Phenom II X3 720BE & CrossFire X Performance - Does it Compete?
by Gary Key on March 28, 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 X3 720BE (henceforth, 720BE) is around 4% slower in average frame rates than the X4 940 in single card and CrossFire X mode due to a 200MHz clock speed advantage in this game. When overclocked, the 720BE equals the X4 940, although both trail the Intel platforms by 3% in average frame rates and 18% in minimum frame rates.
Adding a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 11%, but minimum frame rates decrease 14% for the 720BE. Overclocking the 720BE resulted in a 6% improvement in average frame rates and 35% in minimum frame rates in CrossFire performance.
We have roughly the same performance results at 1920x1200 when comparing the platforms. The Phenom II X3 720BE is competitive with the Intel platforms and X4 940 in single card and CrossFire operation, though minimum frame rates in CrossFire mode trail the other solutions up to 17%. Once we overclock the CPUs, the minimum frame rate is about 15% lower on the Phenom II processors compared to the Intel products.
Installing a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 25% and minimum frame rates increase 5% for the 720BE. Overclocking the 720BE resulted in a 7% improvement in average frame rates and 37% in minimum frame rates.
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 heavy action scenes in the jungle, but honestly, we could not tell the systems apart during testing. The 720BE provided an equal gaming experience to the other processors with our settings.
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yyrkoon - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
You know I have been thinking it would be really cool if you guys did a story on *why* a specific game title performs better on various hardware. Does ID soft optimize for Intel ? AMD ? nVidia? AMD/ATI ? What about other game developers ? Could it be Microsofts "fault" ?You know, all that sort of "jazz" :)
MadMan007 - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
I would have liked to see idle and load power consumption numbers. I know that my PC does not run at loast at least half the time if not more so idle power consumption is important to me and matters for TCO.That's the only thing missing from this article, otherwise nice succinct writeup.
gnesterenko - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
Well, if I was buying a system today, I'd have to go for i7 920 by these numbers, BUT. THeres a few very interesting options coming soon. First is the new C2D from intel - the E8700 clocked at 3.5GHz. Although only a dual core, thats really really fast clocks per core and I'm sure it would OC to 4.5GHz on air like a champ considering how well the other C2Ds OC. THe other is the Phenom II 955 clocked at 3.2GHz. THis is the first quad AM3 CPU from AMD to break 3GHz barrier and should be an interesting option as well. In any case, I'd like to see another one of these articles including these two above once they come.Although either way, won't be picking a platform until I see performance numbers of the RD890 and SB800 platform from AMD. THis is going to be a merry X-mas!
TMike7 - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
The quality of your articles is really outstanding, i love reading them.Some time ago I read an article about memory and the conclusion was that more memory is better for improving the overall performance of a given computer system than more expensive memory.
Could You please include in your testing on DDR2 versus DDR3 one or several tests with 8Gb of DDR2-memory (2 kits of 2x2Gb). It would really be nice to see how the PhenomX3 720BE can cope with all four memory slots populated and how far it still can overclock.
Thanks
martenlarsson - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
He paid $400 for the entire setup excluding GPU, that's just a tad more than you pay for the cheapest i7, CPU only...Really nice article and shows you don't need a monster CPU to game. The X3 720 is looking more and more like the chip to buy.
erik006 - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
In the article index "opposing forces" in displayed. That should be "opposing fronts."JarredWalton - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
Gary's been playing the new cross-genre game that combined HL2 with RTS gameplay, I suppose. We could tell you more about it, but then we'd have to kill you.... ;-)jaggerwild - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
You spent four hundred on a MATX when for a few hundred more you could have bleeding edge I7 that will clock out higher? You must be a FAN BOY with yer very miture remarks!Oh yeah my momma says hello :)
abzillah - Sunday, March 29, 2009 - link
This is why I bought my phenom 720. On January 18th I got laid off work from a biotech company. I haven't had any luck finding a job. Two weeks ago I sold my 2 year old PC for $350 to a friend who's kid needed a new PC but didn't want to spend much. So now I had $350, and I got $100 for painting some stuff around his house. So, please tell me how I could get myself a core i7 for $450, unless you will give me the rest of the money for free.Yesterday I got hired part time at a hardware store and after I pay some of my credit cards, I will buy myself a 4890. You can call me a fan boy all you want, but I see it as smart economics.
I use mATX boards because I don't add anything on the board besides a video card, so the extra pci lots are not needed by me. I use my pc to surf the net, watch movies, play video games and use Microsoft Office.
iamezza - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
he was being sarcastic ;)