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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yacoub - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
We really need the P55 motherboard reviews. That's where we (hopefully) learn about temps, stability, power draw, features, etc. I certainly won't be buying until I read reviews for the P55 boards.Stradigos - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
I agree! I can't wait to read it. I won't be buying anything till I do.strikeback03 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
I'm waiting on the same thing. The ~$50 difference between a P55/860 system and an X58/920 system isn't enough to affect my decision much, but this article mentions in passing that the P55/860 system uses 70W less, which would be a definite consideration for me. I'm waiting to see whether this is only in stock configuration or if there is also a difference when overclocked, temps on good air coolers, etc.jonup - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
I'm with you. I am upgrading within the next 6 months and if the i5/p55 is worth the money I will be jumping on it sooner rather than later. Microcenter has the i5 for $170 after MI sales tax. I would of pull the triger but there is not enough MB reviews yet.Gary Key - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
I am not going to wait much longer, just about every person I have contacts with is working on the NV problem. I just hate showing numbers with the knowledge that something is not right. It is not just games, the 3D Rendering apps like Cinema 4D are affected also. That said, I have spent the better part of the last three days testing with the HD4890. ;)CB434 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
Gary, this GPU issue...Is it that the i5 and i7 is "underperforming" and is getting less FPS than it is expected to (relative to other benchmarks). Or is it simply that the AMD/275 combo is simply better then expected? Is there a "problem" with the i5/i7 and the 275GTX per se? If there was no AMD/275 test, would you have thought there was a problem?
I'm confused about which is which.
Are your contacts Intel people, trying to find a reason for the "problem" or are they AMD people trying to find an explanation for their "success"?
For the record I've been hunting down 275GTX reviews for quite a while and this is the first I've been able to find using a Phenom II and a 275GTX (no chance of ever finding 275GTX SLI on Phenom :(.. ) It's always an i7 in the GPU test rigs. So finding a frame of reference or baseline for how 275GTX is supposed to work with Phenom CPU's is hard because there is nothing out there.
GeorgeH - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
From other reports I've seen on this issue, it really is a problem and it's specific to 1136/1366 - a high-end 775 C2Q would have performed pretty much identically to the X4 965.Bottom line, LGA775+GT200 looks to be a superior gaming platform to a i7+GT200 right now.
Source (bottom of page):
http://techreport.com/articles.x/17545/6">http://techreport.com/articles.x/17545/6
yacoub - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
So is this issue unique to the P55 boards, or do the X58 (or whatever the i7 920 runs on) exhibit this same issue when running the same NVidia drivers and Win7?If the issue isn't unique to P55, it's not really a factor in which P55 motherboard to buy if they all exhibit the same behavior and the X58 boards do as well.
CB434 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
That's why turbo mode is so cool.You can get all the upsides of a 24/7 3.8Ghz overclock without the extra heat and power usage. You can OC to 3.2 24/7 and let turbo do the rest. For single and dual core turbo it will shut off the other 2/3 cores, meaning more hz for less power consumed and heat generated. Turbo can give you all the upsides without the downsides, or at least the downsides are reduced.
jeffj29 - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 - link
So it looks like OC'd at 3.8 GHz with HT on that it's a dead heat performance-wise between the x58/920 and then p55/860 platform.The 860 combo would have lower cost but the 920 combo have greater future upgrade performance potential (with a future 6-core processor). But here is the question I am most curious about... how much higher would a 920 (with D0 stepping) overclock to using air cooling than a 860? For example, if the 920 overclocks easily to 4.0 GHz but the 860 wouldn't OC stable past 3.8 GHz then the 960 would be the clear performance pick in my book.