PCMark Vantage
PCMark Vantage is a Vista-only benchmark suite from Futuremark. It is multi-core aware and provides a variety of different tests that simulate real-world activities. I’ll be using the ‘Memories’ digital photo manipulation test as well as the ‘TV and Movies’ test. Both are very CPU intensive and can give even the latest processors a good run for their money.
The default benchmark and resolution settings were used for both tests.
The PCMark Vantage tests we’ve run seem to slightly favor the DDR3 equipped processors. The Phenom II X4 955 rocks the TV and Movies test, and narrowly pulls ahead of the Q9550 on the photo editing Memories test. In a DDR2 setup, the Intel quads fall behind the older Phenom II X4 940, so we have no reason to believe that the Phenom II X4 955 would be bested in that situation.