i5 / P55 Lab Update - Now with more numbers
by Gary Key on September 15, 2009 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
i5 / P55 Lab Update -
We welcomed Anand back into the office with open arms this past weekend. He immediately started working on an in-depth analysis of clock for clock comparisons for several processors as a follow up to our Lynnfield launch article (among many other things). This analysis along with a quick i7/860 performance review will be available in the near future.
In the meantime, I have additional performance results using the P55 motherboard test suite along with some unusual results from our gaming selections. I am not going to dwell on with commentary in this short update. We will let the numbers speak for themselves at this point. Let’s get right to the results today, but first, the test setup.
Test Setup-
For our test results we setup each board as closely as possible in regards to memory timings and sub-timings. The P55 and 790FX motherboards utilized 8GB of DDR3, while the X58 platform contained 6GB. The P55 and X58 DDR3 timings were set to 7-7-7-20 1T at DDR3-1600 for the i7/920, i7/870, and i7/860 processors at both stock and overclocked CPU settings.
We used DDR3-1333 6-6-6-18 1T timings for the i5/750 stock setup as DDR3-1600 is not natively supported in current BIOS releases for this processor at a stock Bclk setting of 133. We had early BIOS releases that offered the native 1600 setting but stability was a serious problem and support was pulled for the time being. Performance is essentially the same between the two settings. When we overclocked the i5/750 to 3.8GHz, we utilized the same DDR3-1600 7-7-7-20 1T timings as the i7 setups.
The AMD 790FX setup is slightly different as trying to run DDR3-1600 at CAS 7 timings on the 1:4 divider is extremely difficult. DDR3-1600 is not natively supported on the Phenom II series so this divider is provided with a caveat that you are overclocking the memory bus. The same holds true for the Lynnfield (i7/8xx, i5/7xx) processors as DDR3-1333 is officially the highest memory speed supported and it is DDR3-1066 for the Bloomfield (i7/9xx).
Without resorting to some serious overvolting and relaxing of sub-timings, we set our AMD board up at DDR3-1600 8-8-8-20 1T timings. The difference in performance between C7 and C8 DDR3-1600 is practically immeasurable in applications and games on this platform. You might pick up an additional few tenths of second in SuperPi or a couple of extra points in AquaMark or 3DMark 2001SE, but otherwise performance is about equal.
However, in order to satisfy some of our more enthusiastic AMD supporters, we also increased our Northbridge speed from 2000MHz to 2200MHz to equalize, if not improve, our memory performance on the AMD system. Yes, we know, further increasing the NB speed will certainly result in additional performance but the focus of this short article is to show clock for clock results at like settings. Personally, I would run DDR3-1333 C6 with 8GB as this platform favors tighter timings over pure bandwidth.
Last, but not least, I only ran the i5/750 without turbo enabled and the P45/C2Q setup is missing. I am still completing those numbers. Anand will be providing additional analysis on the other Lynnfield processors in his update. The image gallery below contains our Everest memory results with each processor overclocked at similar memory settings along with voltage/uncore/subtiming options. I will go into these in more detail once the motherboard roundups start. For the time being, the 860/P55 offers slightly better throughput and latency numbers than the 920/X58 when overclocked. At stock, the numbers favor the Lynnfield, but primarily due to the turbo mode.
Other than that we are in a holding pattern on the P55 roundups at this time trying to figure out some unusual game and 3D Render results with our GTX275 video cards. I will discuss this problem in the game results.
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GeorgeH - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
*Puts on tinfoil hat*Intel won't let Nvidia make chipsets for 1156/1366.
Nvidia GPU's perform conspicuously poorly only on 1156/1366.
Coincidence???? You decide!!!!!!!
*Takes off tinfoil hat*
Random question: Does the Nvidia+Intel performance thing correlate at all to how multithreaded a game is?
CB434 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
You know it's an honest review when unexpected results like this pop up.Purely coincidentally, I have emailed a few reviewers in the last few weeks about this..
