Anand: PII vs. Q9550 vs. i7 crossfire, Phenom II = smoother

[Titan7171]

Out of context, All the quotes in the op are from one game, You guys already know this, Go on yell Intel fanboy. Seriously, Read the whole thing, In some Intel win min frames and in others AMD win, It does not support the whole slower but smother argument.

How does this broad overall statement refer to one game?

Now that we have discussed the numbers, what about game play experience? As we alluded to earlier, the Intel platforms had problems with minimum frame rates throughout testing, not just in the benchmarks, but also during game play in various levels and on-line. We have not nailed it down yet, but we have noticed this problem consistently. In the meantime, the Phenom II X4 940 had rock solid frame rates and offered the smoothest game play experience.

[Scubar]

The results are so close that its more than likely the Motherboard chipsets that are the differences and not the CPUs themselves. That being said the i7 920 and Q9550 still top the charts. The Phenom II does hold its own though so its certainly an improvement over the original. The Intels do many other more CPU intensive tasks better though which overall gives them the edge of the Phenom IIs.

If i was in the market for a new Rig though and had to pick between an old Q9550 or new Phenom II id go with whichever system comes out cheaper as theres not much between them.

Of course if i had the choice i7 would still definitely be the system to pick for performance.

[informal]

As for the charts,at the 5th page of user comments on the AT article I found this one quite revealing:

There are errors in the benchmark charts on page 9....and maybe other pages..

In the first chart you have the overclocked 9550 CF at the top of the chart, yet if you look at the min and max frame rates it is NOT the top performer, the core i7 beats it with 5 more min frames and 12 more max frames. The overclocked phenom ii cf shoudl also beat it with 11 higher min frames tho 13 less max frames.

In the second chart, the clear winer by the min/max frames is the overclocked phenom ii CF, it had a 9 higher min fps and 6 higher max fps yet its rated lower then the core i7. It had 21 more min fps yet only 2 less max fps then the 9550 but was ranked way lower.

Your score or min/max numbers are fubar...something is really wrong with those charts.

Maybe some of the other charts are messed up too, but this page stood out like a sore thumb.

AT fubared the charts a bit it seems...

Also,BenchZowner ,Phenom II was OCed less than both intel platforms and it performed great overall.Also NB clock on Phenom II was(edit,i found it, here,NB multi was 11x)~2.4Ghz(they never mention the NB multi and hence we can conclude it was left at 9x meaning NB clock was 9x 226=2034Mhz,a very low clock for L3 cache,looking at 2.6-3Ghz clocks we see in here).

[FlanK3r]

on czech web is too comparsion in games, firts part CPU in games with gtx280,
second part will be with HD4870X2 or gtx295. All CPUs are on 3600MHz.

http://pctuning.tyden.cz/index.php?o...2581&Itemid=44



this comparsion in %

[Titan7171]

This is not about charts graphs or numbers, whether its the cpu or the entire system as a whole it was a better gaming experience that didnt offer stuttering in multiple tests online or off with a slower cpu.

[accord99]

Did you check the charts ?
Most of the times ( I only gave it a quick read though ) the i7 had the highest min fps.

Yeah, for an Intel-biased site, they sure did gloss over all the games where the i7 and/or Q9550 had higher minimum FPS and more stable framerates.

[accord99]

How does this broad overall statement refer to one game?

Maybe because it only refers to Company of Heroes?

[gallag]

How does this broad overall statement refer to one game?

Have you read it, Come on man, Just read the ing thing. You guys seem desperate.

[TL1000S]

This is a good thread.

But seriously guys, what does the AMD CPU driver contribute to the "smoothness"?

I noticed today when testing/benching my new X4 940 that every 3D-bench stuttered worse than any Intel rig I've ever owned.

Since I had swapped MB from my () DFI Jr 790GX-M2RS to Asus M3A78-EM I wondered if I needed to reinstall the AMC CPU driver.
Sure enough.
After (re)installing this everything went "buttersmooth". No hick-ups.. just smoooooth framerates.
AFAIK there is no similar "CPU driver" for an Intel CPU(multi-core).

Could this be the simple explanation for the AMD smoothness?
Just plain old sw/drivers and not hw related at all?

[G0ldBr1ck]

This is a good thread.

But seriously guys, what does the AMD CPU driver contribute to the "smoothness"?

I noticed today when testing/benching my new X4 940 that every 3D-bench stuttered worse than any Intel rig I've ever owned.

