Test notes
WeÂ’ve added Lightwave 8.3 and Sysmark 2004 SE to encompass a wider variety of rendering platforms and overall system performance tests. Any suggestions or comments you have regarding these tests, specific scenes, or suggestions on multi-threaded testing in general are welcome.

Our testing methods
As always, weÂ’ve done our best to deliver clean benchmark results; all tests save for Sysmark 2004 SE and 3dsMax 7 were run at least three times, and the results were averaged. Sysmark and 3ds Max were each run three times, but both benchmarks pick the fastest run time of the three, rather than the average.

Our Pentium Extreme Edition 840 picCOLOR results weren't run on my own test platform, due to a hardware failure. Scott ran those tests himself on his own 955XBK board, using a Maxtor DiamondMax 10 and Crucial Ballistix DDR2 PC6400 512MB x4. The memory was set for 533 MHz and the same latencies as shown in our table. The results should be nearly identical, and Pentium Extreme Edition 840's performance in that benchmark did not deviate significantly from expected results. Nevertheless, be aware that we had to substitute a different configuration in that test.

Processor Pentium Extreme Edition 840 3.2GHz Single Xeon 3.6GHz (Nocona 1MB)
Dual Xeon 3.6GHz (Nocona 1MB)		 Single Opteron 275
Dual Opteron 275
Single Opteron 254
Dual Opteron 254
System bus800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped)800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped)1GHz HyperTransport
MotherboardIntel D955XBKASUS NCT-D Tyan Thunder K8WE S2895
BIOS revisionBK95510J.86A.19591007 1.01T
North bridge955X MCHE7525nForce4 SLI
South bridgeICH7R6300ESB
Chipset drivers INF Update 7.2.1.1003 INF Update 7.2.1.1003SMBus driver 4.48
IDE driver 5.34
Memory size 2GB (4 DIMMs)2 GB (4 DIMMs)2 GB (4 DIMMs)
Memory type Corsair XMS2 PC4300C3Pro 512MB DDR2 SDRAM  at 533MHzInfineon 512MB Registered ECC DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz Kingston 512MB Registered ECC DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
CAS latency (CL)333
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD)333
RAS precharge (tRP)333
Cycle time (tRAS) 898
Hard DriveSeagate 7200.7 ST3120026AS
AudioIntegrated ICH7R/STAC9221D5
with SigmaTel 5.10.4456.0 drivers		Soundmax ADI 1980Integrated nForce4/ALC850
with Realtek 5.10.0.5820 drivers
Graphics GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB PCI-E with ForceWare 78.01 drivers
OS Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
OS updates-

All Xeon and Extreme Edition benchmarks were run with Hyper-Threading enabled

Power was provided by an Enhance ENS-0555 PSU (550W).

Tests were run in 1280x1024 (32-bit color) at an 85 Hz refresh rate. Vsync was disabled in all tests.

We used the following versions of our test applications:

The tests and methods we employ are generally publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.