Maxon Cinebench is based on Maxon's popular animation software, Cinema 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. We've used the built-in CPU benchmark, which uses a 3D scene file to render a photo-realistic image of a concept bike. The scene makes use of various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders.
Intel's Hyper Threading makes the Core i7 in this benchmark - the extra threads are lapped up by Cinebench much more than Triple-channel memory (versus dual channel), Turbo mode or the 6.4GT/s QPI bandwidth offers. SMT allows the Core i7 about a nine percent performance increase, and even a cheaper i7 940 outperforms the i7 965 with SMT disabled.
In a clock for clock comparison with the previous generation, the Core i7 965 at 3.2GHz is 29 percent faster than the QX9770 at 3.2GHz and the i7 920 is 38 percent faster than the Q6700 and 5.3 percent faster than the Q9450, both of which also run at 2.66GHz.
Cinebench 10
x64 Version - 1CPU, 800x600 Image
Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT disabled)
Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, 6.4GHz QPI, SMT enabled)
Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, Dual Channel, SMT enabled)
Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, 4.8GHz QPI, SMT enabled)
Core i7 965 (4x3.2GHz, Single Channel, SMT enabled)
In Cinebench's single threaded test Turbo Mode makes a much larger difference and when turned off, it's slower than running the 965 with just single channel DDR3 by around four percent. All the Core i7 processors, apart from the 920, exceed anything Penryn can churn out and in a clock to clock performance is still 18-to-21 percent in favour of the Core i7.
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