How does Phenom II X4 940 compare to i3 550?

[bX510]

I couldn't find benchmarks for i3 550 for games. How do they compare for Chrysis, Wow, Starcraft 2?

 

[aigomorla]

to be honest... unless you see yourself scaling cards... and going from SLI to xfire.. to sli again.. id get the AMD.

If you are gonna scale your cards.. then the P55 platform has flexability to take both SLI and XFIRE, so that should be a better option.

In all the games you listed is heavily gpu based, so id get whatever u can save more on, and dump the overhead on a higher class gpu.

Either of those systems will not show much improvement over getting a better gpu.

 

[Ares1214]

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/80?vs=143

Theres a comparison of the i3 540 and the X4 940. So while it isnt the 550, its just one multiplier up, so just cushion the 540 score a little bit.

 

[Axon]

My i3 540 @ 4.0 kills SC2 and WoW when paired with a GTX 460 1GB at 1920x1080. With that said, I don't think you can go wrong with either processor, since the games you've listed are GPU intensive, save WoW...which suffers from the worst coding of all time.

 

[maniac5999]

My i3 540 @ 4.0 kills SC2 and WoW when paired with a GTX 460 1GB at 1920x1080. With that said, I don't think you can go wrong with either processor, since the games you've listed are GPU intensive, save WoW...which suffers from the worst coding of all time.

True, but WoW will run on a toaster.
Anyway, will you be overclocking? Because the i3 should have more headroom. The 940s top out around 3.6, but i think the i3s normally go to about 4.2. Overall, I think that they're pretty close, with the i3 having better IPC and more headroom it gets the nod in older games, and games like SC2, which is only dual threaded. The 940 gets the nod in games that can actually use 4 cores (Crysis, WoW) because even though the i3 is faster, hyperthreading just isn't as good as having more cores.

I think the deciding factor is if you have any old components that you can re-use. I bought a 940 because it will slot right into my rig. Do you have RAM? a motherboard?

 

[Termie]

This new article from XbitLabs should answer most of your questions: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-benchmark-mainstream.html

They tested the i3-550, and the PII 955 they tested is pretty close to the PII 940 you're considering. Xbit comes away saying the PII series is better than the i3 series, and for gaming in particular, it looks like the Phenoms are definitely better: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cpu-benchmark-mainstream_6.html#sect1

 

[Gikaseixas]

hyperthreading just isn't as good as having more cores

this... The Phenom is a bit faster still

 

[Jdawg84]

I3's will touch 4.4-4.6 with a good heatsink and 4.8-5.0 with a high end water setup.

 

[OBLAMA2009]

thats pretty sad, the i3 is better or close on most benchmarks that matter. the 550 is even better.

how come this site doesnt update bench anymore?