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

Socket AM2:

• AMD Phenom 9600 (on MSI K9A2 CF)
• AMD Phenom 9900 (on Asus M3A32-MVP)
• AMD stock CPU cooler
• Noctua NH-U 12 cooler
• Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 4-4-4-12/2T
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT
• Corsair HX620W power supply

LGA 775: (please read the processor review to see which exact board it was tested on)

• Core 2 Quad Xeon X3210
• Core 2 Quad QX6700
• Asus P5W DH Deluxe motherboard
• Gigabyte GA-P35T-DQ6 motherboard
• Corsair PC2-8500 memory @ 4-4-4-12/2T
• XFX GeForce 7800 GT

 ASUS' M2N32-SLI motherboard is an excellent performer, and allows us to try very high FSB speeds.

Naturally, we also used a high-end 975X-based motherboard for our LGA775 benchmarking. In this case it was the ASUS P5B-E Premium -- 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
• World In Conflict

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. :-) 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 the effective memory speed. All DDR2 tests were run at 4-4-4-12 timings unless otherwise specified.