System setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.- Intel Pentium 4 3.
Common components
- ATi Radeon 9800 Pro (380/340)
- 2 x 256MB Corsair XMS3500C2 run at 2-6-2-2 at DDR-400 for
Software
- Windows XP Professional Build 2600.xpclient.010817-1148
- DirectX9
- Intel 5.00.1012 chipset drivers
- NVIDIA nForce 2.03 drivers
- ATI CATALYST 3.2 drivers and control panel (6307s)
- Pifast v41 to 10m places
- Lame v3.91 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album
- Hexus SETI benchmark
- 3DMark 2001SE
- UT2003 Demo (Build 2206)
- Comanche 4 benchmark
- Serious Sam 2 Demo
- Quake 3 v1.30 HQ
Notes
The 3.2GHz processor will be run on an decent Canterwood dual-channel motherboard in the form of the DFI LAN Party. The same board will be used to run the incumbent 3.00GHz Pentium 4 C, and an MSI Granite Bay motherboard will house a 3.06GHz (533FSB) CPU. A Radeon 9800 Pro rounds off the cutting-edge packages. You may notice that the drivers used are reasonably old. The simple explanation lies in trying to maintain consistency between different setups, as they were benchmarked at different times. An AMD XP3200 (2200MHz / 200FSB) was run on an EPoX 8RDA3+ to provide some cross-CPU numbers. Our review of the initial 3.00GHz P4 and Canterwood combination showed it to take most of our benchmarks with a little to spare. It was, as expected, edged out in the mathematical crunching activities by the AMD combination.
Bumping up the voltage to ~ 1.65v, we managed a relatively stable 3.55GHz with an enhanced retail cooler. We had hoped for a little more from this newest Northwood. This, however, may not be indicative of just how high OEM and retail processors may go. 3.6GHz seemed to want to crash more often than not. We found it hard to envisage that this particular sample would be stable at the magical 4GHz in a refrigerant-based cooling system. A little disappointing.
