AMD 955 vs Intel i7 920 Gaming Value Showdown

[fusion238]

AMD Phenom II 955 system is about 30-40% less than the Intel i7 920 but when it comes to games, it proves that it overpowers the Intel in games like COD. What is surprising is that in the newest games like X3: Terran Conflict, the high priced Intel is no match for the AMD Phenom II 955 even at stock clock!

AMD Phenom II 955 vs Intel i7 920 Gaming Showdown

 

[Fox5]

Games are just one type of performance, and some games (farcry 2, company of heroes) go heavily in favor of the i7.

Honestly, it comes down to the workload. If something can make use of 8 threads, the phenom IIs (and core 2s) have no chance, otherwise it can be close.

 

[v8envy]

That's not how I interpret it at all. At lower resolutions where the CPU matters more than the GPU the 920 yields 96 vs 83.4 FPS. That's a 14% speed advantage Intel. Yes, it could be X3 is not a cpu hog (it does run fine on my E2180) -- that doesn't mean the Phenom "overpowers" the i7 at all.

And meh, when you view the total system cost (including OS, case, PSU, hard drive(s), peripherials, monitor) the price difference is hardly 30%. I just picked up a $199 i7 from Microcenter. Yes, I'll be paying $40 more for a board and $50 more for RAM. But unless you can put together a complete, high performance AMD system on a $300 budget you can hardly say the i7 premium is 30-40%. In absolute dollars it's right down there with a price of a tank of gas.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

horrible comparison, even at the OC'd levels... plus WAW is not a CPU intensive game like others

its more like an AMD ad 'Look, AMD is faster than i7" but on a review sight medium

EDIT: something smell funny to you around here?

 

[richierich1212]

fusion is back at it lol

 

[Atechie]

More and more games are getting multithreaded(and so are applications) and those games run better on a i7:
ArmA 2 tested: Benchmarks with 18 CPUs

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Atechie
More and more games are getting multithreaded(and so are applications) and those games run better on a i7:
ArmA 2 tested: Benchmarks with 18 CPUs

The threading for that game looks really weird. picture. The dual core is maxed out so that's nice. The quad core never hits 100% on any of the cores. The i7 has heavy usage on 1 logical core then the other 7 cores are lightly used. The graph looks like the game is GPU bottlenecked, but the overclocked i7 still destroys the stock i7.

I think I'll download the demo just to check this out. you can get the demo here.

 

[lopri]

I have always thought there is something wrong in current X58 and its implement of QPI/PCIe, and that is why i7 isn't doing well in games. It hasn't surprised me at all because I saw X58's bug lists. Eventually it will fixed by a newer revision X58 or a different chipset. Remember that among all the benches you're likely to see, games are usually the only ones that actually utilize motherboards' interconnects, outside the benches that are storage-bound.

 

[jimhsu]

From experience:

In an empty sector with a decent amount of scripts running, X3 is almost certainly CPU limited. However, the engine is horrible when it comes to parallelization, explaining AMD's lead -- even though the game is an EXCELLENT parallelization candidate (sectors are essentially isolated from each other, threads typically run on individual ships). There had been talks to rehaul the engine but that doesn't look too likely.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: lopri
I have always thought there is something wrong in current X58 and its implement of QPI/PCIe, and that is why i7 isn't doing well in games.

its called HT ON.

Its not a friend of gamers, or benchmarkers. Something about a virtual thread not being as fast as a physical thread, so it increases latency in all applications.

Thats why i dont have HT ON lately, unless i need to do a full 8 thread task. Which i havent had the need to do lately.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: v8envy
That's not how I interpret it at all. At lower resolutions where the CPU matters more than the GPU the 920 yields 96 vs 83.4 FPS. That's a 14% speed advantage Intel. Yes, it could be X3 is not a cpu hog (it does run fine on my E2180) -- that doesn't mean the Phenom "overpowers" the i7 at all.

And meh, when you view the total system cost (including OS, case, PSU, hard drive(s), peripherials, monitor) the price difference is hardly 30%. I just picked up a $199 i7 from Microcenter. Yes, I'll be paying $40 more for a board and $50 more for RAM. But unless you can put together a complete, high performance AMD system on a $300 budget you can hardly say the i7 premium is 30-40%. In absolute dollars it's right down there with a price of a tank of gas.

