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Software used during testing consisted of the following:

• Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2
• NVIDIA ForceWare 84.21 drivers
• CPUZ Version 1.35
• CineBench 2003
• LAME MP3 Encoding
• PC Magazine Winstone 2004
• PC Magazine Multimedia Content Creation 2004
• POV-Ray 3.7 beta 13
• RightMark Memory Analyzer
• SiSoft Sandra 2004
• TMPGEnc MPEG2 Encoding
• WinRAR
• Call of Duty
• Comanche 4
• Doom 3
• Far Cry
• Halo
• Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
• Unreal Tournament 2004

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

Socket AM2 Athlon 64 System

• Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6 GHz 2x 512 KB L2 cache processor
• Athlon 64 AM2 X2 3800+ 2.0GHz 2x 512 KB L2 cache processor (5000+ with lowered multiplier)
• Athlon FX-62 2.8 GHz 2x 1MB L2 cache processor
• ASUS M2N32-SLI motherboard
• Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 4-4-4-12/1T
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT

LGA 775 Conroe System

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (Conroe) 2.66GHZ 1066MHZ FSB 4MB L2
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 (Conroe) 2.13GHZ 1066MHZ FSB 2MB L2
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (Conroe) 1.86GHZ 1066MHZ FSB 2MB L2 (E6400 with multiplier set to E6300 speeds)
• Asus P5B Deluxe WiFi
• Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 motherboard
• Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 4-4-4-12/2T
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT

As is our custom for a while now, we discuss our overclocking adventures at the end of the article, but all of the benchmark results in the following pages will include overclocked results - we are not holding you in suspense until the end of the article. :-)  We include this FULL set of overclocked benchmarks to show you what gains you might get if you also achieved similar overclocks - our test sytems were all stable at the settings shown with air cooling. The 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 except for the overclocked Opteron which ran at 2.5-4-4-8-1T and the overclocked D 930, which was run at 5-5-5-15/2T.

Ok, enough talking about the basics... let's get on with the testing!

A note about our charts: Please note that to help you digest the chart information we use a different colour to mark the labels and the bars/lines so that the products will stand out and be easier to identify.  Just look for the dark red text and darker coloured bars.