Phenom II X3 720BE & CrossFire X Performance - Does it Compete?
by Gary Key on March 28, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts
The oldest title in our test suite is still the most played. CoH has aged like fine wine and we still find it to be one of the best RTS games on the market. We look forward to the Tales of Valor standalone expansion in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, we crank all the options up to their highest settings, enable AA at 2x, and run the game under DX9. The DX10 patch offers some improved visuals but with a premium penalty in frame rates. We track a custom replay of Able Company’s assault at Omaha Beach with FRAPS and average three test runs for our results.
Single card scores at 1680x1050 are fairly close between each platform. In this particular game, the Phenom II X4 940 offers slight better performance than the X3 720BE in the single card and CrossFire results with a 1% advantage thanks to a higher clock speed. When overclocked the 720BE finishes ahead ever so slightly but within our margin of error on the benchmark. Installing a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 42% and minimum frame rates by 43% for the X3 720BE. Overclocking the 720BE resulted in a 9% improvement in average frame rates and 5% in minimum frame rates, indicating we are largely GPU limited at this point.
In our previous testing with the 8.12 drivers, the Intel systems would generate minimum frame rates in the 23~24fps range on a couple of runs and then jump to their current results or higher on the others. Guess what, we still noticed that problem with the 9.3 drivers. However, the hitch and pausing we encountered previously was mitigated somewhat in our new tests. It was only in intensive ground scenes with numerous units that we really noticed the problem and it was primarily with the Q9550 platform. Both Phenom II systems had extremely stable frame rates along with very fluid game play during the heavy action sequences.
The Phenom II X4 940 leads the group at 1920x1200 with a single card. The X4 940 is 4% faster in average frame rates in single card mode and 2% faster than the 720BE in CrossFire. The X4 940 has a 8% advantage in minimum frame rates in single card results and 7% in CrossFire. When overclocked, both Phenoms are equal for all intent purposes. Adding a second card for CrossFire operation improves average frame rates by 57% and minimum frame rates by 62% for the 720BE. Overclocking the 720BE only improved frame rates 5% as we continue to be GPU bound at this resolution.
What about the game play experience? As we mentioned earlier, the Intel Q9550 platform had some problems with minimum frame rates throughout testing - not just in the benchmarks, but also during game play in various levels and online. The i7 platform would behave in the same manner at times, but the game play experience with it has certainly improved with the 9.3 driver set and BIOS upgrades. The problem is very likely driver related in some manner (as the man who helped to start DirectX once put it, "the drivers are always broken"), but nevertheless this continues to be a problem on the two Intel platforms.
We could not discern any differences between the X3 720BE and the X4 940 during game play. Actually, how could we, the frame rates were basically even in all situations. Even the slight gap in minimum frame rate differences between the two processors did not create any problems during our gaming sessions.
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yyrkoon - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
You know I have been thinking it would be really cool if you guys did a story on *why* a specific game title performs better on various hardware. Does ID soft optimize for Intel ? AMD ? nVidia? AMD/ATI ? What about other game developers ? Could it be Microsofts "fault" ?You know, all that sort of "jazz" :)
MadMan007 - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
I would have liked to see idle and load power consumption numbers. I know that my PC does not run at loast at least half the time if not more so idle power consumption is important to me and matters for TCO.That's the only thing missing from this article, otherwise nice succinct writeup.
gnesterenko - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
Well, if I was buying a system today, I'd have to go for i7 920 by these numbers, BUT. THeres a few very interesting options coming soon. First is the new C2D from intel - the E8700 clocked at 3.5GHz. Although only a dual core, thats really really fast clocks per core and I'm sure it would OC to 4.5GHz on air like a champ considering how well the other C2Ds OC. THe other is the Phenom II 955 clocked at 3.2GHz. THis is the first quad AM3 CPU from AMD to break 3GHz barrier and should be an interesting option as well. In any case, I'd like to see another one of these articles including these two above once they come.Although either way, won't be picking a platform until I see performance numbers of the RD890 and SB800 platform from AMD. THis is going to be a merry X-mas!
TMike7 - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
The quality of your articles is really outstanding, i love reading them.Some time ago I read an article about memory and the conclusion was that more memory is better for improving the overall performance of a given computer system than more expensive memory.
Could You please include in your testing on DDR2 versus DDR3 one or several tests with 8Gb of DDR2-memory (2 kits of 2x2Gb). It would really be nice to see how the PhenomX3 720BE can cope with all four memory slots populated and how far it still can overclock.
Thanks
martenlarsson - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
He paid $400 for the entire setup excluding GPU, that's just a tad more than you pay for the cheapest i7, CPU only...Really nice article and shows you don't need a monster CPU to game. The X3 720 is looking more and more like the chip to buy.
erik006 - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
In the article index "opposing forces" in displayed. That should be "opposing fronts."JarredWalton - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
Gary's been playing the new cross-genre game that combined HL2 with RTS gameplay, I suppose. We could tell you more about it, but then we'd have to kill you.... ;-)jaggerwild - Saturday, March 28, 2009 - link
You spent four hundred on a MATX when for a few hundred more you could have bleeding edge I7 that will clock out higher? You must be a FAN BOY with yer very miture remarks!Oh yeah my momma says hello :)
abzillah - Sunday, March 29, 2009 - link
This is why I bought my phenom 720. On January 18th I got laid off work from a biotech company. I haven't had any luck finding a job. Two weeks ago I sold my 2 year old PC for $350 to a friend who's kid needed a new PC but didn't want to spend much. So now I had $350, and I got $100 for painting some stuff around his house. So, please tell me how I could get myself a core i7 for $450, unless you will give me the rest of the money for free.Yesterday I got hired part time at a hardware store and after I pay some of my credit cards, I will buy myself a 4890. You can call me a fan boy all you want, but I see it as smart economics.
I use mATX boards because I don't add anything on the board besides a video card, so the extra pci lots are not needed by me. I use my pc to surf the net, watch movies, play video games and use Microsoft Office.
iamezza - Tuesday, March 31, 2009 - link
he was being sarcastic ;)