Not Falling Behind The Brethren

We’re still dealing with a Phenom II derivative off the Propus mask, deprived of its L3 cache memory, but with its clock setting upped from 2.8 GHz (the value used for the 630) to 2.9 GHz. We stated back then, and will repeat for those who weren’t paying attention, that the improvements in Phenom II architecture reflected on the Athlon II derivatives as well, the performance of which, especially when overclocked, raised alarmingly close to the more expensive models. The tried-and-true recipe that Athlon II X4 630, otherwise named a best-buy in its class, was created on, continued with this model as well, with AMD following the logic of presenting models with progressively higher clocks, a better overclock margin and performance. Talking about competition, the price range of Athlon II X4 CPUs covers the weakest models of Intel’s Core i3 family - 530 and 540. This is why we’ve opted for an interesting comparison.

Intel vs. AMD

Although apples and oranges don’t mix, and the question has been arisen for a while now on how to compare Intel and AMD CPUs when they’re using completely different chipsets, which makes it impossible to know whether the results were also affected by the chipset, memory controller, motherboard bus and other components. When the new generation of Intel CPUs, codenamed Clarkdale, surfaced, the situation changed a bit. Other than the fact that these CPUs have the GPU and integrated memory controller on the same chip, meaning that the motherboard won’t affect performance much, the prices of these models finally dropped down to the competition price point. The graphics core, called GMA HD by Intel, is close to AMD’s Radeon HD 4200, which means that the choice of AMD 785 and Intel H57 chipsets is logical and allows for a direct clash of competitors, showing the CPUs in their true light.

The tested Athlon II X4 635 was compared against two representatives of the new Intel Core generation - models i3 530 and i5 661. By the way, Core i5 661 is the only model from the Clarkdale series to have a GPU clocked at 900 MHz - all others have a default clock of 733 MHz, which makes this model particularly interesting for comparison’s sake. Although the new Core i3 and i5 models are natively dual-core, Hyperthreading technology made it possible to form logical cores out of unused transistors, which makes the operating system detect these CPUs as quad-core. This allows them to confront AMD models head-to-head in multithreaded applications. Intel also has the benefit of somewhat higher clocks and the presence of L3 cache, but if you take a look at the charts, you’ll see that AMD holds on pretty well despite the handicap.

All CPUs were tested on their default and maximum attainable stable clocks on standard high-performance air-cooling. As far as AMD’s concerned, although the system booted at 4.1 GHz, which is a terrific result, we had to settle for 3.7 GHz in the end, which, again, is a good deal faster than the default 2.9 GHz clock. As you could’ve read on our site during the past month, the new Clarkdale CPUs are also good overclockers, which made their results quite a feat as well.