Best performance & overclock - Core i7 920 or Phenom II X4 955

Have you found any AM3 DDR3 SLI motherboards yet?

http://www.nvidia.com/object/produ [...] li_us.html
Seems to be a nice motherboard with 3 PCI-E x16 Slots(that doesn't get capped) and SLI ready and supports the AM3 socket including the Phenom II X4 955 And if I am right nvidia motherboards always allow overclock?

That would be interesting. You know what is under the IHS, right?
And that AS5 has metallic conductive properties?

Phenom II X4 955

I would not recommend removing the heat spreader...its probably soldered on.

One can remove any IHS with the liberal use of a small handheld blowtorch. When the IHS turns red, prize it off with a screwdriver.

Another method that has worked for some is to use a small handheld grinder, like the ones that smash repairers use. Grind off the top, then work on the sides.

BTW, Intel actually do make better CPUs at the momet.. AMD dont have anything as good as the i7.. yet..

To awnser you questions

1. The i7 will overclock like a bitch, i know this because i have one.

2. My overclocked i7 runs at 53C full load after 40 mins of prim95 using a zalman 9700 with AC5

3.Both CPUs will cope with Crosfire or SLI very well and i would think you would only notice any diffence in actuall CPU performance in a benchmark or encoding

AMD has best price/performace. Don't waste your money on overpriced CPUs.

The best overclocker in the hole universe

Look here noob go to new egg(which is one of the cheaper sites) and look at the lowest most suckiest i7 and compare it to the 955. It is nothing. i am an IT professional so i would shut it if i were you. and for your info the 955 ocs to an easy 4.3 GHz with an aftermarket AIR cooler. with water it goes far beyond that. and don't forget that amd has the fastest oc and benchmark. it is not a thousand dollar processor but it sure hands intel its a$$.

Dude, the i7 overclocked is like a Viper with Twin Turbos. All i7 920's overclock to 3.8 - 4.0 stable all day. I don't even know where people come up saying the phenom is better at gaming, 'cause an overclocked i7 will net you at least a 6.8Ghz QPI memory link, and those benchmarks will destroy the AMD in any game. I've been an AMD fan for years, but the i7 changed everything. And wait until more games start supporting multi-threading, the i7 has 8 of them. A stock i7 is fast, but an overclocked i7 is like having 50% more power on tap, it's just amazing to own one.

You see though, the "lowest most suckiest i7" absolutely DESTROYS the top Phenom II in all CPU limited benchmarks, including when overclocked. So, it is the better buy. Of course, that's ignoring the difference in motherboard and RAM cost, which is significant (though less significant than it used to be), but still, AMD definitely does not hand Intel its ass. If anything, it's the other way around. Admittedly, gaming is very rarely CPU limited, and even more rarely is it CPU limited and highly threaded, so it is an area where the i7 and Phenom II are more likely to be pretty close in performance, but neither is exactly stressed in that case. Look at situations where there is a high end CF/SLI setup though, and you can see the i7 pulling away - once more strain is put on the CPU due to the more powerful graphics, and the i7's additional power becomes readily apparent.

As for the 955 overclocking? From what I've seen, it tends to go to between 3.8 and 4.2 on air (depending on your luck). The i7 920 D0 also tends to get to a similar clock range, perhaps slightly higher (maybe 3.9-4.3?). Sure, AMD scales better at extreme cold, but how many people honestly run on liquid helium? Since the i7 has better performance per clock cycle (both single and multithreaded), the i7 920 is simply a better CPU than the 955, and if anything, it gets farther ahead when overclocked because the 955 loses the clockspeed advantage that it enjoys when both are at stock speed.

Oh, and Kemnaly, the i7 isn't choking at high res gaming. The graphics card is choking, so the CPU becomes irrelevant.

Not at all. The i7 will easily keep up if you turn off HT and only run 2 channels. In fact, if someone with a 955 will run some benchmarks, I'll run the same ones with mine with only 2 channels of RAM and no HT. I bet mine is still faster.

Basically your right on. The newest arch from Intel is faster, tho not that much in gaming, and the highest AMD is priced accordingly vs Intel anyways. Intels new arch is 1 arch ahead of AMD at this point, and it should be ahead, or Intels been doin the pooch. The overall system cost is whats usually taken into consideration in a gaming rig, which then puts the 955 in a very competitive scenario vs i7, BUT in this case, since we dont mind spending money as the OP obviously doesnt, Id say, go with the i7

Clock for clock, AMD will have to wait for BD to maybe be truly competitive.

OK, just for fun, here are some quick benchmarks. Dual channel DDR3-1600 7-8-7-22-1T, 2 DIMMs per channel (8192MB total), 4GHz, 4 cores active, 4 threads active.

First, the settings:

Everest memory benchmark:

SANDRA memory benchmark:

SANDRA processor arithmetic:

3dmarkVantage CPU score:

3dmark06 CPU score:

Oh, and just for grins, here's a full 3dmark06 run with the i7 at 4200MHz (still HT off and dual channel though).

Actually, my benchmarks are relevant. The D0 920s hit that kind of speed all the time (and unfortunately weren't available when I was building my system - if D0 had been out, I wouldn't have a 965). Oh, and dual E5520s is nice, but at just 2.26GHz apiece, they won't be significantly faster than my 4.2GHz i7 in multithreaded loads, and in gaming (still primarily single threaded), my i7 will utterly flatten the dual E5520 setup.

