AMD Thuban x6 to Intel i7 2600k - Journey complete, holy hell!

[=CJW= Bin Fish]

Right guys, I have had enough of my 5870's barely breaking a sweat playing this game and being bottlenecked to around 40% usage.

I have jumped ship and will be running an Intel rig next week.

This is not a fanboy or flame war. My rig already plays MWLL amazingly, and even with only one 5870 will play at CCC Level 4+ comfortably.

Current build:

AMD Thuban Phenom II 1055T @ 4Ghz
Asus Crosshair IV Formula
8GB Corsair Dominator GT
2x Asus HD5870 in Crossfire
Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 Sound Card
All wrapped up in a Corsair 700D with custom water cooling.

Simply I don't believe the Phenom II chips have the IPC performance to let my twin 5870's sing properly.
I will be doing lots of before and after bench runs for anyone who is interested in the difference of both chips at 4Ghz.

Build will be:

Intel i7 2600k
Asus Maximus IV Extreme
8GB Corsair Dominator GT
2x Asus HD5870 in Crossfire
Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 Sound Card
All wrapped up in a Corsair 700D with custom water cooling.

Build done - CPUz Link



Benchmarks-

MWLL Tests

Death Valley Empty Server
CCC Level 4+ and then everything turned to low in-game. Physics set to core 1.
Resolution at 1920x1080

Default spectator position: AMD
Straight ahead - 215fps - 38% usage on GPU's
Straight up       - 555fps - 56% usage on GPU's
Straight down  - 623fps - 67% usage on GPU's

Default spectator position: Intel
Straight ahead - 668fps - 76% usage on GPU's
Straight up       - 996fps - 99% usage on GPU's
Straight down  - 999fps - 99% usage on GPU's

In game positions: AMD
Spawn point - 281fps - 48% usage
Back of hangar wall looking out - 148fps - 44% usage
On runway looking straight out - 100fps - 35% usage
Standing between right hand gates looking out - 130fps - 33% usage

In game positions: Intel
Spawn point - 480fps - 94% usage
Back of hangar wall looking out - 278fps - 74% usage
On runway looking straight out - 217fps - 56% usage
Standing between right hand gates looking out - 238fps - 57% usage

HOLY FPS INCREASE BATMAN!!!


Cinebench 11.5
AMD Stock - 4.98pts
Intel Stock - 7.40pts
AMD @ 4.0ghz - 7.13pts
Intel @4.0ghz - 7.89pts
Intel @5.0ghz - 9.67pts

wPrime
AMD Stock - 14.32s
Intel Stock - 10.12s
AMD @ 4.0ghz - 10.16s
Intel @4.0ghz - 9.83s
Intel @5.0ghz - 7.85s

AvP DX11 Benchmark
AMD Stock @ 1920x1080 - 112.5fps
Intel Stock @ 1920x1080 - 126.1fps
AMD @ 4.0ghz @ 1920x1080 - 115.2fps
Intel @4.0ghz @ 1920x1080 - 126.3fps
Intel @5.0ghz @1920x1080 - 127.3fps
AMD @ 4.0ghz @ 5760x1080 - 54.2fps
Intel @4.0ghz @ 5760x1080 - 58.8fps
Intel @5.0ghz @ 5760x1080 - 58.4fps

Heaven 2.5 DX10 Benchmark min/avg
AMD Stock @ 1920x1080 - 13.7/96.1
Intel Stock @ 1920x1080 - 54.1/103.2
AMD @ 4.0ghz @ 1920x1080 - 13.8/100.0
Intel @4.0ghz @ 1920x1080 - 58.3/104.1
Intel @5.0ghz @ 1920x1080 - 62.2/104.1
AMD @ 4.0ghz @ 5760x1080 - 13.3/29.9
Intel @4.0ghz @ 5760x1080 - 13.9/28.9
Intel @5.0ghz @ 5760x1080 - 15.8/29.1



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[=KoS= 37]

That's a good idea, that'll help a bunch of people a ton, what were you running your Thuban at most of the time?

Could you informally test with one of your 5870s disabled and your i7 at whatever you decide to keep it at?  I'd just like to know if that setup handles MWLL decently at 1680x1050 or 1920x1080.

