The Lynnfield Preview: Rumblings of Revenge
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 29, 2009 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
3dsmax 9 - SPECapc 3dsmax CPU Rendering Test
Today's desktop processors are more than fast enough to do professional level 3D rendering at home. To look at performance under 3dsmax we ran the SPECapc 3dsmax 8 benchmark (only the CPU rendering tests) under 3dsmax 9 SP1. The results reported are the rendering composite scores:
There are three key takeaway points here.
1) Hyper Threading allows the i7-920 to outperform the entry level Lynnfield by nearly 18%.
2) With HT disabled, the $196 Lynnfield is faster than the $316 Core 2 Quad Q9650. It's a true replacement for Penryn in the lineup.
3) Intel could release an even slower Lynnfield and, by enabling HT, offer a chip faster than all other Penryn and Phenom II based processors in the market.
Cinebench R10
Created by the Cinema 4D folks we have Cinebench, a popular 3D rendering benchmark that gives us both single and multi-threaded 3D rendering results.
The single threaded Cinebench test shows us just how powerful the Nehalem core is. Remember, we're looking at single-core performance here.
Without an aggressive turbo mode, the 2.66GHz Lynnfield sample is faster than a 3.0GHz Penryn. Even at 2.13GHz Lynnfield is able to perform like a 2.5GHz Penryn. This is a very flexible core.
These results also give you an indication of exactly how strong the dual-core Nehalem derivatives will be in notebooks late this year and into 2010.
Crank up the thread count and feel the frustration brew. The entry level Lynnfield won't have Hyper Threading enabled, and thus it'll only outperform the Phenom II 955 by 3.4%. Had Intel enabled the HT switch, Lynnfield would not only be 16% faster than AMD's best but it would also be only 5% slower than the i7-920.
POV-Ray 3.73 beta 23 Ray Tracing Performance
POV-Ray is a popular, open-source raytracing application that also doubles as a great tool to measure CPU floating point performance.
I ran the SMP benchmark in beta 23 of POV-Ray 3.73. The numbers reported are the final score in pixels per second.
We see a similar story in POV-Ray.
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Hyperion1400 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
*Presses imaginary edit button*"Don't forget, Istanbul is heading..."
MadMan007 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Awesome preview, too bad about HT.I think there's an error with the labelling for the first pass x264 encoding test on pg 7.
dwade123 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
i5 is perfect for ITX motherboard compared to i7. Can't wait!!!nubie - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
+1 they need to get an ITX motherboard for these immediately, if not sooner!One chip motherboard with integrated PCI-e x16 is perfect for ITX gaming system, should drive the cost of them way way down :)
Dual x8 PCI-e 2.0 is fine for Crossfire or SLi (not that I would ever plan to run them)
Is there any chance of an nVidia 9800/GTS250 integrated ITX motherboard? I would just about die if you could get one of those for around $200 ;)
Mr Perfect - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
Absolutely! Can you imagine all that horsepower in such a small FF? Hopefully Zotac makes another mini-ITX with a x16 slot on it.Depeche - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
By the time I got the i7 the i5 comes out and when I finally get the i5 some other series comes out. I can't keep up :)Get these CPUs in the Bench Beta :P
A5 - Friday, May 29, 2009 - link
This kind of thing (and the motherboard round-ups that used to be here) were the reasons I came to AT. If this pans out, I'm definitely building a Lynnfield system to replace my aging Socket-939 rig.philosofool - Monday, August 3, 2009 - link
As a bonus, if you buy into LGA 1156 now, you will probably be able to get a considerable upgrade in 2 years just by replacing the CPU. The LGA 1156 socket should last awhile, at least as long as LGA 775, but maybe longer, because the memory controller was the big reason for a new socket.nuudles - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
I agree, great article!I also have only an an old s939 rig (opteron 150 - so i am still in the single-core world), and I also suspect this is the one I have been waiting for:)
I initially thought I would wait a bit longer till the 32nm parts come out (damn Intel for their tick-tock), but since the first 32nm parts will be more mainstream (2C/4T) where the Lynnfields are high-end mainstream (or whatever its called) I think the 2.8 Lynnfield would suit me nicely for the next 3-4 years.
faxon - Monday, June 1, 2009 - link
yea i would wait man. i upgraded from my 939 rig to an e5200 and now i have a Q9650 @ 4GHz @ 1.296vcore. given the performance benchmarks, even a 3.7ghz lynnfield will probably outperform my 4GHZ quad in games