WorldBench
WorldBench's overall score is a pretty decent indication of general-use performance for desktop computers. This benchmark uses scripting to step through a series of tasks in common Windows applications and then produces an overall score for comparison. WorldBench also records individual results for its component application tests, allowing us to compare performance in each.
We'll look at the overall score, and then we'll show individual application results alongside the results from some of our own application tests. For the sake of conciseness, however, we won't be look at all individual tests—we've left out Nero 7 Ultra Edition, Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5, Firefox 2.0, and 3ds max 8 DirectX performance.
The Core i7-920 looks far less appealing in WorldBench's overall rankings, where the $163 Core 2 Duo E8400 finishes just nine points (7%) behind.
If our scatter plot shows anything, it's that general desktop productivity tasks in the WorldBench suite aren't terribly CPU-bound overall. That's why so many points are clumped together. We'd see even more clumping together if it weren't for AMD's south bridge chips, whose inadequate support for Native Command Queuing leads to poor performance in WorldBench's WinZip, Nero, and Photoshop CS2 tests. Have a look at page six of our Socket AM3 Phenom II review for more details.
Productivity and general use software
MS Office productivity
Multitasking - Firefox and Windows Media Encoder
Office is a perfect example of an application where higher CPU performance doesn't do all that much: going from our baseline Athlon X2 6400+ to a Core i7-965 only reduces the test run-time by about 11%. Coincidentally, the i7-965 is also around 11 times more expensive than the 6400+.
Our multitasking test shows more notable differences and, naturally, gives the advantage to triple- and quad-core CPUs. The Phenom II X3 720 does particularly well there, although the Core 2 Duo E8400 isn't all that far behind. Jumping on the Core i7 bandwagon in this instance only yields substantial performance dividends with the $999 Core i7-965 Extreme Edition.