I think Lynnfield will be much more competitive with the Phenom II's than the current Bloomfield processors.
The only thing with LGA1366/Core i7 that has had me on the fence with this whole Phenom vs i7 thing, is that LGA1366 is going to reserved for high-end and server CPUs from Intel in the future, whereas AMD will be using AM3 for all their mainstream processors...Intel will be releasing the mainstream LGA1156 later this year, which is a whole other chipset.

I don't know, I just think AMD has a better selection for most mainstream users...It's true that a X4 955 is comparable to a 920 i7 for gaming because the software still isn't optimized take advantage of i7's HT.

Both systems will give you great performance though, no matter what.
I think everyone forgets that even though the i7 is better clock for clock, both chips are a great upgrade from anything older than a Core 2 Quad.
Even then, C2Q is on the out. *shrug*
I'm building my system this summer and I like the idea of saving close to $300CAD by purchasing a AM3 Gigabyte board + X4 955 + 4GB DC RAM, as opposed to an i7 920 + LGA1366 Gigabyte mobo + 6GB trip channel RAM...
My own personal opinion though. I just think both platforms have their advantages and it will depend on your specific needs/requirements.

EDIT: The one thing I hate about AM3 boards out right now, is the almost total lack of SLI support. About 50% of all X58 mobo's have SLI + CF support, whereas almost all AM3 boards only support CF...Doesn't leave much choice for multi-GPU setups, which I intend to have in the future.

i'm copypasting from newegg. The Vorlon said regarding the 955:

Pros: The Core i7 series DESTROY this cpu in most benchmarks... But that is not really the point.

This CPU is priced to be up against the Intel Q9550 and Q9650 series, and it's over all performance is in the general range of those two CPUs.

The AMD fanboys proclaiming this the fastest CPU in existance, are, well, just fanboys, but the Intel folks out there should open their minds up as well. The AMD motherboards tend to be a tad cheaper than the Intel boards, so over all this CPU is an excellent value when views from a total platform perspective.

Regarding over clocking, the AMD and the Intel parts are quite different. For a short period of time, the AMDs will (generally) overclock a little better than the Intel parts - This is because the AMD parts are thermally limited. The Intel parts are speed path limited but have much lower power consuption values, and will generally have higher stable 24/7 overclocks than the AMD parts, but cannot match the short term AMD overclocks.

Cons: These cpus use a lot of power 125 watts versus (typically) in the 65 to 70 range for the Intel Core2quads.

Other Thoughts: There will be a x4 965 (3.4 ghz) soon, so they may be a bargain to be had on this part when it is no longer the top of the AMD heap...

END of copypaste
I lean towards the AMD simply for the cost, but since that's not a big deal for you, then go and spend on the i7. If you want OC all the time, intel. If you want bursts of speed (mainly gaming/large polygon scenes), go AMD. Really, there are tradeoffs you need to consider in how you want to use the computer, not just I WANT OVERCLOCK. If you really want power, go buy a rack and put several server blades in parallel and you'll have an awesomely fast computer.

In price/performance, yes. I didn't buy the 965 for gaming. I got it for engineering apps, including matlab and solidworks. If gaming were my only goal, I might not even have an i7 at all. As for Nvidia Cuda, it's pretty much useless to me. None of the apps that I need a fast CPU for use CUDA at all. As for a beefy GPU, I think 4870 quadfire counts in that category (those are for gaming )

Sure "Mr. IT". Whatever you say. Have you even considered that the CPU the OP is talking about is the i7 920? Not $1K. Only a 1/4, probably less than that. And the D0 stepping has been shown to easily hit 3.8GHz from the stock 2.66GHz on air using the stock voltage. Be the X4 955 has to raise the voltage to get to that 4.3GHz, doesn't it?

Either way stop being a punk.

The whole point to the OPs thread is getting one for OCing. Thats what he plans to do. So in the end its probably best to go with the Core i7 920 especially since he plans on two GTX275s.

Nice benchmarks! im glad my q9550 has better overall than an amd 955 on a ddr3 mobo but i think that you guys have lost the point! a pc sould be upgraded when it is no longer efficient and not because the new i7 or amd9950 BE gets 2 fps more in games like crysis!. why to buy an i7 that will be out of production in 2-3 months when the new 6core chips will come out? what will you do then? buy the new 6 core or later the new 12 or 40 core just to say you have one?. I have been around since the first 8 bit computers and i o/c pcs since the time you needed a soldering iron and tampering with jumpers on the mobo! but i did it only for making them run heavier applications or top games of their time. However if you want to build a system decide first what you want it for, an amd 9950BE has better cost/performance ratio and can use existing mobos that have am2+ socket, an i7 has build in triple channell memmory controller hyperthreading and good oc capabilities but you have to buy a good mobo an even better set of ddr3 memmory and a high efficiency psu. if you dont care about the cost buy the i7 but if you have a limited budget buy amd. As for me ill stick to what i have until they drop the prices or until an upgrade is absolutely needed!
P.S Pardon my english but its not my native language.

Thank you for providing some reason. I would really like to see the results of this duel. Keep up the levelheaded unbiased posts... some one has to.

Haha. I know this a necro thread but I had to comment at the epic fail statement. "The i7 is better when overclocked but at stock the 955 will walk all over it in a lot of stuff. The big thing is, the i7 scales dramatically with OC'ing while the phenom II's give mediocre results. It's just architecture making the difference and seeing as nehalem is pretty much a new arch compared to the phenom II's which are more of a revision if you like, it's pretty decent from AMD this round.

If you have no intention of overclocking your cpu, you'd be better off with a phenom II 955 instead of an i7 920."

Facepalm to that one. And facepalm to me for posting in this thread.