Since I had swapped MB from my () DFI Jr 790GX-M2RS to Asus M3A78-EM I wondered if I needed to reinstall the AMC CPU driver.
Sure enough.
After (re)installing this everything went "buttersmooth". No hick-ups.. just smoooooth framerates.
AFAIK there is no similar "CPU driver" for an Intel CPU(multi-core).

Could this be the simple explanation for the AMD smoothness?
Just plain old sw/drivers and not hw related at all?

As far as I know the driver is not used if C&Q is turned off. or if you have OC'd

[Oliverda]

i7 920@default (HT OFF, Turbo ON):



X4 940(@3.7GHz,NB@1.8):



Average Framerate: 124,9

[Brother Esau]

Ha....ha.....

[BenchZowner]

Yeah, for an Intel-biased site, they sure did gloss over all the games where the i7 and/or Q9550 had higher minimum FPS and more stable framerates.

I was quite sure that this would come up.
Nevermind... have fun in the flame-war that is about to begin.
This is not a court of law, but you guys ( generally speaking ) act like attorneys.
I'm not a psychic, but I can easily predict where this is going real soon...

[Particle]

I don't use the driver either. Perhaps the driver turns off on-the-fly clocking entirely for the duration of detected-open games. Since most of us probably run sans CnQ anyway, we wouldn't notice.

[Brother Esau]

Yeah, for an Intel-biased site, they sure did gloss over all the games where the i7 and/or Q9550 had higher minimum FPS and more stable framerates.

What like this is not a Intel Biased Site............Please

[G0ldBr1ck]

I don't use the driver either. Perhaps the driver turns off on-the-fly clocking entirely for the duration of detected-open games. Since most of us probably run sans CnQ anyway, we wouldn't notice.

If you run with C&Q enabled in bios and dont instal the drivers in the OS is will realy kill performance. Thats why installing the drivers would smooth things out in this case.

Thats all the drivers are, they control the clockspeed and voltage for C&Q. Most MB manuals will tell you not to install the drivers if overclocking but I found that it does not matter as they wont do anything if your OC'd

[TL1000S]

If you run with C&Q enabled in bios and dont instal the drivers in the OS is will realy kill performance. Thats why installing the drivers would smooth things out in this case.

Thats all the drivers are, they control the clockspeed and voltage for C&Q. Most MB manuals will tell you not to install the drivers if overclocking but I found that it does not matter as they wont do anything if your OC'd

Well, this contradicts my recent (and previous) experience with AMD dual/quad and 3D-benches.
If you remember there were quite a bit of discussions/unhappy gamers when X2 entered the scene.
For some games there were "affinity-tricks", "dual core optimizer"... and so on.

I did not experience any "stutter" when benching with the DFI board+X4 920.
When my DFI died and I swapped it with the Asus board+X4 940 I had to (re)install the AMD CPU driver. This make me think this is a Bios/MB issue as well ("solved" by sw/driver).

I *always* disable Q&Q/Ci1/"Speedstep" regardless of Intel/AMD rigs as I'm a "benchmarkwhore" and could not care less about my electricity bill/"our" environment *when benching*.

Still I see that AMD has a specific "CPU driver", Intel does not.
And I think that is peculiar.
That's why I brought this up in the thread.

[roofsniper]

The problem here is, can the smoothness be measured in a convenient way, so AMD would finally get some high numbers and long stretched graph bars right in the face of the audience!

If this is really an decisive advantage, AMD should change to a new slogan, like Smoother choice!

the problem is whether amd knows it or not its hard to prove it. im sure you could get a lot of people and sit them down and tell them to find which one is smoother. it wouldn't matter tho no matter how many people said amd was smoother theres nothing amd can do about it because theres no solid info out on it. theres been many threads like this before and i think every one of them have ended up closed. i have never heard anyone say that the intel one looks smoother but how many have we heard say that the amd one is smoother? doesn't matter to me because i believe what i do and until there is some kind of way to prove this easily then theres not much to say about it.

[bedlamite]

the problem is whether amd knows it or not its hard to prove it.

Maybe you need something like that?

[bingo13]

As for the charts,at the 5th page of user comments on the AT article I found this one quite revealing:

AT fubared the charts a bit it seems...

Also,BenchZowner ,Phenom II was OCed less than both intel platforms and it performed great overall.Also NB clock on Phenom II was(edit,i found it, here,NB multi was 11x)~2.4Ghz(they never mention the NB multi and hence we can conclude it was left at 9x meaning NB clock was 9x 226=2034Mhz,a very low clock for L3 cache,looking at 2.6-3Ghz clocks we see in here).

