System setup and notes
| System | AMD Quad FX system | AMD Athlon 64 FX system | Intel Core 2 system |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processors | 2 x AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 (3.0GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, Socket F (1207) | AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, AM2) | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (2.67GHz, 8MiB L2 cache, LGA775) Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 4MiB L2 cache, LGA775) |
| Motherboard | ASUS L1N64-SLI WS (nForce 680a SLI) | Foxconn C51XEM2AA (nForce 590 SLI) | Asus P5W-DH Deluxe (975X+ICH7R) |
| Memory | 4GiB (4 x 1024) Corsair Dominator EPP 8888 | 2GBytes (2 x 1024) Corsair PC8500 EPP | 2GBytes (2 x 1024) Patriot PC8000 XBLK |
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-12 @ 753.36MHz* | 4-4-4-12 @ 800MHz (PC6400) | |
| Graphics card(s) | Sapphire Radeon X1900 XTX 512MiB | ASUS Radeon X1900 XTX 512MiB | |
| Disk drive(s) | 2 x WD Raptor 150GB SATAI (WD1500ADFD) in RAID-0 WD Caviar SE 500GB SATAII (WD5000KS) |
Seagate 160GB SATAII (ST3160812AS) | Optical drive(s) | Sony AW-Q170A | Sony DW-Q30A |
| BIOS revision | 0117 (25/10/06) | 612W1P14 | 1602 (11/08/06) |
| Mainboard software | NVIDIA nForce Package 9.35 | NVIDIA nForce Package 9.34 | Intel Inf 8.0.1.1002 |
| Graphics driver | CATALYST 6.10 BETA | Operating System | Windows XP Pro SP2 32-bit SP2 | PSU | PC Power and Cooling Turbo-Cool 1000W | FSP Epsilon 600W | Monitor | Dell 2405FPW |
* - the memory speed is derived from a set divisor of the CPU's clockspeed. In this case, the closest to DDR2-800 without going above that frequency is /8.
To test the heavy multitasking capabilities of the systems above, we ran the following benchmarks:
| 2D Benchmarks |
LAME multi-threaded benchmark - 701.5MB file - encoded into 128kbps stereo DivX 6.4 (existing DV-avi source-file, Home-theatre profile, 1700Kbps, Insane-quality video, 40Kbps, Stereo, 16KHz Audio) - encoded with enhanced multi-threading option |
|---|
| 3D Benchmarks |
Quake4 1.3 SMP Support Enabled - low-end script (1024x768) - demo001 recorded by HEXUS. |
|---|
Notes
Importantly, we benchmarked the multitasking scenarios a total of seven times, to reduce the inconsistencies between runs. Benchmarking only thrice lead to reasonably large deviations between results that were ironed out with extra runs. Lots and lots of (time-consuming and expensive!) testing, but we're now adamant the following numbers are solid performance indicators.
