Test: Six X3 & X4 Phenom B3s in detail
by Marc Prieur
Published on June 23, 2008
3ds Max 9 and Maya 8
In this test, we used two test scenes from Maya and 3dsmax developed by Yann Dupont of 3DVF (whom we thank for their use) and which employ the MentalRay rendering engine. This isn’t a random choice as this engine is now a standard part of both programs and is the most commonly used in production. - the scene with 3dsmax is very heavy in terms of polygons and the number of objects. The objective was to test processor capacity and manipulate a heavy flow of data. - Maya's scene is much lighter, but uses MentalRay's advanced lighting algorithms and employs the processors’ raw power in terms of mathematical calculations.
We could have thought that in this type of application, which can fully benefit from multiple cores, the Phenom X3 would do well compared to the Core2 Duo. Of course, at equivalent prices (the X3 6850 vs. the E8300, for example) they are ahead but not by much. The frequency as well as higher efficiency at equal frequencies helps the Core2 to absorb the blow. AMD’s most expensive quad core does not manage to challenge Intel’s least expensive quad core; however, we should add that the two models have similar prices.
