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AMD Socket AM3: X2 550 Black Edition Review SuperPi: SuperPi is a single threaded benchmark that simply calculates digits out to a specific number of places and times how long it takes. For this, we used the XS mod 1.5 version, since this is most common among overclockers. Times are in seconds, and lower
numbers are better.
As we have noted in previous reviews, SuperPi is generally an Intel dominated benchmark, and being a single-threaded benchmark, the amount of cores present is generally meaningless. Thus, The X2 actually has a chance to shine here, and shine it does. The stock X2 is second only to the stock X4 955 for AMD CPUs, and the overclocked X2 at 3.9GHz edges out the overclocked 955 for the top AMD spot. wPrime 2.00: According to the wPrime website, wprime does the following:
"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. "
wPrime is essentially calculating prime numbers and then timing how long it takes. For this, we are using version 2.00. Just like SuperPi, times are in seconds, and thus, lower scores are better.
While SuperPi is an Intel dominated test, wPrime tends to favor the Deneb architecture. Unfortunately for the X2, it is also heavily multithreaded, which ultimately means that more cores wins in this test, regardless of clock. On the plus side, it beats out the E8400, which is still nearly $170 on Newegg.
For the 1024M , the rankings are unchanged, with the dual cores heading up the bottom of the list, and the X2 550 BE again beating the more expensive E8400.
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