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Hardware Used
Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system.
Mainboards
ABIT AA8XE
Processor
Pentium 4 560 - 3.6 GHz (Prescott)
Pentium 4 3.6 GHz (Prescott) @ 4 GHz
Graphics Cards
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT (PCX), 256 MB
Memory
1024 MB (2x512MB) DDR2 - OCZ PC2 5400 (DDR2) 4-4-4-8
Software
Windows XP Professional SP2
Intel Chipset Driver 6.3.0.1008
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime
ForceWare 71.84
RivaTuner 2.0 (tweak utility)
Splinter Cell (Guru3D custom timedemo)
3DMark05
AquaMark 3
Doom 3
PCMark 2004
SiSoft Sandra
LAME MP3 encoder
Tests
As stated we are a hardware site with an audience that is primarily targeted at gamers, therefore we will review CPU's and mainboards in a somewhat different way then other sites tend to do, mostly with gamer's benchmarks in various resolutions. Not because we like them so much, no because I know you want to see that. We could test how fast your spreadsheet's macro function is updated or if that mp3 was encoded 2 seconds faster but I know for a fact you don't care very much about that. We'll go in-depth the gamers way. We will also test games under normal settings and conditions.
Let me explain, the best way to produce benchmarks scores in a gaming environment for a CPU is to lower the screen resolution and measure at 16-bit. Why you ask? Well, the graphics card bottleneck is a key issue here. At a certain point your graphics card becomes the more important and dominating factor to influence overall performance. I believe that the CPU and graphics card are a symbiosis though. There's only one important rule I uphold strongly and that is to use a fast graphics cards and use that to produce results. Do you really care how CPU's rate at 640x480 @ 16 bit ? No, we don't either, therefore we are testing hardware the way you play it at home as well.
SiSoft Sandra was used to measure CPU and Memory Bandwidth, while MadOnion's PC Mark 2004 was also used to measure memory bandwidth and CPU performance. Furthermore, Doom 3, AquaMark 3 and a several OpenGL and Direct3D games were used to measure real-world multimedia performance.