Nobody replaces their whole system every year though. I'm still using my 19" 1600x1200 CRT monitor that is like 6 years old as a second monitor. Using same keyboard I've been using for 5 years. Didn't have to change RAM either, using the same 8GB I had in my Intel system before this.

 

[vj8usa]

Originally posted by: v8envy
That's not how I interpret it at all. At lower resolutions where the CPU matters more than the GPU the 920 yields 96 vs 83.4 FPS. That's a 14% speed advantage Intel. Yes, it could be X3 is not a cpu hog (it does run fine on my E2180) -- that doesn't mean the Phenom "overpowers" the i7 at all.

Are we looking at the same chart? I'm trying to see where you're getting this 83.4 FPS value from, but I'm not seeing it in the linked X3 chart.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: v8envy
That's not how I interpret it at all. At lower resolutions where the CPU matters more than the GPU the 920 yields 96 vs 83.4 FPS. That's a 14% speed advantage Intel. Yes, it could be X3 is not a cpu hog (it does run fine on my E2180) -- that doesn't mean the Phenom "overpowers" the i7 at all.

And meh, when you view the total system cost (including OS, case, PSU, hard drive(s), peripherials, monitor) the price difference is hardly 30%. I just picked up a $199 i7 from Microcenter. Yes, I'll be paying $40 more for a board and $50 more for RAM. But unless you can put together a complete, high performance AMD system on a $300 budget you can hardly say the i7 premium is 30-40%. In absolute dollars it's right down there with a price of a tank of gas.

that's 170$ for a mobo and 70$ for ram... and that i7 came with TAX in microcenter.

 

[aigomorla]

u need to look at the overclocking potential of both as well.

PHII wont top a D0 i7 when it comes to overclocking potential.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
u need to look at the overclocking potential of both as well.

PHII wont top a D0 i7 when it comes to overclocking potential.

PHII won't top a Q8000 or Q9000, even with a moderate clockspeed advantage.

 

[taltamir]

on the plus side, you could turn off your space heater once you get the P2... 140 watt of heat blowing at your feet... (before overclock)

 

[fusion238]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
u need to look at the overclocking potential of both as well.

PHII wont top a D0 i7 when it comes to overclocking potential.

The PC World review says there are people getting the Phenom II 965 to 4.6+ Ghz!

'Test systems have been able to push the new processor up to 4.6 GHz with third-party air cooling; AMD itself claims that the chip can go further, on average, than its 955-edition brother.'

Looking at the Newegg customer reviews of the AMD 965 shows with a cheap Hypermaster TX2 cooler (almost free after rebate), it was clocked to 4.3 Ghz.

Newegg AMD Phenom II 965 customer reviews

Last of all, reviewers comparing actual watts found the Phenom II 965 uses only a few watts more power at load than Phenom II 955.

 

[Rhoxed]

Originally posted by: fusion238

Originally posted by: aigomorla
u need to look at the overclocking potential of both as well.

PHII wont top a D0 i7 when it comes to overclocking potential.

The PC World review says there are people getting the Phenom II 965 to 4.6+ Ghz!

'Test systems have been able to push the new processor up to 4.6 GHz with third-party air cooling; AMD itself claims that the chip can go further, on average, than its 955-edition brother.'

Looking at the Newegg customer reviews of the AMD 965 shows with a cheap Hypermaster TX2 cooler (almost free after rebate), it was clocked to 4.3 Ghz.

Newegg AMD Phenom II 965 customer reviews

Last of all, reviewers comparing actual watts found the Phenom II 965 uses only a few watts more power at load than Phenom II 955.

really?

as you can see by my sig i am an avid AMD fan....

but this trash really needs to stop, quoting newegg reviews is like buying white van speakers and thinking they really are 2000$+ speakers

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Rhoxed
but this trash really needs to stop, quoting newegg reviews is like buying white van speakers and thinking they really are 2000$+ speakers

They often are $2000 speakers. The catch is that they're stolen

 

[OCGuy]

I can get the i7 920 for $199, and so can people near a micro-center. That is a hands-down winner.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: fusion238

Originally posted by: aigomorla
u need to look at the overclocking potential of both as well.

PHII wont top a D0 i7 when it comes to overclocking potential.

