Synthetic Performance
Using the SPECviewperf v10 benchmark data from the Maya and 3dsMax tests we see the Pentium G6950 once again come out as the cream of the crop. The chip outclassed its competition convincingly enough in the Maya test, but the 3dsMax results were comparable with those of the Phenom II X2 555 and Pentium E6600 processors.
Nevertheless, the Pentium E6600 managed to beat the Athlon II X3 435 and Athlon II X4 630 processors in this test. As expected, the Sempron 140 was the slowest AMD processor tested but despite this it was still faster than the Pentium E5400 and Celeron E3300.
The Pentium G6950 edges out the Phenom II X2 555 when testing with the CINEBENCH R11.5 benchmark, though only by a small margin. In fact, the results were close enough to call it a tie. The runner up Athlon II X2 250 was considerably slower but still managed to defeat the Pentium E6600. The Sempron 140 scored well in the OpenGL test, though being a single-core processor it delivered by far the worst CPU result.
Although the Athlon II X3 435 and Athlon II X4 630 processors were outgunned by the Pentium E5400, E6600 and G6950, when looking at the OpenGL performance they were considerably stronger in the CPU test. The Celeron E3300 on the other hand was a slug all round and provided the worst OpenGL score by a considerable margin.
WinRAR is a program we've found to typically favor the high-end Intel processors when compared to the AMD Phenom II X4 and X6 chips. However, in the sub-$100 range it seems quite the opposite is true as the Athlon II X2 550 crushed the Intel competition when measuring both single and multithreading performance.
The Phenom II X2 555 was by far the best performing dual-core processor. When measuring its multithreading performance we found it comparable to the Athlon II X3 435, while it was far superior in the single thread test. The Athlon II X4 630 delivered the best multithreading performance of all at 1860KB/s, making it a whopping 75% faster than the Pentium G6950.