The Pentium Extreme Edition 955 represents the very highest-end of the Intel processors, and along with its dual core architecture, the presence of Hyper-Threading adds another wrinkle. Due to the prevalence of dual core in the current environment, and the very real possibility of never seeing another high-end single core model, we're highlighting only Pentium EE, Pentium D and Athlon 64 X2 dual core processors in the performance section. To go up against the Pentium EE 955, we have assembled every dual core desktop processor on the market, including the Pentium Extreme Edition 840 and the Pentium D 840 (3.2 GHz), 830 (3.0 GHz) and 820 (2.8 GHz) models, and the full range of Athlon 64 X2 4800+, 4600+, 4400+, 4200+, and 3800+ AMD processors. This gives us a complete view of the dual core processor market, and illustrates exactly how the new Pentium Extreme Edition 955 ranks in the current performance structure.
We have matched these processors with corresponding platforms and peripherals, while ensuring consistency with the overall reference system mix. The Pentium EE 955 utilizes a new Intel 975X motherboard, while the Pentium D 840, 830 and 820, and Pentium EE 840, run on the Intel 955X platform and the Athlon 64 X2 models utilize an nForce4 Ultra motherboard. The base memory capacity is set at 1-GB, but due to the differing memory architectures, our Intel systems use 2x512-MB of OCZ PC6400 Platinum (set at 667), while the AMD configuration features 2x512-MB of Corsair XMS PC3200XLPRO.
The default hard disk configuration is comprised of dual Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB SATA drives set for RAID 0. The video component has been upgrade for this latest benchmark testing, and consists of a powerful eVGA GeForce 7800 GTX KO 256MB PCI Express card, which absolutely ensures high-end performance and scalability for our test systems. The operating system is Windows XP Pro SP2, along with DirectX 9.0c installed.
The benchmark list includes a wide range of system, CPU, memory, and gaming tests. These include the PCMark04, PCMark05, SiSoft SANDRA 2005, and CINEBENCH 2003, along with TMPGEnc Xpress 3.0 for MPEG-1 and 2, XMPEG for DivX 6.1, and Windows Media Encoder 9 for WMV encoding. We also utilize popular 3D game tests like Quake 4, Half-Life 2, DOOM 3, Chronicles of Riddick, 3DMark05, FarCry, Halo, AquaMark 3, Painkiller, Unreal Tournament 2004/2003, and Quake 3. Our default game benchmark setting is 1024x768x32 for older games, and 800x600x32 for newer releases, both of which are demanding enough for CPU comparisons but still realistic as actual game play resolutions.
* Please note that unless otherwise stated, such as the media encoding times, all performance graph results equate to the standard "higher is better" routine.
