Tests

Our test method is briefly described here. The scores on diagrams are relative to that of our reference testbed that always scores 100 points. As of 2011, it's based on the AMD Athlon II X4 620 CPU, 8GB of RAM and Palit's NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1280MB. Detailed (absolute) results are traditionally provided in this summary.

3D Modeling

Two threads are enough here, so the Pentium leaves all the AMD processors behind. The new Athlon X4 740 beats the top Athlon II. Athlon X4 750K outperforms FX-4100 and runs on a par with the once top Phenom II X4 955. However, A10-5700 with its Turbo Core is the best of all the AMD CPUs.

Final 3D Rendering

Having four physical cores, Athlon II and Phenom II are the leaders, and the dual-thread Pentium is an outsider. It's curious that FX-4100 shows the same performance as Athlon X4 740 in spite of having the L3 cache and higher clock rate, not to mention the power consumption.

Data Compression/Decompression

Thanks to 16 MB of cache in total, FX-4100 is the leader. However, it's just 3% faster than Athlon X4 750K, which has no L3 cache at all. Athlon X4 740 and Phenom II X4 955 show the same performance, and the previous-generation Athlons are a bit slower. Dual-thread Pentium G870 is holding out as yet, however, the things are going to change, because our new test method will finally include WinRAR benchmarks with multithreading support.

Audio Encoding

Everything is predictable: the AMD's quad-cores are the first followed by the AMD's dual-module devices and then the dual-core Intel Pentium. The microarchitecture progress can be seen when FX-4100 yields to Athlon X4 740 despite better specifications. Both Athlon X4 CPUs perform better than expected: the reason is probably the absence of GPU: it has let AMD make the Northbridge simpler than that in APUs.

Compiling

This thread-hungry test group brings no surprises. Due to the growing importance of L3 cache, FX-4100 wins back, however, reaching only the scores of the cheaper models.

Mathematical and Engineering Computations

In this low-threading group the Athlon II and Phenom II can not outperform our today's heroes. Pentium G870 is expectedly far ahead.

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