3DMark06

3DMark06

Notes

We’ve already seen how this synthetic test seems to favor an Intel platform. But this time around, AMD’s Phenom 9850 Black Edition at its standard 2.5 GHz is able to claim a victory in the overall score. Overclocked to 2.8 GHz, it’s the faster choice in the CPU test, too.

Notice we’ve also added Intel’s Core 2 Duo E8500 to the benchmark chart. The E8500 is based on the company’s new 45nm Wolfdale core. In applications not optimized for threading, we’d expect the higher-frequency dual-core chip show better numbers, especially when you add in the effects of a larger cache. 3DMark is thread-aware, though, so you see the Core 2 Quad chip eke out a victory in the overall metric and a more substantial victory in the direct processor comparison.