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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 939:

• Opteron 170 2.0 GHz 2x 1MB L2 cache processor
• Athlon 64 FX-60 2.6 GHz 2x 1 MB 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 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 System 1:

• 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

LGA 775 System 2:

• Pentium D 840 3.2 GHz 2x 1MB L2 cache processor
• Asus P5WD2 Premium motherboard
• Corsair XMS-PC8000 memory 
• Western Digital WD1200JD SATA hard drive
• 7800GTX 256 MB PCI-Express

LGA 775 System 3: Conroe

• Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (Conroe) 2.66GHZ 1066MHZ FSB 4MB L2
• Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ6 motherboard
• Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 4-4-4-12/2T
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT

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. 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!