The charts are sorted by Average Frame Rates, not the min/max values listed in the text field. I will have to separate the values into individual charts in the SLI article or do something with Excel. The NB speed was set to 2486MHz, the fastest I could run it in Vista 64 and keep that CPU speed.

[roofsniper]

Maybe you need something like that?

a chart that showed the fps over a period of time is what i think is important. like what far cry 2 does at the end of a benchmark. but everyone on the intel side says this is unfair and means nothing so theres no way of pleasing them. i have some games that run at a constant 60 fps on v sync and they are single threaded. so the cpu always runs at 25% usage whenever im playing the game and it will stay at that 60 fps mark but sometimes it will drop down to 40 when the cpu is getting loaded up on. so while 40 fps is still good the drop from 60 to 40 in less than a second looks bad and id rather just stay at a constant 40 fps.

[Titan7171]

Maybe because it only refers to Company of Heroes?

Have you read it, Come on man, Just read the ing thing. You guys seem desperate.

COD

We did not notice any difference in game play quality at either resolution between the platforms after playing through several of the levels. Each platform offered a very smooth and fluid gaming experience. We thought the higher minimum frame rates on the Intel systems would be noticeable during the action scenes in the jungle, but we honestly could not tell the systems apart during testing.

Crysis warhed

After playing through the several levels on each platform, we thought the Phenom II 940 offered a better overall gaming experience in this title than the Intel Q9550 based on smoother game play. It is difficult to quantify without a video capture, but player movement and weapon control just seemed to be more precise. Of course, if you have the funds, we would recommend the i7 platform for best possible performance.

Fallout3

As far as game play experiences, we noted no differences between the Intel Q9550 and Phenom II 940 platforms. Each one offered a very good experience with minimum frame rates on each platform being acceptable. The amount of LOD adjustments in game was disconcerting at times . When we experienced them, the game stutter was minimized on the i7 setup compared to the other two platforms with CrossFire enabled. All three platforms responded in the same manner with a single card setup. Overall, we would not recommend CrossFire for this game, even overclocking the processors resulted in a minimum improvement in frame rates.

Farcry2 i7 showed better results here

When it comes to game play experience and not benchmark tests, all three platforms responded the same 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.

L4D

Our game play experiences revealed no differences between the three platforms. Although the frame rates were lower with the Phenom II, it just did not matter in this game as minimum frame rates were at 60fps or higher in our tests.

Grid

Once again, our game play notes indicate there is no difference between the three platforms at our settings. Although frame rates were higher with the i7 in CrossFire mode, there was no appreciable difference in game play quality

COH

Now that we have discussed the numbers, what about game play experience? As we alluded to earlier, the Intel platforms had problems with minimum frame rates throughout testing, not just in the benchmarks, but also during game play in various levels and on-line. We have not nailed it down yet, but we have noticed this problem consistently. In the meantime, the Phenom II X4 940 had rock solid frame rates and offered the smoothest game play experience

yea you right it was only for that one game Thank god you guys opened my eyes

[bedlamite]

a chart that showed the fps over a period of time is what i think is important. like what far cry 2 does at the end of a benchmark. but everyone on the intel side says this is unfair and means nothing so theres no way of pleasing them. i have some games that run at a constant 60 fps on v sync and they are single threaded. so the cpu always runs at 25% usage whenever im playing the game and it will stay at that 60 fps mark but sometimes it will drop down to 40 when the cpu is getting loaded up on. so while 40 fps is still good the drop from 60 to 40 in less than a second looks bad and id rather just stay at a constant 40 fps.

Sorry, forgot to explain.
It's some chart from article about microstuttering. It shows how much time it takes to render frames. So it's not x = time, and y = fps, but x = number of frame and y = time. This sentence about stuttering in CoH just reminded me about this chart and that many times I've noticed such behaviour in games during tests. This chart shows certain spikes, when screen freezes for a moment and it takes much more time to render specyfic frame.

[.Tret]

The conclusion of the Anand article was, as far as stuttering (min fps) is concerned, The PII 940 and the q9550 are about equal with the PII being ahead in some games; but in the end the i7 is the best overall.

Out of that conclusion you came away with PII IS TEH BESTEST HURR DURR.

Sometimes I wonder if you people are sobbing while you type.

[Titan7171]

What like this is not a Intel Biased Site............Please

Hey you should edit that sig so it shows curly throwing a shoe at Bush......holy it is Bush...........