Our testing methods
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. Tests were run at least twice, and the results were averaged.
Our test systems were configured like so:
| Processor | Athlon XP 'Barton' 3200+ 2.2GHz | Athlon XP 'Barton' 2500+ 1.83GHz Athlon XP 'Barton' 2800+ 2.183GHz | AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.0GHz AMD Athlon 64 3400+ 2.2GHz | AMD Opteron 146 2.0GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 2.2GHz | Pentium 4 2.4 'C' GHz Pentium 4 2.8GHz Pentium 4 3.2GHz Pentium 4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition |
| Front-side bus | 400MHz (200MHz DDR) | 333MHz (166MHz DDR) | HT 16-bit/800MHz downstream HT 16-bit/800MHz upstream | HT 16-bit/800MHz downstream HT 16-bit/800MHz upstream | 800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped) |
| Motherboard | Asus A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 | Asus A7N8X Deluxe v2.0 | MSI K8T Neo | MSI 9130 | Abit IC7-G |
| North bridge | nForce2 SPP | nForce2 SPP | K8T800 | K8T800 | 82875P MCH |
| South bridge | nForce2 MCP-T | nForce2 MCP-T | VT8237 | VT8237 | 82801ER ICH5R |
| Chipset drivers | nForce Unified 2.45 | nForce Unified 2.45 | 4-in-1 v.4.49 ATA 5.1.2600.10 Audio 5.10.0.5920 | 4-in-1 v.4.49 AGP 4.42 Audio 6.14.1.3870 | INF Update 5.0.1015 ATA 5.0.1007.0 Audio 5.10.0.5250 |
| BIOS revision | 1005 | 1005 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.6 |
| Memory size | 1GB (2 DIMMs) | 1GB (2 DIMMs) | 768MB (3 DIMMs) | 1GB (2 DIMMs) | 1GB (2 DIMMs) |
| Memory type | Corsair TwinX XMS4000 DDR SDRAM at 400MHz | Corsair TwinX XMS4000 DDR SDRAM at 333MHz | Corsair XMS3200 DDR SDRAM at 400MHz | Corsair CMX512RE-3200LL PC3200 registered DDR SDRAM at 400MHz | Corsair TwinX XMS4000 DDR SDRAM at 400MHz |
| Hard drive | Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100 | Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100 | Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150 | Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150 | Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150 |
| Audio | nForce2 MCP/ALC650 | nForce2 MCP/ALC650 | VT8237/ALC650 | VT8237/ALC201A | ICH5/ALC650 |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra | ||||
| OS | Microsoft Windows XP Professional | ||||
| OS updates | Service Pack 1, DirectX 9.0b | ||||
Sorry about the 768MB of RAM in the Athlon 64 3200+ and 3400+ system. I couldn't get it to boot with either pair of 512MB DDR400 DIMMs I had on hand, and its motherboard had only three DIMM slots, so 768MB was as close as we could come. I don't belive this difference in memory size should affect any of the benchmarks we used.
All tests on the Pentium 4 systems were run with Hyper-Threading enabled.
Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. If you're looking to tweak out your system to the max and maybe overclock it a little, Corsair's RAM is definitely worth considering.
The test systems' Windows desktops were set at 1152x864 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.
We used the following versions of our test applications:
- Cachemem 2.65MMX
- SiSoft Sandra MAX3! (2003.7.9.73)
- Compiled binary of C Linpack port from Ace's Hardware
- Discreet 3ds max 5.1 SP1
- NewTek Lightwave 7.5
- Cinebench 2003
- POV-Ray for Windows v3.5
- PICCOLOR v4.0 build 451
- SPECviewperf 7.1
- ScienceMark 2.0 beta (06SEP03-A build)
- Sphinx 3.3
- LAME 3.93.1 (build from mitiok.cjb.net)
- Xmpeg 5.0.1 with DivX Video 5.05
- Quake III Arena v1.31
All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.
