System setup and notes
| System name | MESH Elite Extreme SLI | SCAN FX-62 SLI | HEXUS ATI Sturgeon System |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 | AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz, 2MiB L2 cache, AM2) | |
| Motherboard | ASUSTek P5N32-SLI Deluxe | Foxconn C51XEM2AA - nForce 590 SLI | ATI Sturgeon Reference |
| Memory | 2GiB (2x 1024) OCZ PC6400 | 2GiB (2 x 1024) Corsair PC8500 EPP | |
| Memory timings and speed | 4-4-4-15-2T @ 800MHz | 5-5-5-15-2T @ 936MHz (EPP) | 4-4-4-12-2T @ 800MHz |
| Graphics card(s) | 2x NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX - SLI | Radeon X1900 CrossFire (XTX & XT MC) | |
| Disk drive(s) | Maxtor 6H500S0 500GB SATA | 2x WD 150GB Raptors (WD150ADFD) 10,000RPM, 16MB cache, in RAID0 | Seagate 160GB 7200.9 SATA 3Gbps |
| BIOS revision | 28/06/06 | 612W1P14 | 08.00.13 |
| Mainboard software | 6.70 | 9.34 | SATA(AHCI): 2.5.1540.25 IDE: 1.00.0000.3 CHIPSET: 5.10.1000.5 |
| Graphics driver | ForceWare 91.33 | ForceWare 91.27 | CATALYST 6.6 Beta |
| Operating System | Windows XP MCE 2005 | Windows XP Pro SP2 32-bit | |
Benchmark Software
ScienceMark 2.0 (21st March 2005)HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
HEXUS.in-house DivX encode using DivX 6.01 and VirtualDub on 416MB DV file
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
KribiBench v1.1
HDTach 3.0.1.0
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 - HEXUS custom benchmark
Quake 4 v1.04 HEXUS Custom Benchmark
Far Cry v1.33 - HEXUS custom benchmark
Notes
During our testing we found that power management wasn't working on the CPU; it wasn't throttling back its speed when idle. Even a trip to the BIOS to enable a few power-management settings didn't appear to yield any change. The CPU ran at 48ºC under load.
A 6 hour burn-in test of Prime95 and 3DMark05 combined passed without error. We did run in to a few benchmarking issues with our three games, however. Thy symptons suggested that it was a display driver issue, with ForceWare 91.33s installed on the system to blame, apparently. Fingers crossed on a quick fix from NVIDIA or any other parties that may need to provide input.
We'll be comparing the performance of the MESH Elite Extreme SLI against a top-end machine from Scan, sporting an AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 CPU, EPP-supporting RAM, which pushes up memory frequency to 936MHz when allied to the nForce 590 SLI chipset. It, too, utilises twin GeForce 7900 GTX cards in SLI.We'll also add results from our reference ATI Sturgeon motherboard (ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200), run with the same CPU but featuring an X1900 CrossFired graphics setup, that is, X1900 512MiB master card and X1900 XTX 512MiB slave.
We expect 3D tests, run at real-world settings of 1600x1200 and 1920x1200, both with 4x AA and 8/16x AF, to be similar, but 2D results should showcase the power of the Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 CPU.
Let's find out, shall we?
