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Benchmark Setup

Our benchmark system (and competitors) consisted of the following:

• Intel Pentium D 840
• Intel Pentium D 930 processors
• Intel Pentium D 560
• 2*512 MB Corsair XMS2 PC8000
• 2*512 MB Corsair XMS2 PC8500
• 2*512 MB OCZ PC2 5400 4-4-4-12 modules
• Asus P5WD2 Premium
• Asus P5WD2-E
• Asus P5ND2 SLI
• Western Digital WD1200JD SATA hard drive
• BFG 7800GTX with 81.98 drivers memory for some tests.

We used Sandra and RightMark for our memory benchmarks - both give useful results in measuring memory performance.

Benchmarks

We used four different programs to test the influence of the memory bandwidth on different programs.

• WinRAR
• Sandra 2004
• RightMark
• Doom3

The 840 and 560 results are not comparable here as the 560 used our older benchmark setup (6600GT with 66.93 drivers) whereas the 840 uses our newer setup (7800GTX with 81.97 drivers); however the effects of FSB and memory speed with the same processor are still evident.

Overclocking

In order to get a good idea of the performance differences between stock and tweaked memory and processor settings, we are putting our test rig through quite a few tests!

Please note: in order to make our test results easy to read, we labeled the bars on the chart with the processor and memory settings - for example:

560 800 18x200
PC5400 800 4-4-4-7

Means 560 cpu, 800MHz CPU FSB, 18x200 processor setting,
PC5400 memory, 800MHz memory bus, 4-4-4-7 memory timing.

All memory timings at 2T.