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 3000+ 2.0GHz
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 'C' 2.4GHz
Pentium 4 'C' 2.8GHz
Pentium 4 3.2GHz
Pentium 4 3.2GHz Extreme Edition
Front-side bus400MHz (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)
MotherboardAsus A7N8X Deluxe v2.0Asus A7N8X Deluxe v2.0MSI K8T NeoMSI 9130Abit IC7-G
North bridgenForce2 SPPnForce2 SPPK8T800K8T80082875P MCH
South bridgenForce2 MCP-TnForce2 MCP-TVT8237VT823782801ER ICH5R
Chipset driversnForce Unified 2.45nForce Unified 2.454-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
Memory size1GB (2 DIMMs)1GB (2 DIMMs)1GB (2 DIMMs)1GB (2 DIMMs)1GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory typeCorsair TwinX XMS4000 DDR SDRAM at 400MHzCorsair TwinX XMS4000 DDR SDRAM at 333MHzCorsair TwinX XMS4000 DDR SDRAM at 400MHzCorsair CMX512RE-3200LL PC3200 registered DDR SDRAM at 400MHzCorsair TwinX XMS4000 DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
Hard driveSeagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150
AudionForce2 MCP/ALC650nForce2 MCP/ALC650VT8237/ALC650VT8237/ALC201AICH5/ALC650
GraphicsNVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 Ultra
OSMicrosoft Windows XP Professional
OS updatesService Pack 1, DirectX 9.0b

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:

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.