Test System Setup

Below you will find a listing of the test systems which we used in this article for the various Intel and AMD processor platforms.

CONROE - Test System Setup

Processor(s): X6800 Extreme, E6700 and E6600 (Conroe 65nm - 4MB L2 cache)

Motherboard(s): Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 (Intel P965 Chipset)

Memory(s): Corsair CM2X1024 8500C5 2GB

Graphics Card(s): nVidia GeForce 7800GTX 256MB

Hard Disk(s): Seagate Barracuda 250GB SATA 7,200 RPM

Operating System Used: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

Drivers Used: DX9c, nVidia ForceWare 81.95 and Intel 7.3.3.1013

Older Intel - Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 3.46GHz (Presler 65nm - 2x2MB L2 Cache) and Intel Pentium 4 631 and 661 LGA-775 (Cedar Mill 65nm - 2MB L2 Cache)

Motherboard(s): Gigabyte 8N-SLI Royal (nForce4 SLI Intel Edition)

Memory(s): Kingston HyperX KHX5400D2K2/2G DDR2 2GB

Graphics Card(s): nVidia GeForce 7800GTX 256MB

Hard Disk(s): Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB ATA/133 7200 RPM

Operating System Used: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

Drivers Used: DX9c, Intel Chipset Driver 7.2.2.1006 and nVidia nForce4 SLI Intel Edition 7.15

AMD - Test System Setup

Processor(s): AMD Athlon FX-62 and 5000+

Motherboard(s): MSI K9N Diamond SLI (NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP chipset)

Memory(s): PC2-8000 Crucial Ballastix 1GB

Graphics Card(s): nVidia GeForce 7800GTX 256MB

Hard Disk(s): Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120GB ATA/133 7200 RPM

Operating System Used: Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2

Drivers Used: nVidia ForceWare 81.95, DX9c and nVidia nForce4 Standalone Kit 6.70

We used a range of different test systems since some of the testing was done in Taiwan during Computex and the other older processors were tested in our other labs. Although we managed to use similar type memory and hard drive and we were able to use the exact same graphics card and ForceWare driver which will help make things even more comparable.

We wanted to let you know the performance numbers you see here today should be a good indication of the performance you can expect once Intel release the processors. Even the Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 motherboard we used is finished and ready to ship and even includes full overclocking support in the latest BIOS which we tried. We didn't get a chance to run OC benchmarks but we'll cover that hopefully next week, if everything goes to plan.

You come here to see the benchmarks, so let's get started and see how Intel's upcoming range of Core 2 processors perform. Please note due to time constraints we won't comment on each individual benchmark, although on the last page we will discuss the numbers.