Intel’s Core i7-975 & 950: Preparing for Lynnfield
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 3, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Performance
To measure performance under Photoshop CS4 we turn to the Retouch Artists’ Speed Test. The test does basic photo editing; there are a couple of color space conversions, many layer creations, color curve adjustment, image and canvas size adjustment, unsharp mask, and finally a gaussian blur performed on the entire image.
The whole process is timed and thanks to the use of Intel's X25-M SSD as our test bed hard drive, performance is far more predictable than back when we used to test on mechanical disks.
Time is reported in seconds and the lower numbers mean better performance. The test is multithreaded and can hit all four cores in a quad-core machine.
Whoever said there's no room for CPU performance improvements anymore would be very wrong. While the Pentium E5300 is more than sufficient for most tasks, there's nearly a 60% difference between its performance and the class leading Core i7-975. Even the Phenom II X4 955 takes 55% longer to complete this test.
The performance advantage is there, but it's one that you definitely pay for. The i7-975 is around 4x the price of the Phenom II X4 955.
DivX 8.5.3 with Xmpeg 5.0.3
Our DivX test is the same DivX / XMpeg 5.03 test we've run for the past few years now, the 1080p source file is encoded using the unconstrained DivX profile, quality/performance is set balanced at 5 and enhanced multithreading is enabled:
x264 HD Video Encoding Performance
Graysky's x264 HD test uses the publicly available x264 codec (open source alternative to H.264) to encode a 4Mbps 720p MPEG-2 source. The focus here is on quality rather than speed, thus the benchmark uses a 2-pass encode and reports the average frame rate in each pass.
The i7-975 is over 70% faster than AMD's fastest in our x264 encode test, and 3.85x the speed of the old Pentium EE 955. Even compared to the Core i7-920, the 975 is ~24% faster.
Windows Media Encoder 9 x64 Advanced Profile
In order to be codec agnostic we've got a Windows Media Encoder benchmark looking at the same sort of thing we've been doing in the DivX and x264 tests, but using WME instead.
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silver250 - Friday, June 5, 2009 - link
Maybe I missed it but last time I saw a review with the Phenom II CPU's they ran better with DDR3, all the boards for AMD listed are only DDR2 boards.So whats the deal? Or did I just miss a reason somewhere in other reviews?
Tunnah - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
would it be possible at all to get the power usage stats of the overclocked version ? A while ago I was reading an article (not sure if here or elsewhere) and it gave the power usage per overclock step and was a great way of working out where to find the balance of power usage vs overclocking amount. Also I'd love to see the power this beast sucks up at 4.6ghz hatygrus - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
Are you able to measure the CPU clock freq while running the benchmarks to see the affect of the Turbo mode. Labelling as 3.2GHz when it could actually be 3.46GHz.Can we also see results with the Intel Turbo On & Off ?
Does Intel use core activity to determine Turbo limits or does the on-die temperature sensor allow using higher speeds at any time ?
Intel claimed a bit of both, but it seems very pre-set (1core max, 2core max, 4core max). Can it be overridden ?
How hot can the case temp be before the CPU is prevented from using higher speeds ?
How much activity on other cores will prevent the fastest setting of single core task ?
Hrel - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
This article is kind of pointless beyond page 1 just cause you don't include ANY of the processors that used to be the best bang for the buck. Where's the E6600? the E8400? E6420?? the E7650??? Q6600? Seriously, showing us performance for new CPU's is pointless if you're not going to include the processors that sold the best in the past. I mean seriously, the E8400 is STILL the best bang for the buck around for many people and you didn't even include that... sad, just sad.Gary Key - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
You can compare any of those processors to the 975 using our Bench tool - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?b=2">http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?b=2 . :)lpcap - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
I think for the world's most powerful laptop with the Core i7 975 go to:http://www.lpc-digital.com/store/3302695/product/c...">http://www.lpc-digital.com/store/3302695/product/c...
aigomorla - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
:)I dont have anything bad to say about it.
Monster overclocker, im doing about 4.4ghz with 1.35vcore with full stability.
When i showed the 975 off a couple of months ago on the cpu and overclocking section, i told everyone the D0's were gonna be HOT.
Fulle - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
Interesting... most 920s only can OC to about 4GHz at that voltage... even with the D0 stepping. Either you got lucky with your chip, or the 975 isn't as bad as I thought.Fulle - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
Its fortunate for AMD that the vast majority of the games out there are NOT multithreaded, like FarCry 2... and for the majority of games out currently, they don't even scale with CPUs beyond 3 cores... which is evident if you look at the Phenom II X3 720's performance in Anand's benchies.It cracks me up to see some enthusiasts bashing Lynnfield. All things considered, the Lynnfield 2.8GHz CPU with HT will be the one to have for the best gaming frame rates. It has excellent 2 core performance with turbo mode, which will allow for top FPS in most games, and for those that are highly threaded, Graphics bottlenecks considered, it'll hang in pretty darn close to the i7s. Its almost as if Intel designed the chip specifically for hardcore gamers.
This 975/950 business seems lazy, however. Intel doesn't even try when AMD falls too far behind.
lifeblood - Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - link
"Intel really has no other external motivation to push for higher frequency parts, so we only see a bare minimum increase in specs here."If AMD fails the we will very quickly return to the days of overpriced and underpowered Pentium trash. When Intel has no competition they quit trying.