System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| System | Intel Pentium System | AMD Athlon 64 System |
| Processor(s) | Pentium 4 670 Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.73GHz Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (Smithfield) Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (Presler) |
Athlon 64 4000+ (Clawhammer) Athlon 64 FX-57 (San Diego) Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (Toledo) |
| Mainboards | Intel D975XBK i975X | ABIT Fatal1ty AN8 nForce4 Ultra |
| Memory | 2 x 512MB Corsair XMS2-5400UL | 2 x 512MB Corsair Xpert XL DDR-400 |
| Timings | 3-2-2-8 @ 533MHz | 2-2-2-5 @ 400MHz |
| BIOS Version | BX97510J.86A.0354.IB (08/12/2005) | BIOS -19 for ABIT Fat. AN8 - (19/11/2005) |
| Disk Drive | 160GB Western Digital PATA | |
| Graphics Card | ATI RADEON X1800 XL 256MB PCIe, CATALYST 5.13 set | |
| Operating System | Windows XP Professional, SP2 | |
| Mainboard Software | Intel INF Update Utility 7.2.2.1006 | NVIDIA nForce4 Platform Driver 6.70 |
Benchmark Software
ScienceMark 2.0 (21st March 2005)HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
Realstorm Raytracing 2004
CINEBENCH 2003
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel Multi-Threaded compiler) - 701MB WAV
DivX 6.1 encoding test. 1700kbps, Insane Quality, 416MB DV file
picCOLOR 32-bit b568
KribiBench v1.1
3DMark2005 b1.2.0
DOOM 3 v1282 - Medium Quality
Far Cry v1.33 - High Quality
Notes
We'll be comparing the Intel Extreme Edition 955's performance against its direct predecessor, the E.E. 840. Intel Pentium 4 670 (3.8GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 200MHz FSB) and Extreme Edition 3.73GHz (3.73GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 266MHz FSB) provide decent comparative single-core performance. In the green corner and from AMD is its X2 4800+, a dual-core CPU running at 2.4GHz and carrying a total of 2MB of L2 cache. The single-core FX-57 (2.8GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 200MHz driven clock) and Athlon 64 4000+ (2.4GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 200MHz driven clock) keep the high-end theme intact.
The E.E. 955 was benchmarked on an Intel D975XBK motherboard. We'll be reviewing it separately in a multi-board roundup in the near future.
No problems to report during installation or testing.
Overclocking
Given a smaller manufacturing process, it would have been remiss of us not to overclock the sample. As seen on the previous page, we were able to overclock it, via an increase in the multiplier from a factor of 13 to 16, to an overall speed of 4267MHz, using a reference Intel LGA775 cooler and default voltages. We've included the overclocked results in the following pages.
Temperature
Using a reference LGA775 heatsink, we used Intel's hardware monitor to measure the under-load temperature of each Intel CPU. Ambient temperature remained constant at 21c and all CPUs were cleaned and re-greased before testing. The heatsink, too, was cleaned after each CPU had been tested.
Prime95 torture test was run for 15 minutes for each CPU. All non-'955 CPUs ran with a default VCore of between 1.376V-1.388V. The E.E., thanks to a 65nm manufacturing process, defaulted to 1.288V. We guess all that L2 cache makes it a little toastier than we had expected, and it's on a par with other 90nm LGA775 CPUs.
