http://www.overclock.net/blogs/darkcloud89/ An overclocking forum devoted to maximizing the performance of graphics cards, CPUs, motherboards, RAM and everything else found inside your computer case. en Tue, 24 Nov 2009 19:28:50 GMT vBulletin 1 http://static.overclock.net/images/oc/misc/rss.jpg http://www.overclock.net/blogs/darkcloud89/ http://www.overclock.net/blogs/darkcloud89/581-if-phenom-won-would-anyone-notice.html Mon, 07 Jul 2008 19:03:06 GMT From reading reviews and posts, not just on this forum but any hardware enthusiast site, I can get the impression that for building a gaming machine, the Phenom is a horrible choice. While it certainly does have its fair share of problems (clock speed, TDP, etc.), gaming is certainly not one of... From reading reviews and posts, not just on this forum but any hardware enthusiast site, I can get the impression that for building a gaming machine, the Phenom is a horrible choice. While it certainly does have its fair share of problems (clock speed, TDP, etc.), gaming is certainly not one of them.

But the question is, if AMD’s Phenom just happened to overpower Intel’s Core 2 Quad in anything clock-for-clock would anybody notice? Specifically, I'm speaking of gaming performane here. During my aimless wandering throughout the internet, I came across a set of benchmarks at OverclockersClub. While the topic of this specific review was Intel’s Q9450, there are some interesting numbers regarding the Q6600 (2.4GHz) and the Phenom 9600 (2.3GHz). These are the two processors I will be comparing.

These tests were performed with a GeForce 8800GT at settings that users would actually play at with this card. I feel that this makes these numbers valuable since they should be representative of what someone would experience with a similar system. Note that because the graphs are all in Flash rather than images, I can’t actually post the graphs here, but you can check out the review here

First up is the Crysis SP Demo, which was tested at all medium settings and 2xAA. At 1024x768, you can see that the 9600BE is really no match for the Q6600 (-8fps). But, at 1680x1050 it becomes much closer and the Q6600 only has a 4fps lead over the Phenom. Moving up to 1920x1200, the slower-clocked 9600BE actually outperforms the Q6600 by a single fps.
Crysis CPU Winner: Tie (at higher resolutions, they each win one)

Moving on to the Crysis GPU test, at both 1680x1050 and 1920x1200, the Phenom 9600BE delivers higher framerates than not only the Q6600, but the QX9770 and the overclocked Q9450 as well.
Crysis GPU Winner: Phenom

The next game tested was “Knights of the Sea” (DX10, High Quality), which I don’t really know anything about, but it’s tested anyway. At both of the higher resolutions, there’s really no room for argument that the 9600BE doesn’t keep up with the Q6600.
Knights of the Sea Winner: Q6600

As for BioShock (Max Settings), the Phenom is definitely more competitive than with the previous test, but it still isn’t quite enough to gain the edge over the C2Q part.
BioShock Winner: Q6600

Call of Duty 4 is obviously a very popular game, and the results are kind of interesting (Max Settings, 4xAA, Max AF). At both of the higher resolutions, the 9600BE manages to outpace the Q6600 despite the clock speed disadvantage.
CoD 4 Winner: Phenom

World in Conflict is next, and was tested at Very High detail with 16xAF.At 1680x1050, the 9600BE barely beats the Q6600, but at 1920x1200 it again beats not only the Q6600, but the QX9770 and Q9450 as well.
WiC Winner: Phenom

Next up is Call of Juarez (High Detail, 2048x2048 Shadowmaps, Normal Shadow Q, 4xAA). Although the framerates weren’t playable, the 9600BE matches the Q6600 at 1680x1050, but at 1920x1200 it manages to best the QX9770 and Q9450 again, barely.
CoJ Winner: Phenom

The final game test was Company of Heroes which was run with max settings and 8xAA. This test is interesting because the Phenom just dominates the Q6600, QX9770, and the Q9450 at every resolution. The higher resolutions actually make the C2Q look completely uncompetitive.
CoH Winner: Phenom

Looking at the results here, even though the 9600BE is clocked slower than the Q6600, it still manages to come out on top for gaming 5 out of 7 times. Perhaps even more impressively, 3 of those 7 times it bests a 3.2GHz C2Q. The point here is that if someone is building a gaming machine, and wants to go quad core, Phenom may genuinely be the better solution.

