Testbed and Methods
During this test session we will compare the performance of the new dual-core Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 CPU against the top-end dual-core and single-core processors from AMD and Intel. In other words, Pentium Extreme Edition 955 will compete against AMD Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2, Intel Pentium 4, Pentium 4 Extreme Edition and Pentium Extreme Edition processors.
For our tests we assembled a few systems from the components listed below:
- CPU:
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (Socket 939, 2.4GHz, 2x1024KB L2 cache, E6 core revision ?Toledo);
- AMD Athlon 64 FX-57 (Socket 939, 2.8GHz, 1024KB L2 cache, E4 core revision ?San Diego);
- Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (LGA775, 3.46GHz, 2x2MB L2);
- Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 950 (LGA775, 3.4GHz, 2x2MB L2);
- Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (LGA775, 3.2GHz, 2x1MB L2);
- Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.73GHz (LGA775, 3.73GHz, 2MB L2);
- Intel Pentium 4 670 (LGA775, 3.6GHz, 2MB L2).
- Mainboards:
- DFI LANParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra);
- ASUS P5WD2 Premium (LGA775, Intel 955X Express).
- Memory:
- 2048MB DDR400 SDRAM (Corsair CMX1024-3500LLPRO, 2 x 1024 MB, 2-3-2-10);
- 2048MB DDR2-667 SDRAM (Corsair CM2X1024-6400PRO, 2 x 1024 MB, 4-4-4-12).
- Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT 256MB (PCI-E x16).
- HDD: Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB (SATA150).
- OS: Microsoft Windows XP SP2 с DirectX 9.0c.
The BIOS Setup of the mainboards was adjusted for maximum performance.
