Testbed and Methods
As we have already mentioned above we set two goals for our today抯 test session. First of all, we decided to check once again what performance improvement we could get from porting 32-bit applications for 64-bit architecture. And second, we decided to compare the implementation of 64-bit extensions in AMD Athlon 64 X2, Intel Pentium D and the new Intel Core 2 Duo. For our test session we selected the fastest and most expensive CPUs from the corresponding families positioned for hardware enthusiasts and computer gaming fans, although it shouldn抰 necessarily be the case. As a result our test platforms featured the following hardware components:
- CPUs:
- AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (Socket AM2, 2.8GHz, 2x1024KB L2);
- Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (LGA775, 2.93GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 4MB L2);
- Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 965 (LGA775, 3.73GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 2x2MB).
- Mainboards:
- ASUS P5W DH Deluxe (LGA775, Intel 975X Express);
- ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe (Socket AM2, NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI).
- Memory:
- 2048MB DDR2-800 SDRAM (Mushkin XP2-6400PRO, 2 x 1024 MB, DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12).
- Graphics card: PowerColor X1900 XTX 512MB (PCI-E x16).
- Storage subsystem: Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB (SATA150).
- OS:
- Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2;
- Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.
The tests were performed with the mainboard BIOS setup for maximum performance.
