Super Pi Mod 1.5	Source: SuperPI

SuperPI calculates the number PI to 1 Million digits in this raw number crunching benchmark. The benchmark is fairly diverse and allows the user to change the number of digits of PI that can be calculated from 16 Thousand to 32 Million. The benchmark, which uses 19 iterations in the test, is set 1 Million digits.

Lower calculation times are better. SuperPi is not multi-threaded.

Super Pi Mod 1.5 XS 1 Million Digits: (sec) Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 13.516 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 15.5 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 21.699 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 24.5 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 24.398 8 Million Digits: (sec) Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 173.92 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 198 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 269.615 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 301.923 16 Million Digits: (sec) Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 384.78 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 426 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 606.372 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 671.513

Super Pi pits the 3.2GHz Phenom II X4 955 processor against the 2.66GHz Core i7 920 in a single-threaded race. Even with the Phenom II X4's Black Edition's improved cache, the CPU can't keep up with the Core i7 920 when it comes to pure number crunching in this particular program. Lower times are better in this time-sensitive benchmark.

wPrime 2.0	Source: WPrime

wPrime uses a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x²-k, where k is the number we're sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)²=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum.

Lower calculation times are better. wPrime is multi-threaded.

wPrime 2.0 32 Million Digits (1 thread): Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 51.156 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 53.64 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 45.115 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 52.354 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 51.901 33 Million Digits (2 thread): Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 25.828 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 27.078 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 22.682 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 26.537 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 26.256 34 Million Digits (3 thread): Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 23.297 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 15.46 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 18.219 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 17.936 35 Million Digits (4 thread): Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 13.954 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 11.84 32 Million Digits (all threads): Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 9.547 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 27.078 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 11.84 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 18.219 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 17.936

wPrime 2.0 is a great multi-threaded benchmark for testing the number crunching capabilites of a processor. It allows us to stress one core, or any number of cores up to the total amount in the processor. The CPUs benchmarked here range from two to four cores, so the most important results to pay attention to are the final block of results - the all threads results.

The Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition is able to keep up with the Intel Core i7 920 (11.84 vs 9.547 seconds respectively). However the use of HyperThreading allows the Core i7 920 to process eight threads simultaneously, which in turn means that while the Phenom II wins at four threads, the Core i7 wins when both processors are operating at maximum speed.

ScienceMark 2.0	Source: ScienceMark

Mol Dyn: Molecular Dynamics is a method for simulating the thermodynamic behaviour of materials using their forces, velocities, and positions. Most important of the afore mentioned is the force. Primordia: This code calculates the Quantum Mechanical Hartree-Fock Orbital for each electron in any element of the periodic table Lower times indicate better results.

Lower calculation times are better.

ScienceMark 2.3 Primordia: (sec) 2-core Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 214.30866 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 193.09425 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 180.79589 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 206.44843 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 205.89 Mol Dyn: (sec) 2-core Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 40.44002 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 46.56567 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 49.00769 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 56.19517 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 55.893

In physical and scientific simulations, we see the AMD Phenom II X4 955 trading blows with Intel's processors. Since this test only takes advantage of half of the available cores of the Phenom II X4, this test won't show the processor's true potential.

WinRAR Internal Benchmark	Source: RARLabs

This command generates random data, which contain specially introduced redundancy increasing load to processor and memory. Then data are passed through RAR compression and decompression algorithms and output of decompression algorithm is compared with source data. If any difference found, WinRAR reports "Errors found - Yes" in the command window. Also WinRAR displays a size of processed data and compression speed, current and resulting, in kilobytes per second. You may use the resulting speed value to compare RAR performance in different conditions.

Higher results are better.

WinRAR 3.8 Internal Benchmark (higher better) KB/s Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 3012 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 1058 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 1866 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 1534 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 1435

WinRAR's internal benchmark has the Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition besting everything but the top-end Intel processor. This benchmark also takes advantage of memory speeds and bandwidth, so the Core i7's triple-channel bandwidth is certainly helping it here.