AMD Phenom II X4 940 - first AMD Phenom 45nm CPU, Deneb Core

Written by Dimitar Dinchev a.k.a. Veseliq

Thursday, 08 January 2009

 

Page 12 - Performance: Gaming (3DMark Vantage, Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Unreal Tournament 3)

For the first part of the gaming tests of the AMD Phenom II X4 we picked 3DMark Vantage, Crysis and Crysis Warhead. Although the first of the three is synthetic benchmark, it is still valuable for two reasons. First, this is the only benchmark created out of thin air specifically for DirectX 10 (most DirectX 10 games and applications are actually made with the DirectX 9 framework and merely have additional layer of DirectX 10 effects). Second, Futuremark, the company behind the whole 3DMark series of tests, at this time is developing a game that is based on the engine of Vantage, and a promising game it is expected to be.

We do remind you, that tests done with Intel Core i7 965 XE and Intel Q9550 were also with done with NVIDIA GeForce 280GTX. While the Phenom 9850 X4 and Phenom II X4 940 tests were concluded with HD4870X2. And this is the reason why we'll posting the results of the quad-cored Intel processors. We do hope to be able to update soon the review with new tests though.

3DMark Vantage

In the 3DMark Vantage test we recorded the CPU result and the summary result in Performance mode.

CPU tests in Vantage are extremely well optimized for multi-threading and that is clearly seen. With video cards of this caliber the gaming performance is frequently suppressed by the processor. More processor power (measured in cores and frequency) is always welcome and useful.

Crysis

Every benchmarker's favorite Лgame from Crytek, heir of the brilliant Far Cry, that was released over three years ago. In most tests we used the benchmarking tool of HOCBench, with the recorded by us timedemo, in order to get the most realistic result.

We do see notable difference compared to dual-cored cache enriched Intel at the same frequency, but the one between Phenom X4 II 940 and Phenom 9850 X4 is negligible, despite the latter being slower by 400MHz.

Crysis Warhead

The Crysis continuation. Crytek claim that a bit more effects are added as well as some engine optimization. Again HOCBench are to blame for the easy and systematic result gathering from the game:

Same scenario as in the first Crysis.

Unreal Tournament 3

Unreal Tournament 3 - one of the most anticipated 3D Action games for 2007. based on the Unreal 3 engine, that was also the base of games like Gears of War and Bioshock.