Professional 3D and Graphics Benchmarks
SPECviewperf 11
SPECviewperf is an industry standard benchmark incorporating a number of commercial, professional 3D CAD/CAM packages used in the animation, games, and graphics, design, manufacturing and engineering sectors
The best known of these programs to the public would be CATIA, LIGHTWAVE and MAYA.
The view sets in Viewperf 11 incorporate 3D visuals of a popular sedan and SUV, several engines SUV, a, submarine, house amongst other 3D Models.
Typically, professional 3D applications are only certified for professional graphics cards such as those from AMD and NVIDIA. Integrated graphics are not certified or supported.
Both our gold and blue test systems would not complete all of the tests and SPECviewperf 10 would crash and not complete on these systems either so we could not include the older version, which includes different 3D applications.
Intel roadmaps examined by NitroWare.net have indicated at Intel has ambitious plans to support professional 3D applications for their integrated graphics with their upcoming product refreshes.
Regardless If this actually happens, given Intel's commitment to improving their graphics year to year, their track record and engineering expertise we have no doubt they could achieve compatibility and full validation/qualification by the vendors of these professional programs. However as Intel do not currently produce a performance oriented GPU they will not achieve performance levels of AMD and NVIDIA graphics.
The results we have seen here for SPECviewperf11 are encouraging on the Intel front, but remember we need balance, strong graphics will not fully compensate for a weak CPU or vice versa.
Maxon Cinebench R10
Cinebench R10 renders a photo-realistic image of a motorcycle using the CPU as well as incorporating a very simple indoor 3D scene that is rendered using OpenGL typical of that a filmmaker might use to pre-visualise a scene
'1CPU' refers to the PER CPU CORE performance. We have one quad core (Red), dual, core plus hyper-threading (gold) and two classic dual core CPUs in our line-up.
The Higher clock speed of the Intel I3 and Core2Duo 2.8 results in a higher per CPU score
When we take all of the CPU cores together in multi-threaded test, the AMD A6 almost matches the Intel i3 and the AMD A8 would match or beat the i3 due to its faster clock speed of 2.9GHz versus 2.6GHz, however Intel's dual core (two physical cores plus two virtual cores) is able to match a true quad core CPU,
The computer industry phenomena where a fast dual core CPU can match or beat a quad core CPU in some tests is something which vendors such as Intel and DELL are trying to educate consumers of.
For the OpenGL test, AMD's balanced approach of mild quad core CPU and GPU wins out over all other systems which are not as balanced. 
Maxon Cinebench R11.5
Since we have included older and new systems in this review we included Cinebench R10 for historical comparison purposes with other reviews but will cease and only use R11 for future reviews.
Cinebench R11.5 is an updated version of the Cinebench engine but with new and different tests as well as performance metrics. CPU rendering of a photo-realistic scene and OpenGL to render a car chase scene typical of a film or game where the police chase the culprit.
The updated engine gives the win to AMD this time for the CPU test but due to the much more detailed and complex 3D car chase, the most powerful graphics card wins, which is the NVIDIA GTX460 powered system.
We tested Intel's Quad Core i5-2300 at launch time earlier in the year with a 2.8GHz base frequency and 3.1GHz turbo frequency achieves the following scores: CPU 4.56pts and OpenGL 5.82. The mid-level CPU retails at A$180 and is significantly faster than the A6 and the I3 but at a higher price-point is not a comparison. With both i5 and i3 at 3.1GHz maximum, the true quad core i5 is 1.5 times faster than the i3 at 1.5 times the price. You get what you pay for.
The OpenGL score of the i5 is lower than what we achieved with the i3 simply because our reference score was achieved at Sandy Bridge's launch time with early graphics drivers. 
Professional Graphics Benchmark
DriverHeaven.net Adobe Photoshop CS5 benchmark
Respected review site DriverHeaven.net created a test script for Photoshop, which applies a number of filters to a photograph of a motorcycle. Although Adobe Creative Suite CS4 and CS5 feature GPU hardware acceleration via OpenGL which speeds up zooming, rotation and other graphic operations, not all parts of Adobe applications are GPU accelerated and are CPU dependant.
A typical user of Photoshop will be applying various effects filters to photos so this represents a real world Photoshop test.
Note this test is TIMED, lower is better. AMD achieved third place out of four. We expected much better from the APU, being first or second place but this is not to be.
We are investigating this and looking at how dependant the effects in Photoshop are on CPU and or GPU performance.
As it stands, the Intel 2nd generation Core i3 presents the fastest platform for Photoshop CS5 – at least for typical light duties. We were very disappointed at AMD's performance in this tests it is significantly slower (30 seconds !) than our Core2 duo/NVIDIA test system which is older.
We have provided the breakup results of each individual filter from the test so that readers may see which platform excels in which particular filter type if they wish.
