System setup and Notes
| System | Intel LGA775 system | AMD AM2 system |
|---|---|---|
| Processors | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (2.67GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, LGA775) Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.40GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, LGA775)** Intel Core 2 Quad Q6400 (2.13GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, LGA775) *, ** Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.67GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.40GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) Intel Pentium D 925 (3.0GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) |
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, AM2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (2.6GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, AM2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6GHz, 1MiB L2 cache, AM2) AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0GHz, 1MiB L2 cache, AM2) |
| Motherboard | Intel D975XBX2 Bad Axe 2 rev. 303 (Intel i975X) | Foxconn C51XEM2AA (nForce 590 SLI) |
| Memory | 2GiB (2 x 1024) Corsair PC8500 | 2GiB (2 x 1024) Patriot PC8000 XBLK |
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-12 @ 800MHz (PC6400) | |
| Graphics card(s) | Sapphire Radeon X1900 XTX 512MiB | |
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | Optical drive(s) | Sony DW-Q30A |
| BIOS revision | 14/08/06 | 612W1P14 |
| Mainboard software | Intel Inf 8.0.1.1002 | NVIDIA nForce Package 9.34 |
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 6.10 BETA | Operating System | Windows XP Pro SP2 32-bit | PSU | OCZ PowerStream 520W | Dark Power PRO 470W | Monitor | Dell 2405FPW |
* - Core 2 Quad Q6400's spec. hasn't been officially confirmed.
** - slated for official release in January 2007
We then ran through a comprehensive set of benchmarks and utilities on a total of 11 different processors, which were considerably extended from our usual suite:
- Sandra Lite 2k7 SP1 Build 2007.8.10.105 Float Buffered Memory Bandwidth
- Sciencemark 2.0 32-bit Build 21MAR05 Memory Latency
- CPU-Z v1.37
- HEXUS Pifast
- HEXUS Cryptography
- Realstorm Raytracing 2004 - 512x384 No AA
- LAME multi-threaded benchmark - 701.5MB file - encoded into 128kbps stereo.
- DivX 6.4 (existing DV-avi source-file, Home-theatre profile, 1700Kbps, Insane-quality video, 40Kbps, Stereo, 16KHz Audio) - encoded with and without enhanced multi-threading option
- Cinebench R9.5
- Pov-ray 32-bit 3.7.0 BETA 16 - Use internal benchmark mode - biscuit.pov
- FarCry 1.33 (low-end script (1024x768)
- Quake4 1.3 SMP Support Enabled - low-end script (1024x768) - demo001 recorded by HEXUS. Quake 4 also run at 1920x1200 4xAA 16xAF
- Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory 1.05 (low-end script (1024x768)
Notes
As always, we ran each benchmark a trio of times, discarding the outer results and reporting the middle one. If any of the three results looked erroneous, we threw all three away until we could collect three within a margin of statistical error. We report any major attempts needed to get three reliable results, of course. Apart from that, things are as noted on the graphs and in the graph commentary. Want to know more? Head for the HEXUS.community.
There's a slew of high-end CPUs benchmarked here, so performance will undoubtedly be good. We've also added in a couple of sub-£100 dual-core processors from Intel and AMD in the form of the Pentium D 925 and Athlon 64 X2 3800+ AM2, respectively, to show what kind of present performance sensible money can buy.
