]

Are you sure those settings are maxing the GPU? I don't think those settings are very gpu-bound. In any case, your last statement takes nothing from what I said; if the i7's HT is the culprit, meaning the cpu is taking a negative hit, the results are still better than the PHII And if the gpu is maxed, then are you saying it takes only 22% of the processing power of a Ci7 at 3.6ghz to max the a 4870x2 with GTA IV? Or are you leaning towards the unknown?

Well off course i7 is faster than a PhII no one expected anything else "Clock to clock" but as OP has stated the PhII has a OC advantage over the i7

The HT does slow down some game and speeds up others while on GTA4 i dont think it has any type of impact. As i stated above i think even after disabling HT GTA4 will read the CPU with 8 imaginary cores!!!

22% means real 44% cpu utilization see my post above.....
Still in price to performance Phenom II is better as compared to i7 platform

[Oliverda]

iocedmyself

What are the BIOS default clocks for NB and HT?

[Zucker2k]

Well off course i7 is faster than a PhII no one expected anything else "Clock to clock" but as OP has stated the PhII has a OC advantage over the i7

The HT does slow down some game and speeds up others while on GTA4 i dont think it has any type of impact. As i stated above i think even after disabling HT GTA4 will read the CPU with 8 imaginary cores!!!

22% means real 44% cpu utilization see my post above.....
Still in price to performance Phenom II is better as compared to i7 platform

If HT is turned off, Windows can only 'see' 4 cores (or threads). Do you know something we don't? If GTA IV can only run on 3 threads, what's the use to enable HT? To cheat?

[ajaidev]

If HT is turned off, Windows can only 'see' 4 cores (or threads). Do you know something we don't? If GTA IV can only run on 3 threads, what's the use to enable HT? To cheat?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=385

[iocedmyself]

Well off course i7 is faster than a PhII no one expected anything else "Clock to clock" but as OP has stated the PhII has a OC advantage over the i7

The HT does slow down some game and speeds up others while on GTA4 i dont think it has any type of impact. As i stated above i think even after disabling HT GTA4 will read the CPU with 8 imaginary cores!!!

22% means real 44% cpu utilization see my post above.....
Still in price to performance Phenom II is better as compared to i7 platform

Yes i have to agree that the HT is most likely to be the culprit for 22% cpu load, either that or the power saving feature is disabling several of the cores and still counting it as 4 physical or 8 logical threads. Easy way to tell, look in task manager in the performance tab, if it is showing 8 devisions than GTA is calculating based on 8 cores.

I7 has better ram, but gimped caches horrible power consumption (total system draw, not counting the disabled core crap) It's expensive for little real world performance gain and there is little if any overclocking room.

We're looking at raw performance here in gaming not efficiency. There is at 3.6ghz comparison results showing i7 has less than 10% performance gain over phenom II regardless of cpu load. The difference is that 3.6 is the glass cieling, or damn near for i7 where AMD still has anywhere from 400-1000mhz headroom to overclock....with air cooling alone. Plus anyone that is going to be using an I7 or a phenom II at an early stage, especially with a 4870x2 is going to have considerably better than a 1280x1024 display i would think.

Upgrading to I7 means new cpu, heatsink, motherboard as well as DDR3.

Phenom II means....if you already have an AM2+ board you buy a phenom II and at most update your bios. If i had to spend the cash to upgrade.....i know what would be more appealing from all angles

Luckily i won't have to trouble my mind with such thoughts

But Zucker i do see your point and whether HT is enabled or not on the I7 is just guess work on ALL our parts. As well as the fact that things like car density and shadow density settings are unknown and those could be set at 0 which would easily lighten CPU load. But then again the system specs are completly unkown based off that screeny so not really much is certain, if i missed a further detailed explination of the system that bench was done on please correct me, not trying to bait anyone or deny any evidence, just admiting that i've been somewhat preoccupied and using only that screeny as a basis there is a lot left up in the air that could effect the results.

As to the point of enabling HT and then "crippling the cpu" With the way the I7 power saving features work it could just disable some cores, GTA takes into account the existence of all of them and performance results are....creative. They could be accurate but i don't think anyone can deny the fact that when it comes to intel benches, they have not always been on the level in the past. Nor the fact that 22% cpu load at 60 FPS is going to impress people, and if they can show those results why wouldn't they? Besides it may TECHNICALLY be true, but it may be taken out of context as to how those results were obtained

But i can't deny that intel may have improved ability to offload more to the GPU at lower resolutions which also could account for the low utilization. If you'll notice Cpu load on phenom II drops from 70% at 12x10 to 57% at 19x12 at same detail settings, and higher resoltions are more what im interested in.

At any rate not trying to get into a flame war, just trying to shed some light on Denebs as very best i can independent of I7 numbers, and speculation will almost certainly result in hair pulling and name calling with no one winning.

Oliverda, Bios default clocks for NB is 2ghz, HT is also 2ghz @ 200x10

My heatsink through out all testing has been TT DuoOrb http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/Produc...1&ID=1748#Tab4

Though i've finally decided that it is time to break down and break into the realm of water cooling, So i'm about to invest in this Swiftech Apogee GTZ water block

http://www.martinsliquidlab.com/Swif...TZ_Review.html

http://xcpus.com/GetDoc.aspx?doc=69&page=1

And the Swiftech MCP655 adjustable Pump
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1363

So I should hopefully get around to putting this chip of many shines under water definitely before xmas, hopefully ill have it running by the coming weekend so i can shoot for a stable 5ghz.

After new years, i'll have a more fun endeavor to undertake...well two actually. The more certain of tasks will be setting up a water chiller for the Reservoir with a pair of under-volted 12730 each will have power req at around 8V drawing 12A and moves about 40W across 30C. heat load is about 160W. with a 5 pound nickle plated copper Melcor sink that is a rise of 9C. Two should do a fine job on a deneb... around a 300W heat load total, control for 5C water.

The less certain and more fun task will be the old joy of slapping a TEC right on the CPU (btw 3.0ghz at 1.1v has a TDP of around 55-60w) So that water block over a beefy TEC will yield some negative C

[Oliverda]

Oliverda, Bios default clocks for NB is 2ghz, HT is also 2ghz @ 200x10

Thanks, and the default Vcore is 1.35V if I'm not mistaken. Am I right?

[ryboto]

(btw 3.0ghz at 1.1v has a TDP of around 55-60w)

How are you estimating that TDP? If that's true, it's going to be neck-and-neck with penryn consumption(assuming you undervolt) at the CPU level, on the system level it ought to be less considering the IMC in the AMD, and the Intel NB's using a bit more power than an AMD.