Phenom II X2 555 Vs. Pentium G6950: The Rematch

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

The last time we matched up Intel's Pentium G6950 against AMD's Phenom II X2 555, our overzealous overclocking efforts caused a processor meltdown. With a little more experience on Intel's 32 nm process (and caution), we offer a suitable rematch. Game on!

Benchmark Results: Applications

When it comes to audio encoding, the applications we're testing don't seem to make good use of more than two CPU cores. The dual-core Phenom II X2 555 overclocked to 4 GHz meets or beats Core i5-750 performance, but when all of its four cores are enabled and the clock speed is reduced to 3.8 GHz, the AMD CPU loses ground. The Pentium G6950's high clock rate wins the day easily here.

Video encoding performance is greatly dependent on the codec used. Xvid and MainConcept H.264 show the best results with the overclocked Phenom II X4 555 running four cores, as expected, but DivX prefers raw clock speed, and the overclocked Pentium G6950 takes the win.

3ds Max has always made use of extra CPU cores, so the quad-core Core i5-750 and core-unlocked Phenom II X2 555 easily take this benchmark. But 3ds Max also appears to have an affinity for the Clarkdale and Lynnfield designs. Notice that the 3.8 GHz quad-core Phenom can only meet the performance of the 2.66 GHz Core i5-750. Even the 2.8 GHz Pentium G6950 beats the dual-core 3.2 GHz Phenom II X2 555. The overclocked Pentium puts up a good fight, but can't reach the quad-core numbers.

Photoshop performance seems to be dominated by the Intel CPUs, but the core-unlocked Phenom II X2 555 manages a tie against the stock-speed Core i5-750 here. The dual-core Phenom II X2 555 struggles to keep up with stock Pentium G6950 performance, even when overclocked to 4 GHz.

WinRAR is able to utilize available execution resources, while WinZip, which is not threaded, scales according to clock rate. It is strange that the program hits a performance wall at about four and a half minutes. Perhaps we're seeing an I/O bottleneck here.

Don Woligroski
57 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Verkil
    I would love to see a comparison between i3-530 and X3 435 with GTA4.
    Reply
  • This is exactly what I've been waiting for. The numbers matched what I had already assumed. I got the 555 but I will consider the intel next time to change it up.
    Reply
  • ta152h
    One thing to consider is the Pentium G6950 is tied to a crippled platform, whereas the Phenom II can be used with an 890FX, which has more PCI-E lanes for Crossfire, comes with SATA 6Gbps, and can have USB 3.0 added without either running degraded, or using PCI-E lanes used for the video card.

    The AMD platform gives you more choices (integrated graphics, discreet graphics in several flavors, a lot of PCI lanes, or a few), and an unlocked multiplier.

    All these are important considerations.

    Reply
  • Considering you fryed one of the intel cpus quite quickly with only 7% more voltage...

    Id like to see a serious stability test on both cpus. A couple days with a graphic benchmark on loop as well as prime95 running an instance on each core would do it.
    Reply
  • lashton
    I dont understand they talk about the dormant cores and you may not be successful, this is a dual core shoot out, so you intended buying a dual core, why not get the phenom II 555 and see if the cores unlock if they dont well no biggie still a fast CPU but if they do BONUS, also they dont tell you that with 2 cores the phenom can easily get OVER 4GHZ, this is typical of toms not putting everything into the tests, definately Intel fans
    Reply
  • notty22
    9494982 said:
    One thing to consider is the Pentium G6950 is tied to a crippled platform, whereas the Phenom II can be used with an 890FX, which has more PCI-E lanes for Crossfire, comes with SATA 6Gbps, and can have USB 3.0 added without either running degraded, or using PCI-E lanes used for the video card.

    The AMD platform gives you more choices (integrated graphics, discreet graphics in several flavors, a lot of PCI lanes, or a few), and an unlocked multiplier.

    All these are important considerations.

    9494985 said:
    I dont understand they talk about the dormant cores and you may not be successful, this is a dual core shoot out, so you intended buying a dual core, why not get the phenom II 555 and see if the cores unlock if they dont well no biggie still a fast CPU but if they do BONUS, also they dont tell you that with 2 cores the phenom can easily get OVER 4GHZ, this is typical of toms not putting everything into the tests, definately Intel fans
    I don't know if this is ROFL or just sad ? Try reading the article. Your embarrassing yourself.

    More faulty logic by AMD fanboys. Which is it ? A budget bang for your buck rig,
    H55/Clarksdale=200 dollars
    or
    890FX ($160.00 MIN)+ 555=260, all so you can buy another cpu, next year, that does not exist yet ?
    and 890fx, you HAVE to buy a DISCRETE graphics card now.

    AMD will love you , if you invest in all of this hardware , with plans to buy more, lol.
    Reply
  • Reynod
    Thanks Don ... another solid article without the fanboi slant.
    Reply
  • C00lIT
    I don't know of any business who is better off with an Intel CPU these days...

    Businesses do not overclock and the AMD Platform with an ATI4200 onboard is just so much better then anything intel has to offer... Encoding ? Use and AthlonX4...

    The only good thing about the Pentium would be trying to break overclocking records... other then that... it's just a cheep cpu that fails against any amd tricore.
    Reply
  • ta152h
    notty22I don't know if this is ROFL or just sad ? Try reading the article. Your embarrassing yourself.More faulty logic by AMD fanboys. Which is it ? A budget bang for your buck rig,H55/Clarksdale=200 dollarsor890FX ($160.00 MIN)+ 555=260, all so you can buy another cpu, next year, that does not exist yet ?and 890fx, you HAVE to buy a DISCRETE graphics card now.AMD will love you , if you invest in all of this hardware , with plans to buy more, lol.
    Hmmmm, talk about embarrassing yourself - didn't you even bother to find out if your numbers were right before posting? You can get a 890FX for $140, not $160 MIN as you stated. For $155 you can get one with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps, and it's not implemented with the compromises inherent with the LGA 1156 platform.

    You're quite incorrect about needing a discreet GPU. AMD sells the 890GX, 790GX, 785G, 760G, and 880G. In fact, the platform they used had an integrated GPU. The nice thing with the AMD platform is, they have sideport memory, so you don't degrade CPU performance when you use the IGP due to memory contention.

    So, I can get the AMD platform with motherboards around $60 with an IGP, or I can get a powerful platform with two real PCI-E 16x slots, USB 3.0, and SATA 6.0 Gbps for $155. You don't have the same choices with the Pentium G6950 platform in either direction. AM3 processors have a very diverse selection of platform.

    So, is your contention that choice is bad?
    Reply
  • ubercake
    You know they do this all the time... When they start comparing the game performance, they drop the i5 from the comparison charts. WHY??????
    Reply