Test Setup

In order to keep the testing as fair as possible, we will use the following test platform:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 / E6400
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (Conroe) 2.66GHZ 1066MHZ FSB 4MB L2
• Intel Core 2 Quad QX6700 (Kentsfield) 2.66GHZ 1066MHZ FSB 8MB L2
• Intel 930 D 3.0GHz 65nm dual core
• Intel 840 D 3.2GHz 90nm dual core
• Intel 805 D 2.66GHz 90nm dual core
• AMD AM2 3800+ X2
• AMD AM2 4200+ X2 EE
• AMD AM2 5000+ X2
• AMD AM2 FX-62
• Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard
• Asus P5B-E (used for the E4300)
• Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6
• Asus M2N32-SLI
• Asus P5WD2-E Premium
• Intel BadAxe motherboard
• Corsair XMS2x2048 PC8888 @ 4-4-4-12/2T
• Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 4-4-4-12/2T
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT

For the Athlon 64 4200 X2::

• Athlon 64 4200+ EE X2 2x512KB L2 cache processor
• ASUS M2N32-SLI motherboard
• Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 4-4-4-12/1T
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT

Benchmarks

Software used during testing consisted of the following:

• Windows XP Professional
• NVIDIA ForceWare 84.21 drivers
• CPUZ Version 1.35
• CineBench 2003
• LAME MP3 Encoding
• PC Magazine Winstone 2004
• PC Magazine Multimedia Content Creation 2004
• POV-Ray 3.7
• RightMark Memory Analyzer
• SiSoft Sandra 2007
• TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding
• WinRAR
• Call of Duty
• Comanche 4
• Doom 3
• Far Cry
• Halo
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Unreal Tournament 2004

NOTE

The chart labels incorporate a lot of information about the test configuration. The first line shows the model of the processor. All processors are multi-core devices.

The second line shows the "FSB/HT clock rate" x "CPU multiplier"  and the effective DDR memory speed. Please note that all DDR2 tests were run at 4-4-4-12 timings where possible.

Ok, enough talking about the basics... let's get on with the testing!