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Intel Brings 64-bit Processing to the Pentium 4

REVIEW DATE: 18-FEB-2005
By Loyd Case
We first performed an extensive set of benchmarks using good old 32-bit Windows XP Professional. Here's how the two testbeds were configured:

Component:Athlon 64 systemPentium 4 systems
Processor:Athlon 64 FX-55 at 2.6GHz, Athlon 64 4000 at 2.4GHz, Athlon 64 3800 at 2.4GHzPentium 4 model 560, Pentium 4 model 570J, P4EE 3.46GHz, Pentium 4 model 660, P4EE at 3.73GHz
Motherboard and chipset:ASUS A8V-E Deluxe, Via K8T890Intel D925XECV2
Memory:2 x 512MB Corsair DDR400 at CAS 2-2-2-52 x 512MB Corsair Twin2X 5300C4Pro DDR2/533 at CAS3-3-3-8
Graphics:nVidia GeForce 6800GT PCI Express (66.93 drivers)nVidia GeForce 6800GT PCIe (66.93 Drivers)
Hard drive:Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB, 7200RPM SATASeagate 7200.7 160GB SATA Drive with support for Native Command Queuing
Optical drive:ATAPI DVD-ROMATAPI DVD-ROM
Audio:Sound Blaster Audigy 2Sound Blaster Audigy 2
Operating system:Windows XP Professional with SP2Windows XP Professional with SP2

The Athlon 64 system was set up with dual channel DDR400 memory running at low latencies (CAS 2-2-2-5). The DDR2/533 memory on the P4 systems can now run at relatively low latencies for DDR2: CAS 3-3-3-8, using the Corsair XMS2 Pro modules. Note that both Pentium 4 Extreme Edition CPUs run with a 1066MHz effective front-side bus (266MHz actual clock), while the rest of the P4's run with an 800MHz effective FSB (200MHz clock).

The hard drives were defragged prior to each major benchmark run. Also, we used the rundll32.exe advapi32.dll, ProcessIdleTasks command to execute and shut down tasks that would normally run during idle cycles.

We ran an extended suite of 32-bit benchmarks:

  • SYSmark 2004, patch 2, a general applications benchmark suite from BAPCO.
  • Content creation, including 3D Studio Max R6, POV-Ray 3.6, After Effects 6.0, Windows Media Encoder 9, DivX 5.2.1 and LightWave 7.5.
  • Synthetic benchmarks: 3DMark05, version 120 and PCMark04, version 130 and SPEC Viewperf 8.01.
  • Game benchmarks: Doom 3, Painkiller, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004, and Unreal Tournament 2004.
  • Multitasking tests, including results from PCMark04, simultaneously running an Adobe Photoshop Elements script and Norton Antivirus and also a test where we ran Flight Simulator 2004 and a Windows Media Encode simultaneously.
64-bit Test Setup
We used the latest evaluation build (build 1289) of the beta version of Windows XP Professional 64-bit Edition. We also used the available 64-bit drivers, including nVidia's 66.96 driver set and Creative's 64-bit Audigy 2 drivers, as well as 64-bit motherboard and networking drivers.

We ran the benchmark portion of the 64-bit version of POV-Ray 3.6, a freeware 3D rendering application. We tried to get other 64-bit Windows applications, but most weren't ready for prime time. We also ran a few 32-bit benchmarks just to see how much of a performance hit 32-bit apps might take running on the 64-bit version of Windows. These included 3DMark05, PCMark04, and Windows Media Encoder. Continued...

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Prescott Gets Beefier		 Continue to:
SYSmark 2004 Results

 


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