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SuperPi and wPrime 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. 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. In both cases, times are in seconds, and lower
numbers are better.
Like we saw in previous reviews, the Intel architecture owns this test. The overclocked 955 does bridge the gap, closing to within a second of the stock x3360. What is important to notice, however, is the difference between the X4 955 at 3.8GHz and the X3 720 at the same speed. Since SuperPi is a single-threaded benchmark, we can assume the difference in score is from the extra memory bandwidth from the DDR3-1600.
wPrime, on the other hand, is a different story. The X4 955 at stock handily beats out the more expensive x3360's stock score, and at their peak overclocks, are within .004 seconds of each other. Clock for clock, the X4 955 beats the x3360 by nearly half a second. Of course, because wPrime is a multi-threaded application, this benchmark is all about the amount of cores, thus the X3 720 and the E8400 don't stand a chance.
The 1024M instance of wPrime tells a similar story, with the top overclocks of the x3360, the 955, and the 940 all coming in within ten seconds of each other. It is obvious here that the per-clock advantage goes to the AMD architecture. The stock performance of the X4 955 actually handily destroys the stock x3360 by 91 seconds.
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