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 Hardware Used

Now we begin the benchmark portion of this article, but first let me show you our test system. Basically what we'll be showing you today are the differences between an Athlon 64 4000+ CPU based system versus this one.

I'm doing this deliberately because I've been yelling my lungs out in many of the tests that the games are CPU limited. By using the fastest single-core processor to date we definifely should be able to monitor better results. To make sure that the graphics card is not a bottleneck we'll be using the all new GeForce 7800 GT graphics cards and equip the system with one gigabyte of today's fastest memory available.

I'll show you a little shock and awe.

Mainboards

Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-SLI motherboard, nForce4 SLI, Socket 939
Albatron K8SLI motherboard, nForce4 SLI, Socket 939
Albatron PX915PE Pro 2, Intel 915, Socket 775

Processor

Athlon64 4000+, Socket 939
Athlon64 FX-57, Socket 939
Pentium 4 560 (3600 MHz)

Graphics Cards

NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GT (PCX), 256 MB

Memory

1024 MB (2x512MB) DDR400 - PC-3200 2.5-3-3-7

Software

Windows XP Professional SP2
Intel Chipset Driver 6.3.0.1008
DirectX 9.0c End User Runtime
ForceWare 71.84
RivaTuner 2.0 (tweak utility)

Halo:Combat Evolved

As stated we are a hardware site with an audience that is primarily gamers, therefore we will review CPU's in a somewhat different way then other sites tend to do, mostly with gamers benchmarks in various resolutions. Not because we like them so much, no because I know you want to see that. We'll go in-depth the gamers way. We will also test games under normal settings and conditions.

Let me explain, the best way to produce benchmarks scores in a gaming environment for a CPU is to lower the screen resolution and measure at 16-bit. Why you ask? Well, the graphics card bottleneck is a key issue here. At a certain point your graphics card becomes the more important and dominating factor to influence overall performance. I believe that the CPU and graphics card are a symbiosis though. There's only one important rule I uphold strongly and that is to use one of the fastest graphics cards available to date and use that to produce results. Do you care how CPU's rate at 640x480 @ 16 bit? No, we don't either, therefore we are testing hardware the way you play it at home as well.