We've all seen the reviewers who have done some comparisons based on "bottlenecks" and come to the conclusion that the i7 is much better than the PhII with multiple video cards. They didn't actually prove it, but they did come to that conclusion.
Let's do our own little comparison using the Futuremark ORB and 3dMark Vantage GPU scores. I've tried to search for stock speeds on the CPU and GPU but it is not always obvious. Regardless it doesn't matter anyway... because the GPU scores appear to be more dependent on the GPU and how many of them exist versus the CPU frequency anyway. (Overclocking the GPU can get you a few hundred more points also; but again the ballpark figures are going to be about the same.)
SO other than my own results below, the other results are guesses based on what appears to be the "average" score for the GPU type and # of GPU. But even if you go to the orb and pick the highest and/or lowest it won't really affect my final results.
================================================
Lets looks at 4850 cards:
(Remember these are the GPU scores.)
With a Phenom II at 3.0Ghz and 4850 video cards at stock I myself have the following results:
1x4850 = 6652
2x4850 = 11771 Gain of 77% over single
3x4850 = 15233 Gain of 29% over dual
-----------
Searching for i7 at stock on the Futuremark orb I can only find a 1x4850 and 2x4850:
1x4850 = 7136
2x4850 = 11577 Gain of 62% over single
(No 3x4850 results available for the i7 at this time.)
NOTE: The single card scores is higher for the i7 than for the Phenom II. But going to dual cards... the Phenom actually gains MORE than the i7 chip and actually pulls ahead of it.
=============================================
Just for fun lets look at 4870 cards.
(Remember these are the GPU scores.)
Phenom II 940 at 3.0Ghz
1x4870 = 8547
2x4870 = 15317 Gain of 79.2% over single
3x4870 = 21059 Gain of 37.49% over dual
i7 at around 2.8Ghz
1x4870 = 9044
2x4870 = 15005 Gain of 65.9% over single
3x4870 = 19812 Gain of 32.0% over dual
===========================================
RESULTS: Guess what? The Phenom II 940 does just fine at Crossfire and Trifire. In fact it does better than the i7.
Not only does it scale better... but it ends up with higher end scores at the top than the i7; even though the i7 chips start with higher single card GPU scores.
Based on this data... it appears that claiming that the i7 is better than the PhII with multiple video cards is not entirely accurate.
You might be able to find a few scores that change the "who gets the highest at the top" but it won't really change the percentages by much. And thus even if someone went to the trouble to do that... the only thing they could show is that both chips are more equal and not that the i7 is better. But with the size of the percentage gains, I'm going to guess it would be hard to do that anyway.
Bookmarks