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Intel Clarkdale vs AMD Phenom II with 785G – Mainstream Showdown

CPU by massman @ 2010-01-11

With the launch of Clarkdale by Intel, they have finally released a Nehalem for the masses, the Core i3 and i5 variations with integrated graphics are a direct competitor to the market segment currently held by AMD Phenom and Athlon CPUs. In this article we compare the performance of the IGP on the Intel Core i5 661 to and AMD system with 785G chipset.

PCMark05 test results

PCMark05

We've used PCMark05 as it allows us to test a series of sub-tests benchmarks to determine the overall performance of both platforms.

Madshrimps (c)

Overall, the Phenom II is a tad more performant than the Core i5 661. Only in the graphics and HDD department, Intel is in the lead, but in the other tests, we can see the Phenom take the upper hand, most likely due to the native quad core.

Comment from jmke @ 2010/01/11

Comment from wutske @ 2010/01/11

Too bad the memory timings of both systems weren't the same because this biasses the results (as you've mentioned in the review).

Comment from jmke @ 2010/01/11

yes and no.
the memory subsystem for Clarkdale is noticeably lower due to its design, but even then the CPU is never bandwidth starved, even with the slowest of DDR3 sticks.

Comment from wutske @ 2010/01/11

okay, but now it's not only the CPU which needs the memory but also the GPU.
And some synthetic benchmark do benefit from the lower latencies (like on the AMD setup).

Comment from Massman @ 2010/01/11

There are still issues with the current H55 mainboards in terms of delivering decent memory performance. Either the Clarkdale is just no good for high memory bandwidth, or the bioses are too immature.

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