The Core 2 Extreme X6800 and Core 2 Duo E6700 are positioned directly at the top of the Intel desktop performance line, and we've assembled a like-minded set of competitors. The AMD dual core contenders are out in full force, with a set of Athlon 64 FX-62 and Athlon 64 X2 5000+, 4800+ and 4600+ AM2 processors, as well as the Athlon 64 FX-60 939-pin model. The Intel side is comprised of the Pentium EE 955, Pentium D 960, and Pentium D 950 dual core processors. In addition to the Core 2 Extreme X6800 and Core 2 Duo E6700 performance results, we have also lowered the multiplier to give approximate Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4 GHz) scores.
Naturally, these high-end processors are matched with corresponding platforms and peripherals, while ensuring consistency with the overall reference system mix. The Core 2, Pentium EE and Pentium D models utilize an Intel 975X motherboard, which supports both 1066 MHz and 800 MHz LGA775 processors. The Athlon 64 FX-62, Athlon 64 X2 5000+, 4800+ and 4600+ models utilize an nForce 590 SLI motherboard, while the Socket 939 Athlon 64 FX-60 runs on an nForce4 Ultra motherboard. The base memory capacity is set at 1-GB, and both our Intel 975X and AMD AM2 platforms use DDR2-800 (at 4-4-4-12 timings), while the AMD 939-pin system features 2x512-MB of low latency PC3200 (2-2-2-5 at 400 MHz).
The default hard disk configuration is comprised of dual Maxtor MaxLine III 250GB NCQ-enabled SATA drives set for RAID 0, which provides top-end disk performance and ensures consistent benchmarking. The video component is high-end as well, and consists of an eVGA GeForce 7800 GTX KO 256MB PCI Express card, which guarantees high-end performance and scalability for our test systems. The operating system is Windows XP Pro SP2, along with DirectX 9.0c (February 2006) installed.
The benchmark list includes a wide range of system, CPU, memory, and gaming tests. These include PCMark05, SiSoft SANDRA 2007, Everest Ultimate 2006, and CINEBENCH 9.5, 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 F.E.A.R., Quake 4, Half-Life 2, DOOM 3, Chronicles of Riddick, 3DMark06, FarCry, Halo, 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.
