Item: Intel Xeon 3.4GHz ['Nocona' core]
Author: Ryszard Sommefeldt

System Setup and Notes

Hardware

Boston Intel 'Nocona' Xeon System (2 x 3.4GHz, 2GB, 800GB, 6800 GT)
HEXUS AMD Opteron 250 System (2 x 2.4GHz, 2GB, 800GB, 6800 GT)

Software

Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition w/SP1, Build 1184
NVIDIA Detonator 61.76
AMD 8000-series Driver Pack, Version 2.1.0.1
AMD 8151 AGP Tunnel Driver, Version 8.1.2.1
Intel E7525 Chipset Driver, v6.0.1.1002

Auto Gordian Knot, v1.1.25
XviD, built on 17-06-2002
Canopus ProCoder, v1.25
Mainconcept MPEG Encoder, v1.4.2
picCOLOR Image Analysis, v4.0 Build 479
Cinebench 2003
3D Studio Max v6
SPECviewperf®, v7.1.1

3DMark 2001SE
ScienceMark 2.0
HEXUS Pifast
CPU-Z, v1.23

Notes

Not your usual suite of tests, but neither are they your usual test systems. I tried to include SYSMark 2004, but it refused to play nice with Windows Server 2003, so I had to leave it out. What's left, bar the Content Creation tests from SYSMark that I would liked to have run, is a gamut of media encoding, image analysis and 3D rendering tests (both hardware and software) that are suited to multi-processor workstations. Each test is multi-threaded, taking advantage of the physical (and logical in the case of the Xeon system) processors in the system.

HyperThreading was enabled on the Xeon system throughout, the operating system seeing 4 processors in total.

Before testing with the application suite began, CPU-Z was run to check everything was OK, with Sciencemark 2.0 confirming memory latencies and memory bandwidth to make sure the basics were in place.