Test Setup

Comparing the last quad core flagship, the 965 BE with AMD's latest offering would be very logical. Included are also Intel's I7 CPU's the i930 and i950. We are comparing out of the box clocks, this to keep ram speeds and co at an equal level all the time, namely 1600Mhz C8. Most interesting new feature on the Thuban series is the turbo clock function. So the tests are run with it enabled and disabled. This to spot where the gains are. Sadly at the time of testing we did not have an I5 setup at hand, those results might be added later on.

Here's a quick sum up on the test setups :

Leeghoofd's Test Setup
CPU	AMD 555BE, 965BE, 1090T, Intel I7 930 and 950
Cooling	Corsair H50
Mainboard	Asus Crosshair IV 0801 bios and Rampage Extreme III 0534 bios
Memory	4 or 6Gb Corsair PC12800 Dominators at 1600mh 8-8-8-24
PSU	OCZ ModStream 700W
Articles linked to this article	Sempron 140 OCing article ASrock 890GX reviewed. AMD Phenom II X6 1090T OC Scaling With Voltage/Cooling

Operating system: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64bit, Nvidia drivers for the GTX 285 are the 197.45 WHQL

Speeds of CPU's tested :

AMD 555BE : 3200Mhz, 2 cores
AMD 965BE : 3400Mhz, 4 cores
AMD 1090T : 3200Mhz, 6 cores (tested with TurboCore enabled and disabled)

Intel I7 i930 : 2800Mhz, 4 cores + 4 Hyperthreading cores
Intel I7 i950 : 3059Mhz, 4 cores + 4 Hyperthreading cores

Rams being used are the Corsair Dominator PC12800C8. Running in a 4Gb configuration for the AMD line-up and in a 6Gb (triple channel configuration) for the I7 CPU's. Speeds are 1600mhz C8-8-8-24 1T command rate.

Benchmarks

Starting off with Superpi 1mb and Wprime32. Superpi has always been Intel territory. So there's no real surprise here.



If we focus on the 1090T and the 965BE. The albeit 200mhz slower clocked Thuban is able to keep up with the 3400mhz Mhz of the 965 in Superpi. This is thanks to the Turbo core technology that boost up to 3 cores to a maximum of 3.6Ghz. If we disable the TBC than the Thuban is noticeably slower. Kinda logic as it got 200mhz less clockspeed. For WPrime32 AMD's latest creation is able to keep up with the I7's featured here. 6 Real cores instead of 4 real plus 4 hyperthreading ones seems to pay off. Not bad for a 280 euro CPU.



Moving over to Superpi 32mb the Thuban pulls away from its older Deneb brother. Yet keep in mind that Superpi is single threaded so does only stress one core. The Turbo core gives the final edge and makes the Thuban over 40 seconds faster than the 965BE.

In Wprime same story as the 6 cores are able to crunch the numbers faster than the 965BE which has got only 4. Yet Turbo core is not so efficient here as with less threaded apps but still is able to maintain a small lead. Again the Thuban is able to match the I7 i950, which retailed over 200 euro's higher at its launch date.



3dmark wise the Thuban pulls off some impressive numbers against the Intel I7 CPU's. We must admit however that 3Dmark01 has never been the ideal test to show off the crunching power of the Intel I5 and I7 architecture. Good old Socket 775 is still king there. The 01 benchmark also doesn't benefit much from more cores. This is ideally demonstrated by the cheap 555BE that is able to keep up with the Thuban when the latter runs without the Turbo core option.

For 3dMark06, the more cores the better. Compared to the dual core 555BE the Thuban pulls away with a massive 3000points. Even without the TBC function it's able to keep up with the faster clocked 965BE cpu. Once TBC is enabled again, it takes the lead of the AMD pack. To be able to match the I7 i950's power, the Thuban will need to be clocked at least 400Mhz higher in CPU frequency.



Cinebench by Maxon compares 3D animation and photo rendering. It can render single core, or use up to a maximum of 16 cores. Single core wise and running clock for clock there's not much to gaze at. Once TBC is enabled the Thuban keeps up with the 965BE. Once we go multi threaded the extra power of the 2 cores is pretty clear. The score obtained without Turbo enabled is strangely higher than with it enabled. This benchmark also seems to favour real cores, as the 1090T is able to keep up with the I7 950 (which got on paper 2 theoretical extra cores)



Moving over to Lavalys Everest. The new Thuban architecture is slightly faster with its 6 cores than the older Deneb 4 core series. This again even at lower clocks, 3200mhz for the 1090T vs 3400mhz for the 965BE. When we kick in the Turbo function the gap enlarges for the copy and read tests. Intel's I7 triple ram configuration remains unbeaten. Take note that we did not test with the C states enabled, this would have yielded even better scores for the I7 platform.



Techarps x264HD benchmark renders a 30 second High Definition clip into an x264 codec clip. Also supporting multicore technology, making it an ideal benchmark for these new generations of CPU's. The results are expressed in frames per second. A dual core is totally underpowered for this benchmark. Being able to render a measle 7fps per second in test 2 while the quadcore version is almost three times as fast. The hexacore Thuban goes over 4 times as fast in test 2 and about 3 times faster in test 1. If you are into encoding stuff, a quad core or higher is a must ( if your software is multi core ready of course ). And again the little Thuban keeps in touch of the more expensive Intel variants.

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With the performance tests at stock speed out of the way it's time for some fun with this new 6 core monster; OC results on the next page ->