Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, Phenom X3 and Phenom X4: Which One is the Best USD 200 CPU?

Cinebench 10

Cinebench 10 is based on the 3D software, Cinema 4d. It is very useful to measure the performance gain given by having more than one CPU installed on the system when rendering heavy 3D images. Rendering is one area in which having more than one CPU helps considerably, because usually, rendering software recognizes several CPUs. (Cinebench, for instance, can use up to 16 CPUs.)

Since we were interested in measuring the rendering performance, we ran the test called “Rendering x CPUs,” which renders a “heavy” sample image using all available CPUs (or cores) to speed up the process.

Here Core 2 Quad Q6600 was the fastest CPU, being 21.91% faster than Phenom X4 9550, 37.06% faster than Core 2 Duo E8400 and 47.35% faster than Phenom X3 8750.

The surprise here was that Core 2 Duo E8400 was 7.51% faster than Phenom X3 8750, so it seems that the higher clock from Core 2 Duo E8400 overcame the extra core from Phenom X3.