When AMD presented the first Phenom II processors with DDR3 memory support our suspicions were confirmed. The higher bandwidth does bring better performance, but only in selected scenarios. One application that does enjoy some additional bandwidth is 3DMark06 and our Finnish overclocking colleagues Sampsa, SF3D and Macci have started to test what the new DDR3 capable AMD processors can do.
Since Macci is nowadays a resident at AMD it hardly came as a surprise that the team had access to some engineering samples of the new Phenom II X4 AM3 processors and when they started to test them it turned out that AMD's new processors has plenty of power at their disposal during the right conditions.
The so far most impressive result is with 3DMark06 where the processor was pushed up to close 6GHz and despite vaguely overclocked graphics cards managed to score 34,255 points. Only 1,000 points from the world record set with Intel's Core i7 965 Extreme Edition processor. This was later improved to 35,273 points, just 300 points short of a record.
The test system was as follows;
AMD Phenom II X4 AM3 engineering sample
Asus M4A79-T Deluxe (790FX + SB750)
2 GB Corsair DDR3-1800
Asus ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 CrossFireX
Corsair HX1000W + OCZ 600W
Kingpin F1 EE + LN2 cooling
Catalyst 9.1 WHQL (Not FM accepted yet)
Vista Ultimate + SP1
During the weekend that passed they managed to hit even higher frequencies with both processor and graphics cards;
When testing the limits of the CPU they managed to hit quite respectable 6,665MHz. Even if 7GHz seems far off, we can't say it looks impossible with a Golden One.
They also did some SuperPi benchmarking, which has always been Intel's home field, but AMD is closer than even with Deneb, 10.733 seconds;
Phenom II X4 hits 6665MHz, almost 3DMark 06 record and 10s SuperPi
Noctua
