3D modeling and rendering

Cinebench rendering
Graphics is a classic example of a computing problem that's easily parallelizable, so it's no surprise that we can exploit a multi-core processor with a 3D rendering app. Cinebench is the first of those we'll try, a benchmark based on Maxon's Cinema 4D rendering engine. It's multithreaded and comes with a 64-bit executable. This test runs with just a single thread and then with as many threads as CPU cores (or threads, in CPUs with multiple hardware threads per core) are available.

The X4 955 gives even the fastest quad-core Core 2, the QX9770, a bit of a scare here, but the Core i7-920's Hyper-Threading takes it to another level. The Core i7-965 Extreme isn't too far behind the dual-socket QX9775, even.

POV-Ray rendering
We're using the latest beta version of POV-Ray 3.7 that includes native multithreading and 64-bit support. Some of the beta 64-bit executables have been quite a bit slower than the 3.6 release, but this should give us a decent look at comparative performance, regardless.

3ds max modeling and rendering

Valve VRAD map compilation
This next test processes a map from Half-Life 2 using Valve's VRAD lighting tool. Valve uses VRAD to pre-compute lighting that goes into games like Half-Life 2.

The new Phenom II nearly pulls off a clean sweep of our remaining rendering tests, besting the Q9550 in both POV-Ray scenes and both 3ds max tests before falling behind by four seconds in the Valve VRAD job.