On Tuesday i'll be getting a Phenom II 720 cpu to replace my Athlon X2 5000+. I thought I would record the difference the cpu upgrade makes to my in-game fps performance. The 3 games ive chosen to use for my benchmarks are FEAR 2, Far Cry 2, and Crysis.

For FEAR 2 all settings were maxed out, for Crysis everything was set to high with 0xAA and 'natural mod' installed, and for Far Cry 2 everything was set to high with 8xAA. I used 1440x900 for all tests. I made the benchmarks using FRAPS.

AMD Athlon X2 5000+ 2.6ghz

FEAR 2
--------
Min 28, Max 142, Avg 69.577

Crysis
-------
Min 7, Max 39, Avg 24.382

Far Cry 2
-----------
Min 27, Max 50, Avg 36.282


AMD Athlon X2 5000+ 3ghz

FEAR 2
--------
Min 27, Max 163, Avg 96.994

Crysis
-------
Min 18, Max 64, Avg 31.853

Far Cry 2
-----------
Min 31, Max 56, Avg 42.425


As you can see the jump to 3ghz made quite an impact on the fps, I can only imagine the jump the Phenom II (should) make. I will post the 720 results on Tuesday.

-------------------------
ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI R3.0 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T @ 3.9ghz
Sapphire Radeon 5870 1GB
4GB DDR2 RAM (4 4 4 12)
Corsair TX650W PSU
Thermaltake M5 Case
Windows Vista x64 Ultimate

Edited: 05/10/2009 at 01:12 PM by serbusfish

Well I got my Phenom II today, and so far im very pleased with it. Ive not attempted to overclock it yet, but even at stock speeds its performing a lot better than the Athlon did overclocked, Crysis especially is much smoother now.

Here are the benchmarks:

AMD Phenom II 720BE 2.8ghz

FEAR 2
--------
Min 30, Max 190, Avg 132.392

Crysis
-------
Min 29, Max 66, Avg 40.057

Far Cry 2:
-----------
Min 42, Max 66, Avg 50.633


AMD Phenom II 720BE 3.5ghz

FEAR 2
--------
Min 56, Max 181, Avg 137.310

Crysis
-------
Min 36, Max 66, Avg 46.166

Far Cry 2
-----------
Min 42, Max 68, Avg 50.640

-------------------------
ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI R3.0 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T @ 3.9ghz
Sapphire Radeon 5870 1GB
4GB DDR2 RAM (4 4 4 12)
Corsair TX650W PSU
Thermaltake M5 Case
Windows Vista x64 Ultimate

Edited: 05/12/2009 at 10:14 PM by serbusfish

Will you try to unlock the 4th core? I'd like to know, how much impact it will have on the temps.

I just saw, your MB has a Nvidia chipset, sorry.

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Phenom II 940 @3.40GHz 1,35V|Xigmatek HDT-SD964|Foxconn A79A-S|4GB Kingston HyperX 1066 CL5 2.0V|Sapphire HD4830 512MB|Sharkoon Avenger|LC6600GP2 600W
http://www.sysprofile.de/id99196

My motherboard doesnt support the unlocking of the 4th core unfortunatly so im unable to attempt it.

Well ive been overclocking this afternoon and so far ive been unable to get an overclock stable higher than 3.4ghz, I dont know what im doing wrong, ive tried raising the Vcore to 1.5V, ganged and unganged memory, different memory speeds and latency, but so far no luck. Im not really sure what im supposed to do with the NB settings, prehaps this is where im going wrong, ive currently got it set to x11 2200mhz, is this right or should I try altering it?

-------------------------
ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI R3.0 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T @ 3.9ghz
Sapphire Radeon 5870 1GB
4GB DDR2 RAM (4 4 4 12)
Corsair TX650W PSU
Thermaltake M5 Case
Windows Vista x64 Ultimate

Since 720 Is a BE I just changed the multiplyer to 17.5 ,the vcore to 1.38 and that's it works great at 3.5 ghz.

-------------------------
Antec Three Hundred
AMD 720 be 3.5 ghz @1.38v
Sapphire 4870 512 gb With Accelero TWIN TURBO
Corsair 4gb pc2 1066
Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB
Asus m3a78-T
Antec EA500 ATX12V v2.2 Power supply
Windows 7 64b

Well I dont know what im doing wrong but to get stable at 3.5ghz I had to use 1.4375V, set FSB to 226 and multi to 15.5x. NB 9x multi (2000mhz) with 1.2500V.

-------------------------
ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI R3.0 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T @ 3.9ghz
Sapphire Radeon 5870 1GB
4GB DDR2 RAM (4 4 4 12)
Corsair TX650W PSU
Thermaltake M5 Case
Windows Vista x64 Ultimate

Edited: 05/12/2009 at 10:15 PM by serbusfish

Every cpu is different .I 've tryed higher FSB also(went to 228 ) it works to , but my NB was getting to hot and I just don't benefit from faster memory. I don't see any difference in the games I play if i have higher FSB.

-------------------------
Antec Three Hundred
AMD 720 be 3.5 ghz @1.38v
Sapphire 4870 512 gb With Accelero TWIN TURBO
Corsair 4gb pc2 1066
Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB
Asus m3a78-T
Antec EA500 ATX12V v2.2 Power supply
Windows 7 64b

I read somewhere FSB overclocks perform better than Multi increase but I dunno if its true or not. Anyway today ive had a bit of a breakthrough, I decided to return the FSB to default, set Multi to 17.5x, and with the voltage at 1.4125 im now stable at 3.5ghz. My load temps have dropped from 60'c to 55'c (CPUTIN) whilst cores have dropped from 43'c to 39'c. Turns out just upping the multi is a much better way to overclock, im going to see if I can get 3.6ghz now, fingers crossed

EDIT: Ive decided to stay with 3.5ghz, im finding it impossible to stabilize at 3.6ghz, and tbh I dont think I ever will. So 3.5ghz it is, which I am happy with.

Comparison:

AMD Phenom II 720BE 2.8ghz

FEAR 2
--------
Min 30, Max 190, Avg 132.392

Crysis
-------
Min 29, Max 66, Avg 40.057

Far Cry 2:
-----------
Min 42, Max 66, Avg 50.633


AMD Phenom II 720BE 3.5ghz

FEAR 2
--------
Min 62, Max 195, Avg 137.766

Crysis
-------
Min 33, Max 66, Avg 46.106

Far Cry 2
-----------
Min 42, Max 66, Avg 50.277

-------------------------
ASRock K10N78FullHD-hSLI R3.0 Motherboard
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T @ 3.9ghz
Sapphire Radeon 5870 1GB
4GB DDR2 RAM (4 4 4 12)
Corsair TX650W PSU
Thermaltake M5 Case
Windows Vista x64 Ultimate

Edited: 05/13/2009 at 08:05 PM by serbusfish