System setup and notes
Hardware and Software
Test Platforms
| System | MESH Titan X1800 Fire System | Armari Pantheon FX | HEXUS Intel Presler System |
| Processor(s) | AMD Athlon 64 4600+ (2.4GHz, 1MB L2 cache) | AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 @ 2.8GHz. 2MB L2 cache | Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (3.46GHz, 4MB L2 cache) |
| Mainboard | ASUS A8R-MVP Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition | ASUS A8N-VM CSM nForce 430 | Intel D975XBK | Chipset driver | ATI CATALYT 5.12 | ForceWare 4.50 | Intel INF Update Utility 7.2.2.1006 |
| Memory | 1GByte (2x512MB) Samsung Original DDR SDRAM | 2GByte (2x1024MB)Corsair TwinX3200C2PT DDR SDRAM | 1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2-5400UL DDR2 SDRAM | Memory timings | 3-3-3-8 2T @ 400MHz | 3-3-3-8 1T @ 400MHz | 3-2-2-8 @ 533MHz |
| Graphics Card(s) | 2x ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB in CrossFire mode | XFX GeForce 7800 GTX DDR3 512MB XXX Edition | ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB | Graphics Card Driver | ATI CATALYST 5.12 | ForceWare 81.95 | ATI CATALYST 5.12 | Disk drive(s) | Maxtor 6L300S0 300GB 16MB cache SATA | 2x Hitachi 250GB 8MB cache SATA | Western Digital 200GB (200JD) 8MB cache SATA | Operating system | Windows XP Home SP2 | Windows XP Pro SP2 | Windows XP Pro SP2 |
Benchmark Software
ScienceMark 2.0 (21st March 2005)HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
Realstorm Raytracing 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
picCOLOR 32-bit b568
KribiBench v1.1
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory - HEXUS custom benchmark
3DMark05 b1.2.0
Black And White 2 - HEXUS custom benchmark
Far Cry - HEXUS custom benchmark
Notes
We'll be comparing the MESH Titan X1800 Fire system's performance to a couple of high-end rigs based on AMD's Athlon 64 FX-60 (overclocked to 2.8GHz) and Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 (Presler) CPUs, respectively. The MESH's Athlon 64 X2 4600+ will, obviously, seem underpowered compared to the comparison duo, but it will be interesting to see how it stacks up. We'll also be looking at CrossFire and non-CrossFire gaming performance against the comparison Armari Pantheon's XFX GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB XXX Edition (single-card).Our prototype system had a few minor software-related flaws that will be ironed out on production models.
