P2 AM3 a better gamer than i7 ?

Would prefer to see OC'd benchies, as people spending this money are not going to run at stock.

You couldnt be more wrong, the majority of consumers DONT overclock. Maybe 1 in 10.

Why would you prefer to see overclock benchies? Wouldnt P2 at 3ghz w/ddr3 against i7 at 3ghz w/ddr3 be more fair?


Considering the P2 with DDR2 beats the Q9550 and puts up a heck of a fight against i7 with DDR3 in gaming, Id say P2 with DDR3 and a "optimized" platform may put the smack down on the i7 in gaming, clock for clock.

Ok, I'll rephrase.
Stock speed benchies dont interest me personally. Ill bet most the people on this site agree with that.

Regarding the 3GHz Vs 3GHz comment, its of no interest again. Clock the chips as far as reasonably possible. Thats where it gets a bit more vague, as to what the definition of reasonable is. For me its stock HSF air cooled.


Either way i dont see the point of not pushing one chip futher than it is capable just because its competitor is inferior.

If the resolutions are lowered then the i7 will start to come out on top. At a very high resolution the gpu is doing most of the work. Still the P2 is starting to look better and better.

but who in the hell will drop the eye candy just to push the CPU, just to say they have a better CPU, especially when they spent all that money on the system and probably spent over £300 on the GPU to get the best results in the games.

it just doesnt make sence with that sentance

Not everyone can afford a monitor that has a resolution of 1920x1200, suppose someone can only afford something that has a resolution of 1680x1050 or 1440x900? That was more to my point than just dropping the resolution on a high res monitor, and yes with a large monitor I'd agree with you.

Phenom II beat I7 EE in Game High resolutions
http://www.legionhardware.com/docu [...] id=802&p=6

Its funny how the i7 trounces the Phenom II in the low quality tests, and yet in high quality the gap is minimal. I cannot imagine why that is.
Whats even funnier is why they bother with low quality tests with top of the line processors

there's something else you guy's are missing or just not talking about, in
the benchmarks with the Q6600 is also beating the AM3 chips most of the
time.

[url=http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3512&p=9][/url]

At high res, the GFX card is the limiting factor. To gauge performance, you test at 640x480, and have the CPU feed as much data as possible. You then compare to high res, to see if the diffrence (or lack thereof) remains the same.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/arti [...] VzaWFzdA==

The best PII on AM3 can do is match i7, and its clear that i7 is generally faster, even in gaming.

I'll explain again why you test CPU's in gaming at 640x480. Note, these are made up numbers, but the point I am trying to make should be clear:

You test at low resoultions to remove the GPU as a limiting factor. Even if a CPU can send enough data to the GPU to draw 87 frames a second, if the GPU can only draw 23 a second at those settings, the number of frames a second becomes 23.

By testing at low res, you greatly reduce the work a GFX card has to do, and can get a more accurate (although, never correct) representation on how two diffrent CPU's perform in a specific game.

This also means, that at high resolutions, all CPU's will generally end up with almost the same FPS, as the GPU will bottleneck the CPU. Example: CPU1 sends data to draw 34 frames/sec, and CPU2 sends data for 54 frames/sec, but if the GPU can only draw 23 frames, both CPU's show 23, but even though both setups produce only 23 FPS, one CPU is clearly better than the other. (Note, most graphs prove this to be correct. At high res and settings, the gap between FPS using diffrent CPU's narrows to almost nothing).


In short, making CPU comparisions at 1920x1200 (or any res above 640x480 with bare minimum settings) is irrelevent, as the rendering time of the GPU distorts the entire comparison. And even at bare minimum settings, as a real-time GPU does not exist, there is a certain margin of error in the CPU comparisions (unless increasing settings leads to no reduction of FPS, in which case it is proven the GPU is not yet limiting the CPU).

good explanation Gamerk316, but it does not tell the story of why the i7 is laggin behind in the games, apart from if they used a different graphics card (which they didnt),

in short, whast people are seing is the resolutions that they want to play at, when they see the core i7 drop down by almost 10-20 FPS on most games, this would sway them towards the core 2 and PII.

and people cant say, it must be wrong and there must have been a problem with the benchies, as i am seein this all over the net from other sites.

the fact that the cpu is faster in lower res, is irrelavent as nobody plays games at those res in the real world (apart from cpu benches), also the fact that it is faster in X-fire and SLI, shows that it is a formidable chipp (as it has the power behind the GPU), but what is goin on in the area where most people are using this CPU.

well intel better think of lowering the price of i7 as this is some result for AMD, and you have to feel sorry for the ppl that ran out and got there selves an i7. NOT

Because the cost of an i7 system is so much higher than the AM3's.

Why is that? The AM3 boards will be using the same chipsets as the AM2+ boards and DDR3 memory modules have the same number of wire traces as DDR2 modules so where will the price increases come from other than the customary price gouging for a newly released product?

There should be several 790GX-based boards for around $100 and many 770 and 780G based boards for $75-$100.

Yeah....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227297

VS.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820227381

Yep there is a money difference for the same performance. But I see your point, we will only know when the CPUs and MBs come out.

I think it will have more to do with the Phenom II memory being packaged as dual channel kits as opposed to triple channel kits than the voltage requirements. Basically triple channel kits can only currently be used on i7 systems (still a relatively small market segment), while dual channel kits can be used on Phenom II's and many Core 2 systems (a quite large market segment). Until i7 gains a large enough market share to justify producing the triple channel kits in a higher volume they will carry a price premium.

why would you use stock HSF if you wanted to push the chip as far as reasonably possible most HSF are not meant to take in account for overclocking. They dont give you more than they have to just enough to get the job done the cheaper they can make the more money in thier pockets.

Who would have ever thought the X3 would be in demand. lol.

here is a nice review: http://www.guru3d.com/article/amd- [...] view-am3/1

I think this one was a bit more realistic. Definitely shows its muscle but doesn't mislead it as an alternative on the high end (which it isn't). They did a good job with this review of making it very appealing yet kept things in perspective.
AS already pointed out, the high end is a very SMALL piece of the market. you look at the gravy part of the market and AMD is right there. No more "q6600" references need to be made. They are toe to toe with Yorkfields and overclock well. Putting them in the I7 conversation like some do isn't fair to the P2's and is very misleading to those who don't know any better.

Its all apples and oranges tbh. There is very little difference if any when gaming. Considering the bottom of the marks are still far above what you will ever see at your display either is a great choice.

Or it could be that the x58 is fine and i7 does not give much improvement in gaming over C2Q and Ph2 and that maybe Vantage is MUCH more CPU intensive than any game out there? Nah, never...... (*sarcasm*)

I'd say its pretty close to the O/C ability of the x3 and the core2duo/quad. Give or take they are all about 1GHz depending on the chip you get. This has me rethinking my possible upgrade path a bit. Might want to wait just a little longer, if anything the prices will come down and all the better for people like myself.

The X3's seem like pretty good competition for the E8000 series to me. Close clock for clock, overclock to nearly the same speeds, little slower I guess, but have a third core to help in the future & GTA4 +encoding and such.

THG shows the Phenom II as better then the i7, Anandtech shows the i7 920 as way more powerful then the Phenom II anywhere (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3512&p=8) - makes no sence to me.

Then again, HT could throw off results (same as pentium 4 - performance was a touch lower with HT on, but usability of the system was alot better reguardless)