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 E8500 14.8 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 E8500 190.538 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 198 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 269.615 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 0 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 E8500 422.51 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 426 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 606.372 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 0 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 671.513

In single threaded tests the Core 2 Duo E8500 excels, with times that show the increased speed providing a slight boost over the Core 2 Duo E8400 (422 sec. vs. 426 sec. respectively).

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): (sec) Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 51.156 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 50.466 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 32 Million Digits (2 thread): (sec) Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 25.828 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 25.49 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 32 Million Digits (all thread): (sec) Seconds Ranking Intel Core i7 920 9.547 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 25.49 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 capabilities 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 (lowest results are best).

wPrime 2.0 actually has the Core 2 Duo E8500 winning the single-threaded benchmark by just a hair ahead of the Core i7 920, although the Phenom II X4 955 wins this benchmark by a healthy margin. When all cores are put to use, the dual-core processors can't keep up, which is why they post the longest compute times of between 25-27seconds.

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 Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 214.30866 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 182.98519 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 Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 40.44002 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 43.53948 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

Sciencemark 2.3's dual-core Primordia tests show the performance of the Core 2 Duo E8500 processor approaching that of the Phenom II X4 955, while the overall speed in the Mol Dyn test is nearly as quick as the Core i7 920.

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 Processor KB/s Ranking Intel Core i7 920 3012 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 923 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 has the Core 2 Duo E8500 in dead last for some reason. This does seem a little anomalous, so don't put too much stock into this particular benchmark.