Performance Results
SiSoft Sandra 2009 SP1
The latest version of Sandra changes some values around, as well as adds some new tests and features. It is a good baseline to get an overall feel for a processor and its potential performance when looking at instructions per second, floating ops per second, and cache and memory performance.
The difference in clockspeed and the IPC improvements show themselves quite nicely when comparing the older 9950 to the new 940. The Intel Q9550 still holds a pretty hefty lead in most areas, but due to it still relying on the FSB the memory performance is significantly lower. Also of note is the improvements in the Multi-Media Integer performance, and how the 940 actually scores slightly higher than the more expensive Q9550.
3DMark Vantage
My personal opinion is that Futuremark has done a very good job with its 3D Mark Vantage, especially in terms of nicely differentiating CPU performance from GPU. This allows us to not only look at the system as a whole, but be able to accurately point out where some of these performance differences are coming from. While this benchmark has its critics, it is still a valuable tool to decode and define performance differences between products.
While this benchmark is primarily aimed at the GPU, the Intel Q9550 does perform faster.
The GPU tests do show a small performance advantage on the Intel platform vs. that of the two Phenoms. In this particular test, while the differences are not glaring, the Q9550 still holds a significant lead overall.
PCMark Vantage
This “total system” benchmark stresses every subcomponent of the machine. From graphics, to main memory, to hard drive, to communications, PC Mark Vantage attempts to put a single number on overall performance. Luckily it also breaks down overall performance so we can see where the advantages lie.
Interestingly enough, the Phenom II comes out slightly ahead of the Q9550 in the Gaming benchmark, which relies heavily on not only the 3D Mark subset included in this benchmark, but also the heavily threaded Alan Wake test.
The Phenom II does score slightly higher than the Q9550 overall, but the primary difference seems to come from a small lead in the Productivity department. It is odd that the Q9550 is 150 points lower overall than the Phenom II, even though it holds a significant lead in several of the tests. The largest of which is the HDD portion, and we can blame that on the mediocre performance of the SB750 chips vs. that of the ICH9 included in the X38 chipset.
Cinebench R10
The latest version of Cinebench renders a very realistic, if futuristic, motorcycle as well as testing OpenGL performance in a rendering scenario. This benchmark can test single thread and multi-thread performance. This has typically been a benchmark where Intel has simply dominated AMD.
The results are definitely interesting. AMD is neck and neck with the Q9550, but Intel still has the IPC advantage over AMD. This is a welcome change though, as evidenced by the results from the Phenom 9950. Oddly enough, Intel has a distinct advantage in the OpenGL rendering test, though that should not be as extreme of a difference because both setups use the Radeon 4870 video card.
WinRAR
This popular compression software is also multi-threaded, and is very dependent on memory speed and overall latency. I took a 1.5 GB folder and compressed it down to 250 MB.
The Phenom II X4 940 again competes well against the Core 2 Q9500.