The PC World review says there are people getting the Phenom II 965 to 4.6+ Ghz!

'Test systems have been able to push the new processor up to 4.6 GHz with third-party air cooling; AMD itself claims that the chip can go further, on average, than its 955-edition brother.'

Looking at the Newegg customer reviews of the AMD 965 shows with a cheap Hypermaster TX2 cooler (almost free after rebate), it was clocked to 4.3 Ghz.

Newegg AMD Phenom II 965 customer reviews

Last of all, reviewers comparing actual watts found the Phenom II 965 uses only a few watts more power at load than Phenom II 955.

Newegg reviews?

 

[v8envy]

Even with tax my 920 i7 was $215. Sometimes online etailers charge shipping, so it's a wash.
Motherboard weighed in at $145 after Bing cash and rebate ($185 AR gigabyte UD3R, $40 borg cash).
Memory is $73 for 6 gigs.

While people may not replace their whole machine every year it's fairly pointless to upgrade the CPU+motherboard without upgrading the video, cooling and possibly storage and power supply. Lately my video cards have been running about as much as my CPUs. My point still stands. The grossly overstated 30-40% price premium on an Intel build shrinks to a much lower percentage very quickly when you view the whole budget. It's very rare a gamer would only upgrade just the CPU. Looking at egg pricing it looks like there's a $80 difference in CPU prices and the most popular MSI phenom board is $180 -- not far off from the large selection of $150-210 X58 boards. Let's call it a $100 price difference. Taken in perspective of a $600 budget for a CPU+board+RAM+video that's a 17% difference. Throw in a faster hard drive and $100 PSU and there's yet more delta shrinkage. In my case the price difference of an i7 vs 955 based build was roughly zero.

Anyway, got vertical dyslexia when reading that graph. Compared an OCd 920 to a stock clocked 955. Apples to apples looks suspiciously like the differences are in the testing margin of error, both when the PII wins stock clocked or the 920 wins overclocked.

And I'm glad the average newegg user is able to crank the P2 to 4.3 ghz or better with nearly free after rebate cooling. Competition is good for everyone, and it should cut down on RMAs of processors from disappointed kids who were "only" able to get to 4 ghz or so out of one.

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: taltamir
on the plus side, you could turn off your space heater once you get the P2... 140 watt of heat blowing at your feet... (before overclock)

You know, I can't speak about power consumption because I do not own anything remotely scientific to measure power consumption of a given system (not to mention a CPU), but I can say with a reasonable confidence that PII system is not as hot as i7 system. (I had them side-by-side in front of me) It is not as hot as Kentsfield + X48 combo, either, if my memory serves me right. Yorkfield + P45 combo is probably cooler but I cannot say for sure because I haven't had a full-blown Yorkfield processor.

 

[lopri]

Not considering price, performance, power, etc. there is an advantage to X58 that may matter to some: It does both SLI and CrossFire. I am not a fan of multi-GPU configuration (I've had enough of it), but gamers who want to spend top dollars for a new build this could be a consideration. In that regard, X58 holds a distinct flexibility that no other chipset has currently.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Rhoxed
but this trash really needs to stop, quoting newegg reviews is like buying white van speakers and thinking they really are 2000$+ speakers

They often are $2000 speakers. The catch is that they're stolen

no, they are just REALLY CHEAP speakers and they are ripping you off... they always use the same story "we picked it up in the factory, but they gave us 2 pairs instead of 2 speakers... we need to get rid of the extra one and get back to work"...
look it up on wikipedia. I actually had that offered to me on multiple times

I said no because I didn't want stolen goods, but since then I learned its just super crappy speakers being overpriced like hell.

Originally posted by: lopri

Originally posted by: taltamir
on the plus side, you could turn off your space heater once you get the P2... 140 watt of heat blowing at your feet... (before overclock)

You know, I can't speak about power consumption because I do not own anything remotely scientific to measure power consumption of a given system (not to mention a CPU), but I can say with a reasonable confidence that PII system is not as hot as i7 system. (I had them side-by-side in front of me) It is not as hot as Kentsfield + X48 combo, either, if my memory serves me right. Yorkfield + P45 combo is probably cooler but I cannot say for sure because I haven't had a full-blown Yorkfield processor.

this goes against every review i ever read...