System setup and notes
| System name | Scan 3XS Intel X58 Core i7 | Chillblast Fusion Gemini | PC Specialist Apollo Q260GTX |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i7 920 @ 3.65GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 8MB L3 Cache, 3,292MHz QPI, quad-core + Hyper-threading | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 3.485GHz, 12MB L2 cache, 1,600MHz, quad-core | Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 (2.67GHz, 12MB L2 cache, 1,333MHz, quad-core) |
| Motherboard | ASUS P6T Deluxe (Intel X58) | ASUS Rampage Formula (X48) | ASUS P5N-D (nForce 750i SLI) |
| Memory | 3GB (3 x 1GB) Corsair XMS3 1333MHz | 4GB (2x 2GB) Corsair XMS2-8500 | 4GB (2x 2GB) Corsair XMS2-6400 |
| Memory timings and speed | 10-10-10-24 1T @ DDR3-1.463MHz | 5-5-5-15-2T @ 1,092MHz | 5-5-5-15-2T @ 800MHz |
| Graphics card(s) | XFX GeForce® 260 GTX 896MB DDR3 Black | ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 2,048MB | ASUS GeForce GTX 260 896MB |
| Disk drive(s) | Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F1, 7,200rpm, 32MB cache | Western Digital 750GB Caviar SE, 7,200rpm 16MB cache | |
| Optical drive(s) | Pioneer DVR-216DBK SATA DVD-Rewriter | LG H20L combo drive | |
| Graphics driver | ForceWare 180.47 | ForceWare 177.41 | |
| Operating System | Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, SP1 | ||
| Base unit price | £1,610 | £1,400 | £1,050 |
| Benchmarks | HEXUS.boot - cold-boot time from power-on to Gadwin PrintScreen pop-up HEXUS.power - idle and 3D load measurements from the mains HEXUS.transcode - 200MB, 1080p clip to iPhone (480x272, medium quality) HEXUS.optical - Nero DiscSpeed 4 using DVD of Batman Begins - 2 disc S.E. HEXUS.photofix - 152MB photos auto-fixed - 25 images HEXUS.PiFast HEXUS.squeeze - 205MB photos compressed into one file using WinRAR HEXUS.pro - CINEBENCH R10 multi-CPU render HEXUS.USB - 17.5GB (1046 files) transfer from USB HDD to primary drive HEXUS.gaming - Call Of Duty 4 - 1,680x1,050 4xAA 16xAF, VHQ HEXUS.gaming - Call Of Duty 4 - 1,920x1,200 4xAA 16xAF, VHQ HEXUS.gaming - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - 1,680x1,050 4xAA 16xAF, VHQ HEXUS.gaming - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars - 1,920x1,200 4xAA 16xAF, VHQ wPrime v2.00 32M |
|---|
Notes
The system was shipped with an XFX GeForce GTX 260 XXX Edition (192 core), however, shortly after receiving the system this card was discontinued by the manufacturer so we replaced it with one of our 216-core GTX 260 cards from the labs and set it to the correct XFX Black edition clocks for all the 3D tests.
A couple of bloopers were noticed with the setup of the system we received. Firstly, the Windows Experience Index test hadn't been run so it still had a score of 1.0 and as such Windows Aero was disabled.
Secondly, on the review sample received it would appear that all of the PSU installation screws had worked loose and could easily be turned by hand.
The system was exposed to an overnight stress-test consisting of running multiple copies of Prime95 simultaneously, with 3DMark06 looping at 1920x1200 4xAA and 16xAF. It ran fine for some 12.5 hours which is as long as we left it running for.
In addition to the usual set of tests we run, the optical testing application has been changed to Nero Discspeed 4, as this can report additional information which the DVD decrypter test couldn't reveal.
As well as this, the gaming tests have been increased. In addition to running at 1,920x1,200 in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars we also run at 1,680x1,050 as this allows us to see how well gaming performance scales. As Enemy Territory: Quake Wars has traditionally favoured NVIDIA GPUs, we've also introduced a traditionally AMD-favouring title from our GPU test suite, Call of Duty 4.
All the games tested are run at maximum detail and configured in the same way as our high-end GPU testing suite (with the exception of sound always being enabled).
Last but certainly not least we ran wPrime to 32 million places. This popular benchmark performs very similar calculations to PiFast, but it's a somewhat more demanding test as it's heavily multi-threaded and can take full advantage of all the Core i7 920's cores (both real and virtual).
