Phenom II: AMD pulls closer

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TESTING SETUP

For those who are expecting pages and pages of benchmarks using programs you've never heard about and will never use, we will disappoint. SPCR's focus is on acoustics, thermals and power. We'll focus on these aspects using test tools you may be familar with from other SPCR reviews. We designed a basic test suite with a few time-sensitive operations that the majority of users may find themselves doing from time to time. The tests were run on three similarly equipped systems — one Core i7, one Core 2 Quad, one Phenom II — for a comparison of practical desktop performance diferences between the three platforms.

Core i7 Test Platform

• Intel Core i7 920 Bloomfield core processor - 2.66GHz, 4.8 QDI, 130W TDP
• Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme RT CPU heatsink
• Intel DX58SO motherboard - Intel X58 chipset
• QiMonda DDR3 RAM - PC3-1066, 2 x 1GB
• Asus ENGTX260 graphics card - GeForce GTX 260 896MB
• Intel X25-M solid-state hard drive - 80GB
• NesteQ ECS7001 ATX power supply.
• Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 operating system - Home Premium, 32-bit
• nVidia Forceware graphics driver - version 178.24

Core 2 Test Platform

• Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 Yorkfield core processor - 3.00GHz, 130W TDP
• ZEROtherm Zen FZ120 CPU heatsink
• Intel DX48BT2 motherboard - Intel X48 chipset
• Asus ENGTX260 graphics card - GeForce GTX 260 896MB
• QiMonda DDR3 RAM, PC3-1066, 2 x 1GB
• Intel X25-M solid-state hard drive - 80GB
• NesteQ ECS7001 ATX power supply.
• Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 operating system - Home Premium, 32-bit
• nVidia Forceware graphics driver - version 178.24

Phenom II Test Platform

• AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition processor - non-retail sample, 125W TDP
• ZEROtherm Zen FZ120 CPU heatsink - with Nexus 120mm Real Silent Case Fan
• Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H motherboard - AMD 790GX chipset
• Corsair Dominator DDR2 RAM - PC2-1066, 2 x 1GB
• Asus ENGTX260 graphics card - GeForce GTX 260 896MB
• Intel X25-M solid-state hard drive - 80GB
• Asus BC-1205PT Blu-ray drive - SATA
• Antec Signature 650 ATX power supply - 650W
• Microsoft Windows Vista SP1 operating system - Home Premium, 32-bit
• nVidia Forceware graphics driver - version 180.48

Measurement and Analysis Tools

• CPU-Z to monitor CPU frequency and voltage.
• HWM BlackBox to monitor CPU frequency.
• Prime95 processor stress software.
• CPUBurn K7 processor stress software.
• FurMark as a tool for stressing the GPU.
• Cyberlink PowerDVD to play VC-1 video.
• Eset NOD32 as an anti-virus benchmark.
• WinRAR as an archiving benchmark.
• iTunes an audio encoding benchmark.
• TMPGEnc Xpress as a video encoding benchmark.
• PCMark05 as a general system benchmark.
• 3DMark06 as a general system benchmark.
• Seasonic Power Angel AC power meter, used to measure the power consumption of the system

Benchmark Test Details

• Eset NOD32: In-depth virus scan of a folder containing 32 files of varying size with many of them being file RAR and ZIP archives.
• WinRAR: Archive creation with a folder containing 68 files of varing size (less than 50MB).
• iTunes: Conversion of an MP3 file to AAC.
• TMPGEnc Xpress: Encoding a 1-minute long XVID AVI file to VC-1 (1280x720, 30fps, 20mbps).