3D Rendering Performance using 3dsmax 7 & CineBench 9.5

We're looking at 3D rendering performance using two different applications: 3D Studio Max and Cinebench 9.5. Cinebench is a free performance testing utility based off of the CINEMA 4D R8 rendering package. Our scores from 3D Studio Max are a composite score from four rendering tests: CBalls2, SinglePipe2, UnderWater, and 3dsmax5 Rays.

General Performance - 3D Rendering

General Performance - 3D Rendering

General Performance - 3D Rendering


3D rendering relies almost entirely on CPU performance, and cache sizes have very little impact. The end result is that our overclocked E6300 and E6400 place very near the top of the charts, and the overclocked E6400 actually manages to take the lead over the X6800 in the Cinebench multi-CPU rendering test. Clock for clock, Core 2 Duo holds about a 9-11% performance advantage in 3D rendering over the AMD X2 processors. The difference between the fastest and slowest systems tested here is roughly 60%-70%, and due to the time-consuming nature of 3D rendering even small performance increases are very welcome.

Once again we see that while the Core 2 Duo E6300 is slightly faster than the Athlon 64 X2 4200+, and once overclocked it's out of reach of even an FX-62. The E6400 is also an impressive little chip, offering performance around the X2 4600+ and X2 5000+ levels.

Application Performance using Winstone 2004 Encoding Performance using DivX 6.1, WME9, Quicktime (H.264) & iTunes
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  • coldpower27 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link

    Assuming you have the Socket AM2 platform, then yes you can, remember 5000+ only exists for Socket AM2, and not Socket 939.

    Since that platform is relatively new, only a handful who have would consider upgrading to anything.
  • Gigahertz19 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link

    I'm definetly going with the Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4GHz since it is the cheapest one that has 4Mb of L2 cache and overclock it to 3GHz or whatever is stable.
  • Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link

    I'm also missing any mention of single core solutions. Sure, dual core is the future, but in the present, single core is just as fast for games and a lot cheaper.
    An Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4 ghz costs only 110 dollar/euro.
  • krisia2006 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link

    AMD left me wanting for an affordable dual core cpu and Intel answered.
    I bought the Pentium Ds and will buy the Core 2 Duo.
    In the present, I play games fine on my Pentium Ds.
  • Olaf van der Spek - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link

    quote:

    Gamers on the other hand are probably going to at least want to think about SLI/CrossFire, which means they might need to pay more for an appropriate motherboard, especially if overclocking is a primary concern.

    Isn't way too much attention given to CF/SLI?
    Given the costs, it's only interesting to 'diehard' gamers that spend very much money on their systems.
  • JarredWalton - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link

    The benefits in some games are huge, and I would say just about any gamer would at least *think* about CF/SLI before making a decision as to what to buy. That doesn't mean they have to go that route, but without CF/SLI you will certainly be GPU limited at higher resolutions. This is a well-established fact, as in recent titles you can't run 1600x1200 or 1680x1050 with 4xAA/8xAF and still get CPU-limited results.
  • samuraiBX - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link

    Hey guys, I like the article, but I was wondering, why did you go with medium settings instead of ultra high or high? I'd like to see the performance in that arena more than the medium settings. Any chance we could get those? Thanks!
  • coldpower27 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link

    The performance is obvious, even on a Crossfire system with image quality settings tunred up you will get a straight line down the middle between NetBurst, K8, and Core based products due to the GPU being the bottleneck, since the emphasis was CPU performance, they need to kick back on the GPU settings a tad to make sue the CPU is the limiting factor.

    Real world, a Pentium D 915/945 would be sufficient for gaming.
  • bob661 - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link

    What impresses me the most about these Conroe's is their OCing ability. Almost as fast as a Conroe EE for less than a 1/4 of its price.
  • mkruer - Wednesday, July 26, 2006 - link

    You might want to pick up the new stepping 6 (mass produces ones) A lot of people over at xteamesystesm are complaining that the stepping 6 doesn’t over clock nearly as well as the stepping 5 and that the temperatures are staring to go though the roof.

    Personally I would love to know if this is true
    http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...">http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...

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