Memory tests
A look at memory bandwidth and latency first.
All much of a muchness here. The D955XBK motherboard has system RAM set to 333MHz, offering up a potential 10.7GB/s in dual-channel mode. The XE 840, however, runs off a standard 200MHz FSB and can utilise around 6.4GB/s, so we'd still expect the memory benchmark result to be a touch higher from a 955X Express board.
Memory latency, similarly, isn't quite as good as it should be. Relaxed 5-5-5 timings isn't doing the XE 840/955XE setup any favours, though.
Benchmark results will depend largely on whether the application tested is threaded in nature. If it is, results will be good. If not, as in the case of Pifast, the results will be similar to those obtained on a Pentium 4 640. Single-threaded applications, run in isolation, simply leave one core more-or-less idle. One would need to run two instances of single-threaded apps. to flex the second core's execution muscle.
