How much slower is the Phenom II X4 945/955/965 than the i7 920?

[LW07]

Topic. Are they about the same in performance as the i7, slightly slower, or significantly slower?

 

[alyarb]

i can't think of a single Phenom II review that doesn't include the i7 for comparison.

google, google, google. you will find on the whole the phenom ii is negligibly slower given the huge disparity in cost, however there are a few scenarios where the i7 outshines everything, and you will have to do your own investigating to see whether or not these exceptions apply to you. at any rate, it's impossible to definitively declare one processor better than the other. There are a thousand things that go into a detailed comparison and the individual has to decide which is best for his unique set of needs.

 

[Denithor]

The i5 750 is a much better comparison - still ahead in performance and closer in total price.

 

[Idontcare]

Here are a few reviews comparing the PhII X4 965 and its slower siblings to the i7 920 as well as its faster siblings:

Anandtech AMD's Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition review

The Tech Report AMD's Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition processor review

Xbitlabs AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition: The Peak of Deneb Evolution review

AMDZone Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition review

Lostcircuits AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE review

(I chose these reviews just because they contain a wide variety of applications used in their benchmarking, helps widen-out the performance perspective across the differing classes of desktop applications)

I understand you explicitly titled the thread topic to be a performance comparison, not a price/performance comparison...but I'll add this link just to highlight what it is that some of the other posters are hitting on regarding i7 920's price/performance to the PhII X4 product line.

Not having assembled the numbers to do anything closely resembling statistical analysis, just going by my gut impression from looking at graph after graph of benchmark data, I would say my impression is that at stock a PhII X4 965 appears to perform on par with an i7 920 in general.

It outperforms even the i7 965 in a few apps, but then again it underperforms the i7 920 to a seemingly similar margin in an equally few number of apps as well. What you want to do as a consumer is determine if your app falls into one of those categories where the architecture of choice really does make a substantial difference in the performance you will extract from your computer.

Not going to say much about comparisons between overclocked cpus as no two cpu's overclock the same, and any reviews based on comparing overclocked results are going to be inherently limited by the specific cpu sample they received for review so it says little about the statistics behind what the typical consumer can expect from their specific cpu in an overclocked environment.

That's not to say overclocking data and reviews have no value, quite the contrary, just saying for the purpose of your thread's topic (as I have interpreted it to be) I don't see the merit of injecting OC'ed results into the evaluation matrix at this point.

 

[heyheybooboo]

I'd say you can't go wrong either way ---- but that the i7 920 with HT enabled kicks Phenom butt in video encoding.

Not so sure about the OC'ing noted by IDK --- if you 'Turbo' an i5/i7 the best comparison would probably be against a Phenom with 400MHz (which pretty much seems to be the rule at stock volts).

Nonetheless, I think Anand has a current comparison article (quite well done) that covers "" On - Off - Turbo - HT - OC - not OC "" in decent depth.



edit: Here's the link

Interesting 'multitask' benching -- probably hard to replicate but a thumbs-up to AT for the hard work.

We wait two minutes for system activities to idle and then start playing Pinball Wizard via iTunes, start the render scene process in Cinema 4D R11, start a resize of our Photoshop image, and finally the render frame benchmark in Lightwave 3D. Our maximum memory usage during the benchmark is 5.62GB with 100% CPU utilization across all four or eight threads.

 

[aigomorla]

question needs to be asked differently

How much slower is the PHII compared to i7 in what?

Games?
Not by much if any. In all likelyhood u wont see jack squat between a i7 and PHII system if it has the same GPU config.

In Crunching?
By a LOT. And not a small margin. The PHII is a turtle compared to the i7 when it comes to cpu tasks.
Also the i7 on average overclock a lot better then the PHII.
But the i7 can cost a bit more then the PHII.

So are u a gamer? or a cruncher?

Cruncher = video encoder, multi threaded apps, vm ware, F@H, WCG... stuff which loads your cpu up 100%.