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Now comes the all important performance analysis. First up, we are going to look at gaming benches, and then we will wind up with some CPU performance benchmarks. Gaming Performance To test the gaming performance of the Phenom II 940, I pitted against what I believe to be the best gaming CPU on the market right now: intel's E8600. We tested head to head with maximum overclocks on both; 3.7GHz on the AMD and 4.4GHz on the intel, both completely stable. The E8600 makes for an interesting comparison for gamers because both CPUs should be right around the same price, and since gaming performance is important for so many people, this should prove to be very interesting. Below is the intel comparison system for the gaming benches:
X3: Terran Conflict First up, we are going to look at some benchmarks I know to be very CPU dependent. First up for testing is X3: Terran Conflict. This benchmark has four different tests to represent different scenarios with in the game. This test loves pure clock speed on both the CPU and the GPU for effective testing. Testing was done at 1920x1200, 8xAA, 16xAA, with all the goodies turned on. Here are the results:
As we can see here, the clock speed of the E8600 cruises past the Phenom II, with about a 20% performance advantage across the board. Supreme Commander This is not a test I usually bench with, however it is notoriously CPU dependent so I thought it would make for another good candidate. This was also tested with all settings maxed at 1920x1200, using the /perf option in the command line to invoke the built in bench:
While the minimum framerate count is about even between the two CPUs, the E8600 again takes the lead, which is quite surprising for a game that is supposed to be able to take advantage of four cores. Far Cry 2 Next up is Far Cry 2. This first person shooter features a wide-open world environment with tons of AI. It also happens to feature a pretty nice benchmarking tool. This test was run with the "Ultra" preset, at all common resolutions and AA settings.
It would appear here that Far Cry 2 is much more CPU limited than I expected; it appears that for the most part the only testing that is GPU bound here is when 8xAA is applied. The E8600 definitely wins out here. Crysis: Warhead This is turning into one of my favorite benchmarks. It's not as brutal as Crysis, but it is truly one of the funnest games out there, and very pleasing to the eye. Just like Far Cry 2, the test was run with the "Enthusiast" preset, at all common resolutions and AA settings.
The story here is a bit different than the one for Far Cry 2. While the E8600 does indeed win at 1280x1024, once you hit 1680 or higher, the benchmark is entirely GPU bound.
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