Phenom quads vs. 45nm Intel quads

Tempered81

Diamond Member
Jan 29, 2007
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Which architecture is faster?

i was checking out toms' cpu guides and looking at a winrar 8 beta zipping benchmark
a quad core intel 45nm would do their task in 140 seconds with a clock of 2666mhz
a quad core amd phenom did it in 164 seconds with a clock of 2400mhz
based on this, and the other benches, or just you guys' knowledge, which of these two cpus is faster clock for clock?

 

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
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Originally posted by: jaredpace

Which architecture is faster?

i was checking out toms' cpu guides and looking at a winrar 8 beta zipping benchmark
a quad core intel 45nm would do their task in 140 seconds with a clock of 2666mhz
a quad core amd phenom did it in 164 seconds with a clock of 2400mhz
based on this, and the other benches, or just you guys' knowledge, which of these two cpus is faster clock for clock?

Clock for clock a Kentsfield (65nm quad) is faster in just about everything compared to a Phenom (even without the TLB patch, so no performance penalties buried in the comparison).

And since Yorkfield (45nm quad) is faster clock-for-clock than Kentsfield that means the gap between Intel's 45nm quads and AMD's Phenom is quite sizable.

These kinds of threads usually deteriorate into ferverent arguments over the relevance of clock-for-clock versus performance per dollar.

Just be aware that the performance per dollar metric will vary over time (favoring whoever made the most recent pricecuts) whereas the clock-for-clock values will not change unless a major chip revision comes out.
 

sutahz

Golden Member
Dec 14, 2007
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I agree with Idontcare, but here's some stupid little math I did:
2666MHz/2400MHz=1.111 (11.1% faster)
164s/140s=1.171 (17.1% slower)
so... about 6% slower for that specific application/benchmark, clock-for-clock.
 

Duvie

Elite Member
Feb 5, 2001
16,215
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remember that the 45nm versus of quads due out in Mar08 are supposedly 10-15% clock for clock versus kentsfield which seem 10-20% faster over the phenoms already......
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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I'm not known for my naive, tongue-in-cheek answers, but I rely on industry and enthusiast publications for "the skinny" just like everyone else does.

A recent issue of CPU Power User Magazine for January, '08, has a series of articles that would answer your question completely:

Page 58 Phenom Explained
Page 62 The Power of Penryn
Page 66 Multi-Core Slugfest

and page 70 has an evaluation of several DDR3 modules and kits.

The upshot of it is this. Phenom may poise AMD for its big come-back, but it isn't, by itself, the big come-back. The benchmark scores from the QX9650 just blow away the Phenom 9700's scores.

Here's a few samples from CPU's page 68:

SiSoft Sandra Drystone: QX9650 = 58,221 Phenom9700 = 36,743
Whetstone: QX9650= 45,949 Phenom = 31,032

Floating Point x4 iSSE2 (fitps) QX9650=190,270 Phenom = 120,716
RAM Bandwidth Int'ger iSSE2 MB/s QX9650= 9,329 Phenom = 5,759
RAM Bandwidth Float iSSE2 MB/s QX9650= 9,299 Phenom = 5,773
Futuremark PCMark05 CPU QX9650= 10,148 Phenom = 6,713
3DMark06 overall QX9650= 17,471 Phenom = 13,731
Sony Vegas (min:sec) QX9650= 2:53 Phenom = 4:19

Price-wise, the 9700 costs less than a third of the Penryn. But in consideration of the Kentsfield processors now available, and the fact that even a mild over-clock to a Q6600 can take you to the same level provided by the QX9650 at its stock speed although the Q6600 has only 2/3rds of the Penryn's L2 cache, the answer seems pretty obvious.