Our testing methods
Please note that the two Pentium D 900-series processors in our test are actually a Pentium Extreme Edition 955 chip that's been set to the appropriate core and bus speeds and had Hyper-Threading disabled in order to simulate the actual products. Performance should be identical to the real McCoys.

As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. Tests were run at least three times, and the results were averaged.

Our test systems were configured like so:

Processor Pentium Extreme Edition 840 3.2GHz
Pentium D 930 3.0GHz
Pentium D 950 3.4GHz		 Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.73GHz
Pentium Extreme Edition 955 3.46GHz 		Pentium Extreme Edition 965 3.73GHz Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0GHz
Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2.4GHz
 Athlon 64 FX-57 2.8GHz
Athlon 64 FX-60 2.6GHz
Opteron 165 1.8GHz
Opteron 180 2.4GHz
System bus 800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped) 1066MHz (266MHz quad-pumped) 1066MHz (266MHz quad-pumped) 1GHz HyperTransport
Motherboard Intel D975XBX Intel D975XBX Intel D975XBX Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
Board revision BQBX4500151 BQBX54500151 BQBX55201124 1.01
BIOS revision BX97510J.86A.0354.
2005.1208.1112		 BX97510J.86A.0354.
2005.1208.1112		 BX97510J.86A.0669.
2006.0301.1046		 0806
North bridge 975X MCH 975X MCH 975X MCH nForce4 SLI X16
South bridge ICH7R ICH7R ICH7R nForce4 SLI
Chipset drivers INF Update 7.2.2.1006
Intel Matrix Storage Manager 5.5.0.1035		 INF Update 7.2.2.1006
Intel Matrix Storage Manager 5.5.0.1035		 INF Update 7.2.2.1006
Intel Matrix Storage Manager 5.5.0.1035		 SMBus driver 4.5
IDE/SATA driver 5.52
Memory size 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs) 2GB (2 DIMMs)
Memory type Crucial Ballistix PC2-8000
DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz		 Crucial Ballistix PC2-8000
DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz		 Crucial Ballistix PC2-8000
DDR2 SDRAM at 800MHz		 Crucial PC3200
DDR SDRAM at 400MHz
CAS latency (CL) 4 4 4 2.5
RAS to CAS delay (tRCD) 4 4 4 3
RAS precharge (tRP) 4 4 4 3
Cycle time (tRAS) 15 15 15 8
Hard drive Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250GB SATA 150
Audio Integrated ICH7R/STAC9221D5
with SigmaTel 5.10.4825.0 drivers		 Integrated ICH7R/STAC9221D5
with SigmaTel 5.10.4825.0 drivers		 Integrated ICH7R/STAC9221D5
with SigmaTel 5.10.4825.0 drivers		 Integrated nForce4/ALC850
with Realtek 5.10.0.5970 drivers
Graphics GeForce 7800 GTX 512 PCI-E with ForceWare 81.98 drivers
OS Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 (WorldBench only)

Thanks to Crucial for providing us with memory for our testing. Their products and support are both far and away superior to generic, no-name memory.

Also, all of our test systems were powered by OCZ PowerStream 520W power supply units. The PowerStream was one of our Editor's Choice winners in our latest PSU round-up.

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:

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.