So how do we test? What to test against? Those two questions bore down on me as I wrote this review and tested the CPUs. One test I’ve always enjoyed using in the past was SpecViewPerf. There really aren’t a lot of tests for the latest version is 9 and it’s a good test for OpenGL workstation applications testing such things as 3DSMax and other professional workstation applications. 3Dmark06 is the latest iteration of the Futuremark benchmark, SuperPi is a good measurer of CPU performance.

The Intel test motherboard was a Intel 975XBX reference motherboard provided by Intel. It’s based upon Intel’s 975 chipset released last year. The video card is a 7900GT which is one of the more popular graphics cards on the market today and the hard disk drives are Western Digital Raptor SATA 74GB HDDs. I tested the system with both the X6800 and the E6700 CPUs.

The AMD platform was tested on a M2N32-SLI motherboard with the same hardware as the Intel side of things. That’s one nice thing about the move to the M2 platform, all the motherboards now take DDR2 memory and the two platforms can almost be compared directly. The two AM2 platform CPUs I tested with are the FX-62 (the fastest AMD CPU at the moment) and the 5000+.

Intel platform

Intel 975XBX reference board
Intel X6800 CPU
Intel E6700 CPU
2GB Corsair DDR2 8500 (1066MHz memory) CL4
2 74GB Western Digital Raptor SATA HDDs 10000 RPM
XFX 7900GT clocked at 520MHz/ 1.44GHz core/memory
DirectX 9.0C
Windows XP with SP2
Ultra X-Finity 600W PSU Black

AMD Platform

ASUS M2N32-SLI motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 5000+
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62
2GB Corsair DDR2 8500 (1066MHz memory) CL4
2 74GB Western Digital Raptor SATA HDDs 10000 RPM
XFX 7900GT clocked at 520MHz/ 1.44GHz core/memory
DirectX 9.0C
Windows XP with SP2
Ultra X-Finity 600W PSU Black

Test Software

SpecViewPerf 9.0
PCMark05
PCMark04 Memory
Sisoft Sandra 2005 Memory
Sysmark 2004
SuperPi
Aquamark 3
Doom 3 HQ 1024x768 no AA no AF
F.E.A.R. 1024x768 32-bit no AA no AF Max settings
3Dmark06
3Dmark05