UPDATE: It seems as if the same property holds true for Phenom X3's vs Core 2 Duo's:

With an HD3870X2...
Crysis CPU & GPU:
Winner: Phenom

Supreme Commander:
Winner: Phenom

Company of Heroes:
Winner: Phenom

World in Conflict:
Winner: Core2Duo

With an 8800GT... @ 1680x1050 & 1920x1200... (Repeated tests omitted)
Knights of the Sea (DX10, High Image Quality):
Winner: Phenom

BioShock (Maxed):
Winner: Phenom

Call of Duty 4 (Max Settings, Extra Texture Q., Max AF, 4xAA):
Winner: Phenom

Call of Juarez (High Detail, 2048x2048 Shadowmaps, Normal Shadow Q., 4xAA):
Winner: Phenom

Despite a 600MHz+ clock speed disadvantage, the Phenom still comes out on top in every game tested except World in Conflict. ]]> darkcloud89 http://www.overclock.net/blogs/darkcloud89/581-if-phenom-won-would-anyone-notice.html http://www.overclock.net/blogs/darkcloud89/568-3dmark-nvidiadvantage.html Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:20:32 GMT From what is probably the result of having too much time available due to my recent high school graduation, for some reason I had the strange desire to write about something. Writing isn't something I have been particularly interested in doing in the past, but every once in a while a problem or issue will come along that just makes me want to get my opinion out there, and I'm noticing just this while reading about the Nvidia-PhysX-Vantage "scandal" and so I'm offering my take on the situation...

I do want to start by saying that I don't consider myself to be a fanboy. I will admit that I do lean towards the ATI side, but I don't think it's enough to be considered fanboyism, it's more the result of a much better driver experience on Vista than Nvidia has provided with my 8600m.

That being said, the first thing I want to address is accusations of Nvidia bias in the Vantage test, or what I see as the lack of it. I don't really find the Vantage test to be particularly unfair. Typically Futuremark will create the 3DMark product as a forward-looking benchmark and so they incorporate techniques and technologies that they foresee an increasing usage of in game development. Obviously they looked at the technology of physics acceleration and saw that it had potential and they decided to include it in their benchmark. I don't think it's any more complicated than that, and I can't find anything wrong with wanting to benchmark physics acceleration since it was sort of the "hot new thing". But obviously it's not just the mere inclusion of physics benchmarking that's the issue, it's the fact that they used PhysX which of course is now owned by Nvidia. Even so, I still don't think that's necessarily bias. The decision to include PhysX support was probably made before Nvidia announced the purchase. The only time PhysX support could possibly be biased would be if Futuremark refuses to implement a Havok test when a GPU Havok API is releaesed by AMD without giving a reasonable explanation, and chose to exclusively support PhysX. This currently isn't the situation and I fail to see any bias on the part of Futuremark (yet).

Looking at it from the opposite perspective, Nvidia has also been blamed for this "debacle" as well because they used drivers to boost the score significantly. I guess this could somehow be called "cheating" according to the Futuremark's approved driver policy, but I don't think it is. From what I can tell, the driver isn't using a cheap or underhanded trick to boost the scores. Nvidia simply bought PhysX, they have a right to the technology, and they've implemented it onto their GPU products, and all this test is really doing is showing it off. I'm not the biggest fan of Nvidia and their tactics in the video game industry (read: TWIMTBP), but I can't bring myself to honestly call this cheating because I'm just not seeing it. There are plenty of other reasons Nvidia can be demonized for their actions, but this isn't one of them.

I've also seen comments that Futuremark should add a DX10.1 test to make up for ATI's lack of PhysX. Although I'm for a DX10.1 feature test (which would benefit Nvidia cards too because they have some DX10.1 features, just not full compliance), there's no way that it could somehow "replace" a physics test for ATI cards. They aren't even remotely close the same thing. When you run PhysX acceleration alongside GPU rendering, you have both tasks competing for the limited resource of the GPU's power, however DX10.1 is just a different way of doing that rendering regardless of whether or not physics processing is going on. The only thing they really need to do to make it fairer for ATI is include Havok support when it's available, but until that time I don't see a problem with just including PhysX. As I said earlier, I think they should also include DX10.1 feature tests since Assassin's Creed showed us that it does indeed have performance as well as slight image quality benefits.

Another thing is that benchmarking physics and rendering individually is going to give the result when physics has full priority of GPU resources and also when the rendering has full priority. This has the effect of a very inflated score compared to the actual gaming performance that can be expected since in gaming scenarios, the PhysX and rendering will be competing for resources. However, the other way of looking at it is this actually gives an additional metric by which video cards can be compared because you now have the GPU score and the physics score (which is labeled as CPU score).

From what I can tell, a big portion of the outcry is how much of an effect this has on the "total score" which would effectively render Vantage useless to compare between two different systems unless they both have Nvidia. But, it's not like you *have* to test the physics capability. At the very worst, all this does is makes Vantage scores that include Physics as worthless for comparison as 3DMark06 numbers when it was run at non-standard settings or resolution. In my opinion, this whole thing has been blown quite incredibly out of proportion. ]]> darkcloud89 http://www.overclock.net/blogs/darkcloud89/568-3dmark-nvidiadvantage.html