I am trying to decide if a 6870 would be a decent card to get, its price/performance seems unbeatable right now.  The 6870 was around 90% of the performance of the 6950 in my limited research, and is $170 vs $200.

I think the 6870 was slightly overclocked, but a few frames here or there makes very little difference to me, every upgrade I do is more about changing performance class than anything.  I'm on a 4870 1GB currently.

I can put that extra money toward a better/bigger SSD or keep it for the next upgrade.

[sleepysheep]

Right guys, I have had enough of my 5870's barely breaking a sweat playing this game and being bottlenecked to around 40% usage.

I have jumped ship and will be running an Intel rig next week. I will be doing lots of before and after bench runs for anyone who is interested in the difference of both chips at 4Ghz.

Build will be:

Intel i7 2600k
Asus Maximus IV Extreme
8GB Corsair Dominator GT
2x Asus HD5870 in Crossfire
Asus Xonar D2X 7.1 Sound Card
All wrapped up in a Corsair 700D with custom water cooling.

As long as after your finished the benching, you OC the crap out of that 2600k and put it way above 4ghz

It would be nice to see the improvments, if any that you get. Expecially since my CPU is holding me back to.

[Glycerin]

Do stock clocks first.  That way u have a performance baseline so you'll know if your mwll crashes are OC related.

Then do your normal oc stuff.

I'm interested in your results!

[=CJW= Bin Fish]

No worries guys. Ill do some benches using

Cinebench
Wprime
AVP Benchmark
Heaven
My own FPS during MWLL

I will do 1920x1080 and eyefiinty resolutions.
Two sets will be done at stock clocks and both at 4ghz.
Then I will add a set at whatever the highest stable I can get the i7 to.

Feel free to request any other freeware benchmarks.

[Glycerin]

thx bin.

[=CJW= Bin Fish]

All my stuff got dispatched today so it should show up tomorrow. If I don't have to work too much overtime I will get started on it at the weekend.

[=KoS= 37]

Once I get the parts in, I'll try to make some quick observations about my switch from
xp 32bit + 2GB ram
to W7 64bit + 4GB ram
and figure out if I no longer crash at all and if my frame rate changes.

Hopefully someone will make use of it at some point, since I'm sure there are a lot of people still running xp and getting crashes.  I may find out that switching OSes and adding ram is enough of an upgrade for me, so it may be a good idea to spend a little even if you're not ready to upgrade fully.  We'll see.

I did notice before that having 4GB under xp reduced the crashes significantly, but I think I was still hitting the 2GB per-program limit.  Plus my RAM was faulty, and I couldn't tell if that's why the game would still crash even with the /3GB switch (that ends the 2GB limit).

[GB-72AT Talon]

The benchmarks are good but how about reporting highest playable settings on MWLL?  what I mean is, if you can play at higher settings at the same level of enjoyment, and what those settings are.  Like whatever the highest is you can use now, then after the change.  Synthetic benchmarks don't tell you much about how it performs in real world scenarios.  People are interested in what hardware it takes to reach a certain level of performance.  They can't play Cinebench or Heaven.  Also I started a benchmarking thread a long time ago if you search for it maybe you can also append to it so people can find many systems in one thread.  Thanks

[=CJW= Bin Fish]

Way ahead of ya dude. I will be using vanilla ccc profiles and their results in an empty and full server to document fps scores.

[GB-72AT Talon]

Way ahead of ya dude. I will be using vanilla ccc profiles and their results in an empty and full server to document fps scores.

Not exactly fps scores.  When I judge if a system is adequate for playing MWLL I don't even look at fps.  Its a whimsical thing.  If I can play at the resolution and settings I want without framerate impacting my enjoyment, its good.  Fps could be 3 or 300.  I don't care. 

[=CJW= Bin Fish]

Updated with first round of benches.

Let me know if there are any other benchmarks or specific MWLL maps and grids you want testing for FPS and playability.

[Bill]

I request you give me you 1055T, hahaha

[Glycerin]

i thought u were gonna do benchies in MWLL or at least crysis warhead/wars.  ?

[ratbuddy]

I'd like to know FPS and GPU utilization, on Deathvalley, all graphics set to (in-game) low, 1920x1080, from the default spectator position, looking both ground and sky.