Date: December 11th, 2008
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Intel
<--CLICK FOR PRICES ON AN INTEL PROCESSOR IN THE UNITED STATES
<--CLICK FOR PRICES ON AN INTEL PROCESSOR IN CANADA
BENCHMARKING
POV-RAY BETA 3.7 v29
As a good overall and very processor intensive benchmark, POV-Ray tests the photo rendering ability of any processor. The beta version being used today allows for multi-core benchmarking.
To start off, when it comes to photo rendering, this processor tends to not match up well with extreme processors which are targeted for this kind of work. The larger QPI link and faster memory bandwidth support does have the i7-965 XE with quite a sizeable performance lead.
CINEBENCH 10 RENDERING BENCHMARK
Cinebench is an excellent rendering benchmark to see how a processor will manage a set photo rendering task.
But to confuse things even further, you have this lower end processor matching up with the likes of a $2000 QX9770 processor when it comes to a recent photo rendering task utilizing more modern instruction sets. The numbers speak for themselves. This is still a fast processor.
PCMARK 2005 CPU BENCHMARK
PCMark 2005 is an excellent basic benchmark that tests the CPU by putting it through day to day tasks such as file transfer, audio compression etc.
Seeing this benchmark is a great overall gauge of how a processor will do in a standard multi-task computing environment, when it comes down to how a processor will perform doing the usual consumer tasks, this processor holds the edge. Sure this processor did match up to the faster premium offerings from today and past, but you can see it blows the tailpipe off a dual core.
SUPER PI (1MEG CALCULATION)
This record-breaking program was ported to personal computer environment such as Windows NT and Windows 95 and called Super PI. In order to calculate 33.55 million digits, it takes within 3 days with Pentium 90MHz, 40MB main memory and 340MB available storage.
Again, you see this processor matching up with extremely fast processor from the previous generation for close to half or less of the cost.
PASSMARK v6.1 FULL PROCESSOR BENCHMARK
Passmark is a new benchmark we will be using on Tweaknews to test and overall score a processors performance based on several tasks accomplished.
Passmark's onslaught of CPU benchmarks produced much of the same. The enhanced bandwidth of even the i7-920 has it performing faster in standard tasks than a $2000 QX9770.
