MS ICE 64 and More
MS ICE 64This free “panorama builder” program is multi-core aware, and is another excellent real world application which can show off the power of these multi-core CPUs. A handful of pictures were used to create this panorama and I recorded the amount of time it took.
Intel still holds a small lead in this particular app, but a 5 second difference is again not very compelling to choose one over the other.
Crysis CPU Benchmark
Not many games have hammered on systems as much as Crysis has. In this test I run the CPU benchmark demo and record the average of the last 3 runs. A lot of deformable and destructible geometry is involved in this test, so it really hammers on the CPU.
Crysis loves Intel CPUs. For one reason or another, none of the AMD parts can crack the 20 fps barrier, while even the C2 E8600 runs as fast as the Q9550 at the 25 fps level.
WinRAR
I took a 1.5 GB folder and compressed it to 250 MB using the latest version of WinRAR.
The X4 955 in both AM2+ and AM3 form ties the Q9550.
Euler3D
This scientific application models wind dynamics over wing shapes, and is very much a HPC type application. It does seem to be compiled in favor of Intel CPUs, as they have always had a significant lead over the AMD processors.
The X4 955 improves its showing with the Intel part, but still cannot get anywhere close to the Q9550, even though it is clocked almost 400 MHz faster.
