The results follow what you'd expect from the prices of the different models, but the cost analysis shows diminishing returns as you spend more money on a CPU. Although the flagship Phenom II X4 955 smashes the Athlon II X2 250 by around 120%, the Athlon II gives roughly 22% more points per dollar and 15% more than the Phenom II X2 550. Worst of the lot is outdated Phenom X3 8750, offering less value than the X4 955 and significantly less overall performance.
wprime 2.0:
A CPU's core count matters when you've got a highly parallel workload, and wprime is designed to be exactly that. It's interesting to note that the X4 940 is more than twice as quick as the Athlon II, despite the fact they share the same clock speed. The Level 3 cache is perhaps providing the 940 with quick access to instructions that the Athlon II must fetch from RAM.
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