Motherboard: GIGABYTE X38T-DQ6 (Supplied by GIGABYTE) Memory: 2x 1GB DDR3-1800 Dominator(Supplied by Corsair) Hard Disk: 500GB Seagate 7200.9 (Supplied by Seagate Australia) Graphics Card: MSI GeForce 8800GTS 640MB (Supplied by MSI) Cooling: Intel Stock Cooler Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP SP2 Drivers: Intel INF 8.3.1.1009, Forceware 163.21
Today we are using a board we haven’t reviewed yet, GIGABYTE’s X38T-DQ6 which supports DDR3 and the new 45nm CPU. We aren’t going for any overclocking tests at the moment as this is just a CPU review. Overclocking will come in a separate article. We have three Intel CPUs on show as well as one AMD CPU for comparison.
Today we have the QX9650 running at 3.0GHz on the 1333MHz FSB. Next on the list is a QX6850 running 3GHz using the same 1333MHz FSB. Lastly for the Intel lineup we have a Core 2 Quad clocked at 2.93GHz on the 1066MHz FSB. AMD wise, we have a dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ running at 3GHz, so all of the CPUs run at the same core frequency of 3GHz.
SiSoft Sandra (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a synthetic Windows benchmark that features different tests used to evaluate different PC subsystems.
Our first series of tests puts the QX9650 ahead of the rest of the CPUs by quite a bit. This is largely because it doesn’t need to access the memory as much thanks to its larger L2 cache and new architectural improvements. One area it can’t beat the AMD on is the memory performance, AMDs on die memory controller keeps it king here despite using 800MHz DDR2 vs. 1333MHz DDR3; AMD still has memory dominance.