All the video card reviews for the last 12 months show i7's as the test rig for all the video cards. It's so stupid that no one has ever thought to use an Nvidia card on a Phenom. Until now! Good work. It's always either AMD + Ati or I7 + Ati or Nvidia. All of the perceptions and ideas of performance for the current gen of Nvidia video cards is all based on how they work on an INTEL. Not overall.
It's just a shame the Phenom doesn't have SLI/CF in the same board. I'd be using Phenom II with 275GTX SLI and looks like it would be a kickass solution for gaming.
I don't think it's necessarily a bug or a problem. Maybe it's just the lottery/fluke of when you combine different parts that have different ways of working. Ati and Nvidia go two seperate ways to reach the same goal. Different memory bus bandwidth, shaders clocks etc and maybe something in there gels with the way the Phenom II works.
FlanK3r - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
AMD X4 965 with 2200 MHz uncore2200 MHz uncore is whorse than default 2000 MHz! Its one bad for review :(...I wrote review about Phenoms overcloking and made some comparsion uncores vs CPU cloks. In all performance, 2200 MHz uncore is very bad choice. More better is 2000MHz and of course 2400 Mhz or 2600 MHz (and higher for CPU clocks 3700 MHz up)
daydr3am3r - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
I have to ask, and pardon me for the triviality and/or ignorance but,why is the article title
Topic: Motherboard
Manufacturer: ASRock
?
The accompanying picture also displays an ASRock mobo..
Ben90 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
uhh, so AMD pretty much wiped the floor BIG time with the gtx 275. Ive heard several reports that AMD chips perform better on higher resolutions then i7s, but after research i never found the results to be that drasticI hope to hear the answer, maybe Nvidia released a driver that absolutely loves the deneb architecture, or possibly AMD just got a lucky two games as the ones benched.
If its something like the first one, and phenom can do this consistently game to game, we might see some big changes soon.
MadMan007 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
Thanks for the exploration of overclocks but unfortunately this article is worthless to me, and perhaps many others, without any Core 2 CPUs. Unless I want to try to extrapolate back to older articles, and that's a guessing game plus I'd need to find overclocked results, I am unable to tell how much benefit a new system would be.ggathagan - Wednesday, September 16, 2009 - link
As Gary clearly stated on the first page of the article and reiterated in the third comment, he had not yet finished with the P45/Q9550 testing at the time of his update.He also clearly stated that he would be adding those results at a later point.
coconutboy - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
Good update Gary, this is the kinda article/update I like to see. Comparisons are tough, but using dollar-for-dollar or clockrates helps me as a consumer.I notice that for walk-in customers, Microcenter (at least the one near me here in SoCal) has the following prices
$230 i7 860
$200 i7 920
$160 i5 750
I can get a 920 for less than an 860, then combine it with the ASRock X58 extreme that was recommended back in the July article ($170 at Newegg and it is getting high marks in the comments) and do a moderate overclock to 3.2-3.8GHz to achieve amazing performance for the price. Alternatively I can pick up the i5 750 and a ~$100-130 mobo and have a very low-cost outlay for a great gaming box. Hopefully AMD will also drop their CPU prices soon to give us yet another option.
With the new AMD and Nvidia cards coming out in the near future, all these choices are very inexpensive for the performance and will save $$ to be spent on a brand-spanking new vid card. In the meantime, an ATI 4850 or Nvidia 9600GT can be had for under $100 to conserve $$ and tide gamers over till the new hardware hits. I'm building two new systems in the next few weeks, and the above is my gameplan.
MadMan007 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
Anyone who is a gamer/enthusiast who doesn't have at *least* an HD4850 or 9600GT shouldn't be buying either one right now. Only if they're building a complete new system and are too desparate to wait.cactusdog - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
Not worth running 3.8Ghz if your temps are 90 degrees with the best air cooler money can buy. The 1366/1156 are great but we are hitting a temp ceiling now. People should be made aware of this because they will buy it, take it home and realise they cant really run at those settings even with the best air cooler. If you cant run at those settings the gap widens between the 920.This issue is being completely ignored or glossed over.