System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| System | Rock Xtreme Ti 3.8 laptop | Rock Xtreme Ti 3.6 laptop | Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 laptop | AMD Athlon 64 desktop system |
| Processor(s) | Intel Pentium 4 570 | Intel Pentium 4 560 | Intel Pentium M 770 | AMD Athlon 64 4000+ |
| Mainboard | Intel i915P PCI-Express | Intel i915P PCI-Express | Intel i915PM Sonoma | ABIT AX8 VIA K8T890 PCI-Express |
| Memory | 1GByte (2x512MB) Samsung PC4200 DDR2 SODIMMs | 1GByte (2x512MB) Samsung PC4200 DDR2 SODIMMs | 1GByte (2x512MB) Samsung PC4200 DDR2 SODIMMs | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS3200XL | Memory timings | 4-4-4-11 | 4-4-4-11 | 4-4-4-11 | 2-2-2-5 1T |
| Graphics Cards | ATI Mobility RADEON X800 XT 256MB | ATI Mobility RADEON X800 256MB | NVIDIAGeForce 6800 Go Ultra 256MB | NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT 256MB (desktop) | Disk drive(s) | 2x 60GB Hitachi 7,200RPM in RAID0 | 2x 60GB Hitachi 7,200RPM in RAID0 | Fujitsu 100GB 4,200RPM | 160GB Western Digital 160JB | Screen | 17-inch WSXGA (1680x1050) X-Glass | 17-inch WSXGA (1680x1050) X-Glass | 17-inch WUXGA (1920x1200) | 20-inch Dell 2001FP (1600x1200) | Operating system | Windows XP Home SP2 | Windows XP Home SP2 | Windows XP Home SP2 | Windows XP Professional SP2 | Price | £2231 inc. VAT | £1950 inc. VAT | £2050.56 inc. VAT | £1400 inc. VAT |
Benchmark Software
HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
ScienceMark 2.0 (7th February 2005)
Realstorm 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
picCOLOR 32-bit v4.0
KribiBench v1.1
Simpli Software's HDTach 3.01
DOOM 3 Timedemo 1
3DMark05 b1.2.0
Half-Lfe 2 - HEXUS custom benchmark (prison demo)
CATALYST 5.2 for both Mobility RADEON SKUs
ForceWare 71.89 for both GeForce 6800 SKUs
Notes
We'll be looking at both 2D and 3D performance against the Rockdirect model we reviewed a few weeks' ago. Dell's Inpsiron XPS Gen 2 and a fully-fledged desktop system provide further comparative numbers for us to evaluate the XTI 3.8 by.
3.8GHz clockspeed is the fastest we've seen thus far. Is it enough to oust a 2.13GHz-clocked Pentium M, amongst others?
