Testbed and Methods

We are going to compare the performance of the new AMD Phenom II X4 processors against quad-core Intel CPUs from the same price range. As a result, the rivals will be the top CPU from the Core 2 Quad Q8000 family and the junior model from the Core 2 Quad Q9000 family. Of course, we couldn’t help including the hot buy of this season – the junior Nehalem based Intel Core i7-920 CPU. We will also compare the performance of the new Phenom II X4 against that of the top processor from the previous generation Phenom X4.

As a result, we ended up with three test platforms configured as follows:

1.  AMD Socket AM2+ platform:

• CPUs:
  • AMD Phenom II X4 940 (Deneb, 3.0GHz, 6MB L3);
  • AMD Phenom II X4 920 (Deneb, 2.8GHz, 6MB L3);
  • AMD Phenom X4 9950 (Agena, 2.6GHz, 2MB L3).
• Mainboard: Gigabyte MA790GP-DS4H (AMD 790GX + SB750).
• Memory: Corsair TWIN2X4096-8500C5 (DDR2-800 SDRAM, 2 x 2GB, 4-4-4-12).
• Graphics card: ATI RADEON HD 4870.
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD.
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x64 SP1.

2.  Intel LGA775 platform:

• CPUs:
  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 (Yorkfield, 2.83GHz, 2 x 6MB L3);
  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q9400 (Yorkfield, 2.66GHz, 2 x 3MB L3);
  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 (Yorkfield, 2.33GHz, 2 x 2MB L2);
  • Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 (Yorkfield, 2.5GHz, 2 x 2MB L3).
• Mainboard: ASUS P5Q Pro (Intel P45 Express).
• Memory: Corsair TWIN2X4096-8500C5 (DDR2-1067 SDRAM, 2 x 2GB, 5-5-5-15).
• Graphics card: ATI RADEON HD 4870.
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD.
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x64 SP1.

3.  Intel LGA1366 platform:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield, 2.66GHz, 8MB L3);
• Mainboard: ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58 Express).
• Memory: Kingston HyperX KHX16000D3K3/3GX (DDR3-1333 SDRAM, 3 x 1GB, 7-7-7-20).
• Graphics card: ATI RADEON HD 4870.
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD.
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista x64 SP1.

Note that although we used a Socket AM2+ mainboard with an integrated graphics core, it was disabled during our test session.