Super Pi Mod 1.5	Source: SuperPI

SuperPI calculates the number PI to 1 Million digits in this raw number crunching benchmark. The benchmark is fairly diverse and allows the user to change the number of digits of PI that can be calculated from 16 Thousand to 32 Million. The benchmark, which uses 19 iterations in the test, is set 1 Million digits.

Lower calculation times are better. SuperPi is not multi-threaded.

Super Pi Mod 1.5 XS (single-threaded) 1 Million Digits: (sec) Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 13.516 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 14.8 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 15.5 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 21.699 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 24.398 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 22.24 8 Million Digits: (sec) Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 173.92 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 190.538 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 198 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 269.615 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 301.923 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 275.19 16 Million Digits: (sec) Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 384.78 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 422.51 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 426 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 606.372 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 671.513 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 622.79

The higher clock speeds of the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition give it a good win against the Phenom II X3 720 Black edition, however the reliance on a large L3 cache doesn't work well for AMD in this single-threaded test, where faster L2 memory and higher clock speeds help the Core 2 Duo processors finish faster.

wPrime 2.0	Source: WPrime

wPrime uses a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x²-k, where k is the number we're sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)²=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum.

Lower calculation times are better. wPrime is multi-threaded.

wPrime 2.0 (multi-threaded) lower better 32 Million Digits (1 thread): (sec) Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 51.156 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 50.466 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 53.64 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 45.115 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 52.354 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 51.901 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 48.173 32 Million Digits (2 thread): (sec) Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 25.828 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 25.49 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 27.078 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 22.682 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 26.537 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 26.256 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 24.242 32 Million Digits (all thread): (sec) Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 9.547 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 25.49 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 27.078 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 11.84 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 18.219 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 17.936 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 24.242

This multi-threaded benchmark actually has the dual-core Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition faster than the dual-core Core 2 Duos. However for any work like this you really do need a quad-core processor, which can effectively half the amount of calculation time.

ScienceMark 2.3	Source: ScienceMark

Mol Dyn: Molecular Dynamics is a method for simulating the thermodynamic behaviour of materials using their forces, velocities, and positions. Most important of the afore mentioned is the force. Primordia: This code calculates the Quantum Mechanical Hartree-Fock Orbital for each electron in any element of the periodic table lower times indicate better results.

Lower calculation times are better.

ScienceMark 2.3 (lower better) Primordia: (sec) 2-core Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 214.30866 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 182.98519 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 193.09425 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 180.79589 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 206.44843 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 205.89 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 187.42693 Mol Dyn: (sec) 2-core Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 40.44002 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 43.53948 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 46.56567 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 49.00769 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 56.19517 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 55.893 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 50.63983

ScienceMark's results have always been a little strange. The Primordia test seems to be very sensitive to pure clock speeds, with the fastest processors being the 3.2GHz 955BE and the 3.16Ghz E8500, with the 3.1GHz Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition in third place.

The Mol Dyn benchmark seems to appreciate bandwidth and memory efficiency a little more, which puts the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition behind everything but the tri-core 720BE.

WinRAR Internal Benchmark	Source: RARLabs

This command generates random data, which contain specially introduced redundancy increasing load to processor and memory. Then data are passed through RAR compression and decompression algorithms and output of decompression algorithm is compared with source data. If any difference found, WinRAR reports "Errors found - Yes" in the command window. Also WinRAR displays a size of processed data and compression speed, current and resulting, in kilobytes per second. You may use the resulting speed value to compare RAR performance in different conditions.

Higher results are better.

WinRAR 3.8 Internal Benchmark (higher better) KB/s Points Ranking Intel Core i7 920 3012 Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 923 Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 1058 AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 1866 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR2) 1534 AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition (DDR3) 1435 AMD Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition 970

WinRAR's internal benchmark is multi-threaded, so the more cores it can access the better. Strangely, the E8400 has actually beaten its bigger brother, with the Phenom II X2 550 Black Edition right in between the two.