The Test

We've described all of our tests and what they do in previous articles; click back over to any of them if you want more detail on what's going on with each one of the tests.

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (2.0GHz/512KBx2)
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (1.8GHz/512KB)
AMD Opteron 165 (1.8GHz/1MBx2)
AMD Opteron 144 (1.8GHz/1MB)
Intel Pentium D 920 (2.8GHz/2MBx2)
Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz/1MBx2)
Intel Pentium D 805 (2.66GHz/1MBx2)
Intel Pentium 4 631 (3.0GHz/2MB)
Intel Celeron D 351 (3.2GHz/256KB)
Motherboard: ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe
ASUS P5LD2 Deluxe
Chipset: NVIDIA nForce4 SLI
Intel 945P
Chipset Drivers: nForce4 6.70
Intel 7.2.2.1006
Hard Disk: Seagate 7200.9 300GB SATA
Memory: OCZ PC3500 DDR 2-2-2-7
DDR2-667 4-4-4-15
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTX
Video Drivers: NVIDIA ForceWare 84.21
Desktop Resolution: 1280 x 1024 - 32-bit @ 60Hz
OS: Windows XP Professional SP2
The Contenders Overall Performance using Winstone 2004
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  • Nick5324 - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link

    Agree, good stuff! I'm looking forward to the overclocking write up.
  • whitelight - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link

    i liked how you included a large variety of cpu's. thanks!
  • lifeblood - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link

    Having read all the reviews of EE this and XF that, I was starting to think my poor little +3000 was ready for the garbage heap. After reading this article I was very happy to see my +3000 still does quite well in office productivity and games which is it's primary use. I guess I will keep it around another year before upgrading to an X2.
  • PrinceGaz - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link

    Superb article Anand, this is the kind of article I like; a test that includes all of the likely alternative chips that might be considered and where something useful is said under each graph instead of just presenting page after page of graphs with no comments. Okay so I look at the graphs first and make my own mind up, but it's always good to see what someone else thinks in each test to see if I missed something important. I look forward to more articles like this; hopefully the Pentium D 805 overclocking article will also look at overclocking the other chips, not just the 805.

    The one error I refer to is that although the Celeron D processor is correctly identified as having 256KB L2 cache in pages 2 and 3 of the article, on all of the graphs (page 4 onwards) it says 512KB. Shouldn't take long to fix.
  • Dfere - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link

    I liked the article- not for the graphs. I rad the beginning, some of the set up and the conclusions, and the comments. I am not a tech head! I agree it is nice to get a broad based analysis/market comparison, especially on the "value" segment orbusiness stuff. (CPA here).
  • JarredWalton - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link

    Fixed, thanks! (Not as easy to correct as you might suspect... graphs require a bit more effort, but at least it was only one change per graph.)
  • YellowWing - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link

    No mention of 64 bit support in the 805, is 64 bit possible?
  • Viditor - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link

    quote:

    No mention of 64 bit support in the 805, is 64 bit possible?

    Yes...
    FSB = 533 MHz
    Cache = 2x1MB
    Clockspeed = 2.66 GHz
    Virtualization = No
    Enhanced Speed Step = No
    EM64T = Yes

  • YellowWing - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link

    Thanks
  • JackPack - Friday, April 7, 2006 - link

    Yes, of course.

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