Systems setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.Processors
Intel Pentium 4 3.46GHz Extreme Edition, 13x266 LGA775, 1.5v, DDR2 533 DC (3-4-4-8)
Intel Pentium 4 3.6GHz Prescott, LGA775, 18x200, 1.3875v, DDR2 533 DC (3-4-4-8)
Intel Pentium 4 3.4GHz Northwood, S478, 16x200, 1.5v, DDR400 DC (2-2-2-5)
AMD Athlon 64 FX-55, 2600MHz, S939, 13x200, 1.5v, 1MB L2 cache, DDR400 DC memory (2-2-2-5)
AMD Athlon 64 Model 4000+, 2400MHz, S939, 12x200, 1.5v, 1MB L2 cache, DDR400 DC memory (2-2-2-5)
AMD Athlon 64 Model 3800+, 2400MHz, S939, 12x200, 1.5v, 512kb L2 cache, DDR400 DC memory (2-2-2-5)
AMD Athlon 64 Model 3500+, 2200MHz, S939, 11x200, 1.5v, 512kb L2 cache, DDR400 DC memory (2-2-2-5)
AMD Athlon 64 Model 3200+, 2000MHz, S754, 10x200, 1.5v, DDR400 SC memory (2-2-2-5)
Motherboards
Intel reference D925XECV2, i925XE
DFI LANPARTY i925X LGA775 Alderwood
ASUS A8V Deluxe S939 VIA K8T800 Pro
BIOSTAR K8NHA Grand S754 nForce3 250Gb
ABIT IC7-G S478 Canterwood
Other components
2x512MB OCZ Platinum Rev 2 dual-channel RAM (2-2-2-5)
2x512MB Crucial Ballistix DD2 667 (3-4-4-8)
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT reference (350/1000), both AGP and PCIe
Western Digital 160JB hard drive
Samcheer 420w PSU
Dell P991 19" monitor
Software
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX 9.0b
VIA Hyperion 4.53 drivers
Intel 5.0.2.1003 / 6.0.1.1006 chipset drivers
NVIDIA ForceWare 61.77 drivers
CPU-Z 1.24
Benchmarks
Pifast v4.1
ScienceMark 2.0
Lame v3.92
MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album (611MB)
KribiBench v1.1
Realstorm Raytracing 2004 - 512x384 - no AA
HEXUS XviD encoding test
3DMark2001SE b330
UT2003 HEXUS Custom low-detail benchmark
Comanche 4
DOOM 3 - Timedemo 1 - HQ
Notes
The reference 925XE motherboard allows for asynchronous DDR2 667 RAM speeds but
a pair of Crucial Ballistix DDR2 667 modules continuously failed to boot at that
setting. With that being the case, system RAM was run at a synchronously at DDR2
533MHz. There were no other problems to report during installation or
benchmarking. Overclocking was limited by the references board's maximum 4% extra FSB
limit. We'll take a fuller look with retail examples.
Heat
One benefit of a Northwood processor is a comparative lack of heat. Intel's temperature-reporting utility reckoned that the reference cooler was able to keep the processor at below 50c. That's pretty good going.
