AMD's Athlon II X3 435 & New Energy Efficient CPUs: Killing Intel Below $90
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 20, 2009 12:00 AM 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:
Compared to the Intel dual-core options, the Athlon II X3 435 is a definite winner here. It's got the core count and clock speed to beat the old Penryn derivatives. Its biggest competition comes from its own family, the Athlon II X4 620 is the better buy here.
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.
As I've been mentioning this entire time, the Athlon II X3 435 doesn't really sacrifice clock speed in its three-core configuration. At 2.9GHz even its single threaded performance is comparable to the Pentium E6300. Run a multithreaded app however and the performance goes from parity to leading:
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.
The POV-Ray results echo what we've been seeing thus far, vs. Intel there's no contest - the 435 is the better value. Compared to the quad-core Athlon IIs however, the 435 isn't very good.
Blender 2.48a
Blender is an open source 3D modeling application. Our benchmark here simply times how long it takes to render a character that comes with the application.
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yacoub - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
I'm glad they're putting these out and vying for the low-end market, but I don't see the point when apparently my E4400 Core2Duo running at 3.0GHz, as it has been for two years now, is still faster.When it comes time to replace this, I would expect after two or three years, one could buy a CPU for $99 that near-doubles the performance. I guess not?
maddoctor - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - link
Stick to your E4400 rather than but one of these craps. Intel is much better for you and is cheaper.SunSamurai - Sunday, November 1, 2009 - link
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=96&a...">http://www.anandtech.com/bench/default.aspx?p=96&a...Oh look a cheaper AMD CPU outperforming a more expensive Intel CPU
SUCK ON IT.
maddoctor - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
Stick to your E4400 Core 2 Duo rather than buy this rubbish. Even averages Joe know who is the brand with most powerful product. Intel is the only company with everyone know about it with the best brand awareness.mihaimm - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
Well... you can do exactly that. The Athlon II X4 620 it's exactly 99$ and it OCs to 3.6GHz. I expect it would exactly double the performance of E4400@3GHz. For more than 2 threads that is...Titanius - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
maddoctor is to Intel what snakeoil is to AMD and SiliconDoc is to NVIDIA. Apart from taking different companies side, they are the same thoughtless person in personality probably on the payroll of their respective companies they obsess over.Three points:
1. Competition is the foundation of getting the best bang for the buck.
2. A monopoly might be good for a little while, but it gets corrupted by its own power and starts abusing its customers.
3. People that obsess over a particular business disregarding the facts and truths is an annoying, idiotic, hypocritical, retard or they are on the payroll of the company as an annoying marketer in charge of spamming the comments section of articles regarding their products or competing products (how much does that pay BTW, if the price is right, I might be interested...)
maddoctor - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - link
I believe Intel as a single source supplier is the best situation for PC Consumer and the customers. Intel will prices their stuf accordingly with the production cost. I believe someday everyone will be happy when AMD is no more.fineliner - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - link
How's Intel "pric[ing] their stuf accordingly with the product cost" in this case?September 2009 Price List (From Intel.com):
i7-950 (8M L3, 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 3.06GHz, 4.80GT/sec, Intel QPI 45nm) - $562
i7-920 (8M L3, 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 2.66GHz, 4.80GT/sec, Intel QPI 45nm) - $284
I see a gain of clock speed of 400MHz (~15% clock improvements) with the price nearly DOUBLEd! How's Intel treating their customers (probably you are one of them) right?
I can only see the reason behind is lack of competition. The best Phenom II X4 BE in the market is, maybe, on par with i7-920 (in some of the test, best case scenario). Performance level of a i7-950 is totally out of AMD's reach.
Grizybaer - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
Competition shifts power to the buyers. how much is your computer worth to you? trade excel for your calc * paper; trade picassa for shelves of photo albums, trade ur music collection to stacks of cd's.I'm cant think of a time when a monopoly is good.
people who dont post objectively sound more and more like fox news. dont call it stupid or better; gimme some facts, gimme some numbers. Gimme some logic.
erple2 - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 - link
The only time I can think of a monopoly being "good" was waaaay back when cable companies first started rolling along. The monopoly gave them the incentive to roll out cable to (almost) every household in the US, on the stipulation that they had "guaranteed" profits for many years. They wouldn't have gone to the trouble of rolling out cable to so many homes so quickly otherwise.Now, however, there's real competition, and those that are stuck with cable only are realizing the "problem" with cable.