Testing

I am going to test this CPU with a number of real world tests and a few benchmarks. Please note that as Tech-Reviews aren’t the richest guys out there we don’t yet have an AM3 board and DDR3 memory to test this CPU with. As there are plenty of AM3/DDR3 reviews out there at the moment this will be an opportunity to see if the AM3/DDR3 platform is all that much better than an AM2+ motherboard and DDR2 combo. We do hope to follow this review up with some AM3/DDR3 testing as and when we get the necessary hardware. You may well be wondering looking at the specs below why we are choosing not to use a better GFX card, the answer to this is that this was what was lying around at the time, and that when it comes to the 3dMark testing it will give us a clear as possible indication of the CPU’s true capabilities, rather than using a GFX card such as a GTX 285 which will alter the 3dMark score with it’s increased physics capabilities over the 2400pro.

Test Rig Specification

• Motherboard – Foxconn Digitalife A79A-S (bios rev P07)
• Memory – 4 GB Kingston Hyper X DDR2
• Graphics – ATI 2400pro
• PSU – Tuniq Miniplant 950w

Compression

To test this we have a large file which will be compressed to the maximum level possible using winrar. I will take the time taken to first compress the file and then decompress it and also take the time taken to do this.

File size to compress 350mb

• 1.14 compress time (minutes)
• 16 decompress time (seconds)

3dMark testing

A 3DMark score is an overall measure of your system’s 3D gaming capabilities, based on comprehensive real-time 3D graphics and processor tests. By comparing your score with those submitted by millions of other gamers you can see how your gaming rig performs, making it easier to choose the most effective upgrades or finding other ways to optimize your system.

3dMark 06

3DMark06 is a PC benchmark suite designed to test the DirectX9 performance of your graphics card.

• 4032 3dMarks (CPU score)

3dMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed to test the DirectX10 performance of your graphics card.

• 11028 3dMarks (CPU score)

Prime 95

Prime 95 is a program designed to test your computers stability to the max. It can be used to configure all CPU cores to 100% whilst also stressing memory too. After allowing this program to run for a period of time it allows the user to force their system to generate maximum heat.

The Phenom handles this test quite well. Firstly, the stability was excellent with over 30 minutes of testing and lots of heat output there were zero errors, this indicates that the CPU is stable under heavily loaded states and at high temperatures. 

With regards to heat output this processor got up to 59c whilst testing with a relatively soft-core cooler. This could chow that a more hardcore cooler such as Scythes Orochi or CoolerMasters V10

Super Pi

Super Pi is a utility used by many overclockers to test the stability of their system. It calculates Pi to a set number of digits and records the time taken to make this calculation. The idea being, the shorter the time, the faster the system.

• 000h 00m 00s    [  16K]
• 000h 00m 00s    [  32K]
• 000h 00m 00s    [  64K]
• 000h 00m 01s    [ 128K]
• 000h 00m 04s    [ 256K]
• 000h 00m 10s    [ 512K]
• 000h 00m 22s    [   1M]
• 000h 00m 55s    [   2M]
• 000h 02m 08s    [   4M]

Call of Duty 4

Call of Duty 4 has been one of the most influential FPS games of all time. Selling copies into the multi-millions the Call of Duty game has revolutionised online multiplayer gaming as well as offering intense and gripping single player game play.

Call of duty isn’t a particularly demanding game and can run well on older systems at the expense of the stunning visuals and killer frame rates that newer systems will achieve.

This test isn’t really about how many frames per second the system gets over a different system but more about how fast the maps are loaded etc, faster map loading means that there is a lot of leeway for those with faster systems to load the map faster and start playing at the start of a round earlier than the other players. This can be advantageous as they can get themselves out of the usual “spamming” spots thus increasing their KDR.

I found that with this CPU the levels loaded incredibly fast, with myself always being the first player into the round without fail. There is a grace period unfortunately on the start of some game types which meant that there is no real advantage here but there were often people who missed the first round entirely before their map had loaded.

SiSoftware Sandra

SiSoftwares Sandra utility is a popular hardware monitoring and benchmarking tool. It features utilities to monitor and test most types of hardware this is useful for us to test the CPU’s ALU and iSSE3 performance.

Processor Arithmetic

• Dhrystone ALU 43.56GIPS
• Whetstone iSSE3 48.1GFLOPS

Processor Multimedia

• Multimedia Int 125.22 MPixels/s
• Multimedia float 54.68 MPixels/s

Memory Bandwidth Testing

• Phenom 955 Memory bandwidth 12.9GB/s

Overclocking

When the 955 Phenom was first released there was a lot of hype about how well it overclocked. When I heard this I thought that it was nice to see that AMD were finally marketing products which could compete with Intel on the performance side of things. But having now tried to overclock it myself with a humble air cooler I am quite disappointed. I myself only managed to get the CPU to a stable overclock of 3.7 GHz, this isn’t really that impressive an increase compared to what others have managed with LN2 cooling. Admittedly, these guys were pro-overclockers using some pretty extreme cooling and hardware but a 500Mhz increase really isn’t anything special when you consider that I managed to get 1000Mhz extra from a dual core AMD CPU before. This lack of overclocking performance could be for a number of reasons though, firstly the usage of DDR2 memory could be holding it back, or it could simply be a poor unit which I have. I think that the earlier is the more likely but as I said earlier Tech-Reviews will strive to get a DDR3 review with this CPU up at some point in the future.

Power Consumption