CrossFireX and the Phenom II X4 940 – Competitive or Not?
by Gary Key on February 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Call of Duty: World at War
While not our favorite Call of Duty game, World at War certainly improves upon the graphics quality of previous versions. We play through the first few minutes of the Semper FI level by following a repeatable course and capture our performance results with FRAPS. We set the various graphics and texture options to their highest settings with AA at 2x and AF at 8x.
This game is not particularly hard on either the GPU or CPU, but we do hit a hard cap at 94fps. At 1680x1050 the Phenom II platform is able match either Intel platform in single card and CrossFire mode, although minimum frame rates favor Intel slightly. When overclocked, the Phenom II is only about 2% slower in average frame rates but minimum frame rates are 20% lower.
Adding a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 12% and minimum frame rates decrease 2% for the Phenom II. The Intel Q9550 has an 11% increase in average frame rates and 4% in minimum frame rates. The Core i7 average frame rates improve by 13% and minimum rates decrease by 12%. Overclocking our processors resulted in a 2%~5% improvement in average frame rates with the Q9550 benefiting the greatest.
We have roughly the same performance results at 1920x1200 when comparing the platforms. The Phenom II is competitive with the Intel platforms in single card and CrossFire operation, though minimum frame rates in CrossFire mode trail the Intel solutions around 5% on average. Once we overclock the CPUs, the minimum frame rate is about 16% lower on the Phenom II compared to the Intel products.
Installing a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 27% and minimum frame rates increase 16% for the Phenom II. The Intel Q9550 has a 28% increase in average frame rates and 24% in minimum frame rates. The Core i7 average frame rates improve by 29% and minimum rates increase by 30%. Overclocking our processors resulted in a 4%~5% improvement in average frame rates with the Q9550 benefiting the most.
We did not notice any difference in game play quality at either resolution between the platforms after playing through several of the levels. Each platform offered a very smooth and fluid gaming experience. We thought the higher minimum frame rates on the Intel systems would be noticeable during the action scenes in the jungle, but we honestly could not tell the systems apart during testing.
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FingerMeElmo87 - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
"Seriously, who cares for Crossfire (or SLI)?Please. Stop making those useless enthusiast's enthusiast reviews and come back to the ground, AnandTech."
--Whats down to earth? Intel Celeries and IGPs'? They did both average use benches with single GPU and enthusiast class benches with dual GPUs and overclocking. how could you get your panties in a bunch like so easily. did you even bother to read the article?
"Please, go ahead, check the Steam survey hardware list.
Then tell me: How many people out of 100 do have SLI/Crossfire.
Then laugh.
Then stop testing this shit like it was important."
--Once again, same worthless comment. they didnt just test crossfire
"And here my suggestions for constructive improvement:
Test the new generation of HDDs with 500GB platters (e.g. Seagate 7200.12 series)
THAT would be interesting, because EVERYONE needs a good HDD, but no one needs Crossfire."
--ugh. saying eveyone needs the latest and greatest type of harddrive is like saying everyone needs crossfire and SLI.
going as far as breaking down your entire retarded post was a complete waste of time just to call you a douche bag but i guess it had to be done
CPUGuy - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
The user "Finally" is right (although a tad abrasive). You don't need CF or SLI to run any of those games at an acceptable frame rate. Furthermore, the mainstream crowd does outnumber the enthusiast crowd using CF/SLI by many fold. So it would have made more beneficial to show both CPU stock and overclock results using just a 4870.Heck, they could have added a PII 920 at stock and overclock and a 4850 just to make it interesting. Maybe one day we will see such a setup tested.
scottb75 - Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - link
With SLI/CF the CPU becomes more of the bottleneck then it would be with just one GPU. So, testing with SLI/CF shows more of a difference between the CPUs then it would with just a single card.Gary Key - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
This is not a GPU comparison per say, it is a platform comparison. We set the game options to a blended mixture of quality and performance in order to keep the GPU setup from becoming the limiting factor when possible. This is explained in further detail in page two.CPUGuy - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
Although I understand your reasoning and to a degree it make sense. However, many are using or attempting to use 4xAA max settings at 1680 (at the very least). Therefore, it would be very informative to many of use what we could expect.This is with the expectation that we are no longer worried about just CPU scores but platform scores. IMO, reviewers should start looking at the platform as whole in reviews like this as many are looking at it that way. If it were true that one motherboard performed exceedingly better then another a CPU only benchmark would make sense.
CPUGuy - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
us not use...sorryv1001 - Sunday, February 1, 2009 - link
Page 10 - Final Words is missingGary Key - Monday, February 2, 2009 - link
The article went live before it was completed. Page 10 is in and I will update it late tomorrow with power consumption numbers. Just finishing the power tests on the i7 with the same power supply we use on the other setups.