Testbed and Methods

Since the goal of our test session is to compare the performance of systems based around different CPUs, we decided to turn this test session into a comparison of different integrated platforms. In other words, we will compare not just integrated chipsets performance, but the performance of complete systems that can be built around the given chipsets.

For our testing we chose AMD and Intel processors comparable from price and heat dissipation standpoint. Of course, the integrated platforms built with the newest processor models are of the greatest interest to us in this context. Therefore, for our LGA775 platforms we will use Intel Core 2 Duo E6300, the youngest processor on Core micro-architecture that is officially selling for $183. A competitor within Socket AM2 systems will be AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ officially selling for $187. In our test session we decided to use an Energy Efficient modification of this CPU, because it is competitive with Core 2 Duo not only from price standpoint, but also in terms of the power consumption and heat dissipation level.

So, we used the following hardware to assemble our testbeds:

• CPUs:
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Energy Efficient (Socket AM2, 2.2GHz, 2x512KB L2);
• Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (LGA775, 1.86GHz, 1067MHz FSB, 2MB L2).
• Mainboards:
• ASUS M2N-MX (Socket AM2, GeForce 6100+nForce 430);
• ASUS M2NPV-VM (Socket AM2, GeForce 6150+nForce 430);
• ASUS P5B-VM (LGA775, Intel G965);
• ASUS P5LD2-VM Rev. 2.00 (LGA775, Intel 945G).
• Memory: 2048MB DDR2-800 SDRAM (Mushkin XP2-6400PRO, 2 x 1024 MB, DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12).
• HDD: Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB (SATA150).
• OS: Microsoft Windows XP SP2 with DirectX 9.0c.

We ran the tests with the mainboard BIOS settings adjusted for maximum performance. The video memory capacity was set to 256(224)MB on all mainboards. Moreover, since Intel 945G chipset doesn’t support DDR2-800 SDRAM, the memory on ASUS P5LD2-VM worked as DDR2-667 with 3-3-3-10 timings.