Related Articles

To test the Phenom II x4 955 Black Edition, I will compare it to two other systems of the competitor. A rig based on the Intel Core 2 architecture as well as another one based on the newer Core i7 architecture will be used for comparison.

As for the benchmarks, there will be a set of system benches and another set of gaming benches. Fraps will be used to record the FPS in both Mirror's Edge and Bioshock whereas for all other gaming tests, the built-in benchmarking tool will be used. All of these will be ran at 3 different resolutions except Call of Juarez, Lost Planet and World in Conflict where the minimum settings will be used to prevent bottleneck from the graphics card.

Test Setups

AM3 system:

• AMD Phenom II x4 955 Black Edition processor
• MSI 790FX-GD70 motherboard
• NVIDIA GTX 260 videocard with Forceware 182.50
• Seagate 7200.11 with 32MB cache SATA2 drive
• Mushkin XP-800AP power Supply
• 2x2GB Mushkin DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24-1T

Socket 775 system:

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650
• ASUS P5E3 motherboard
• NVIDIA GTX 260 videocard with Forceware 182.50
• Seagate 7200.11 with 32MB cache SATA2 drive
• Mushkin XP-800AP power Supply
• 2x2GB Mushkin DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24-1T

Socket 1366 system:

• Intel Core i7 920
• ASUS Rampage Gene II
• NVIDIA GTX 260 videocard with Forceware 182.50
• Seagate 7200.11 with 32MB cache SATA2 drive
• Mushkin XP-800AP power Supply
• 3x2GB Mushkin DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24-1T

Benchmarks

• SiSoft Sandra Professional
• WinRAR
• PCMark Vantage
• TMPG rendering program
• POV-Ray
• Cinebench
• Call of Juarez
• World in Conflict
• Lost Planet
• Far Cry 2
• Bioshock
• Crysis Warhead
• Left 4 Dead
• Mirror's Edge