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AMD suggests that reviewers compare the AM2 5000+ and AM2 FX-62 to Intel's highest-end 65nm Pentium 4 processor, the 965 Extreme Edition, which runs at 3.73GHz on a 1066MHz FSB with two 2 MB L2 caches.

Unfortunately, we do not have a 965 EE (which is actually quite a rare chip at retailers), so we decided to overclock our D 930, and managed to make it run at much higher speeds than a 965 EE - namely, 4.2 GHz with a 1120MHz FSB. Using Intel's naming conventions, this would correspond roughly to a 995 EE (that does not exist) so we are making an even tougher comparison than AMD suggests.
We also take the 5000+ and underclock it to a 3800+ equivalent to compare directly against our X2 3800+ 939 chip. And of course, we overclock the AM2 5000+ a healthy amount and include numbers for that.

In order to keep the testing as fair as possible, we will use the following test platforms:

Socket 939:

• Athlon 64 FX-60 2.6 GHz 2x 1 MB L2 cache processor
• Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0 GHz 2x 512 KB L2 cache processor
• ASUS A8N32-SLI motherboard
• OCZ PC4000 Gold Edition VX memory @ 2.5-3-3-8/1T
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT

Socket AM2:

• Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6 GHz 2x 512 KB L2 cache processor
• Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0 GHz 2x 512 KB L2 cache processor (underclocked 5000+)
• ASUS M2N32-SLI motherboard
• Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 4-4-4-12/1T
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT

LGA 775:

• Pentium D 930 3.0 GHz 2x 2 MB L2 cache processor
• ASUS P5WD2-Extreme motherboard
• Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 4-4-4-12/2T
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT

ASUS' new M2N32-SLI motherboard is a clearly closely-related to the A8N32-SLI motherboard, and we are lucky enough to have one of these in our lab, allowing us to draw a comprehensive comparison between the 939 and AM2 platforms. Unfortunately the Socket 939 system has an unfair advantage due to having twice the L2 cache of the AM2 counterpart, however it is the closest comparison we can do at this time. To alleviate this conundrum, we've also pitted the AM2 running at a 2.0 GHz clock speed in order to compare "cleanly" against a stock X2 3800+ on Socket 939.

Naturally, we also used a high-end 975X-based motherboard for our LGA775 benchmarking. In this case it was the ASUS P5WD2-E -- a favourite of ours here.

Software used during testing consisted of the following:

• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
• NVIDIA ForceWare 84.21 drivers
• CineBench 2003
• LAME MP3 Encoding
• PC Magazine Business Winstone 2004
• PC Magazine Multimedia Content Creation 2004
• POV-Ray 3.7 beta 13
• RightMark Memory Analyzer
• SiSoft Sandra
• TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding
• WinRAR
• Call of Duty
• Comanche 4
• Doom 3
• Far Cry
• Halo
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Unreal Tournament 2004

Please note that we are showing overclocked results in all the charts - we are not holding you in suspense until the end of the article. :-) We are also presenting you with a FULL set of overclocked benchmarks - our test sytems were all stable at the settings shown with air cooling. Please note that chart labels incorporate a lot of information about the test configuration. The first line shows the socket type and the model of the processor. Since all the processors shown are dual-core devices, we did not specify that on the charts.

The second line shows the "FSB/HT clock rate" x "CPU multiplier" followed by 1T or 2T (memory command rate), and the effective DDR memory speed. Please note that all DDR2 tests were run at 4-4-4-12 timings, and all DDR tests were run at 2.5-3-3-8 (with the exception of the overclocked D 930, which was run at 5-5-5-15/2T).