| AMD Phenom-II X4-840 CPU HDX840WFGMBOX |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Processors | |
| Monday, 03 January 2011 | |
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PCMark Vantage Benchmark TestsPCMark Vantage is an objective hardware performance benchmark tool for PCs running 32- and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7. PCMark Vantage is well suited for benchmarking any type of Microsoft Windows Vista/7 PC: from multimedia home entertainment systems and laptops, to dedicated workstations and high-end gaming rigs. Benchmark Reviews has decided to use a few select tests from the suite to demonstrate simulated real-world processor usage in this article. Our tests were conducted on 64-bit Windows 7, with results displayed in the chart below. TV and Movies Suite
Gaming Suite*
Music Suite
* EDITOR'S NOTE: Hopefully our readers will carefully consider how relative PCMark Vantage is as "real-world" benchmark, since many of the tests rely on unrelated hardware components. For example, per the FutureMark PCMark Vantage White Paper document, Gaming test #2 weighs the storage device for 100% of the test score. In fact, according to PCMark Vantage the video card only impacts 23% of the total gaming score, but the CPU represents 37% of the final score. As our tests in this article (and many others) has already proven, gaming performance has a lot more to do with the GPU than the CPU, and especially more than the hard drive or SSD (which is worth 38% of the final gaming performance score).
The PCMark Vantage test are all over the place. This is likely due to the fact that much of the testing relies on components other than the CPU. While we kept the test systems as similar as possible, because of the different hardware required, it wasn't possible to only change the CPU. In the overall average PCMark score, the Phenom-II X4-840 scores 20% better than the Athlon-II X4-645. When overclocked to 3.9GHz, its own score only increases by 1%. Within the test suites, only the music suite shows the X4-840 with any type of valuable increase over the Athlon-II X4-645, and it scores 47% higher. When overclocked, the music suite score drops by 17% for the Phenom-II X4-840. Also, when overclocked to 3.9GHz, the Athlon-II X4-645 actually decreases in performance in the TV and Movies test suite. The reason might be more apparent when we look at the composition of the TV and Movies test suite. The CPU is never weighted for more than 50% of any of the tests and only the SSD is weighted in the third test in the suite. The decrease is only 0.21% and is well within the margin of error.
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Comments
However... the Phenom II 840 is not "a wolf in sheep's clothing", as you say, but more of a sheep in wolf's clothing :-)
It should be called a Athlon II 650, without a doubt. This renaming brings shame to AMD.
No doubt we will see the likes of HP and Acer peddling this Phalse Phenom to the gullible masses.
On a different note I am curious how many people complained when the the i5 was moved from the quad core as it originally released to a dual? Did anyone cry foul then?
The difference in actual results is mostly way below the 12.5% expected by the clock speed alone.
Seems like the only reason for spending the extra money on a "real" Phenom II X4 is to get a Black Edition with better overclocking.
Do not forget the L3 cache is suited for memory intensive tasking.
So just a clockspeed application a faster Athlon will beat a lower clocked Phenom,but whenever memory (Cache) comes in play a slower Phenom will beat an even higher clocked Athlon handsdown.
That's why in certain games the smaller P2X2 560 will beat the Athlon 2X4 645 .