Intel Core 2 Duo & Core 2 Extreme Processors, Chipsets And Performance Analysis
WB5: 3ds Max and Nero Burning ROM
We continued our testing of the new Core 2 Duo E6700 and Core 2 Extreme X6800 processors and chipsets with a few more tests that are part of the WorldBench 5.0 suite. Up next we have some performance results from WB 5.0's 3Ds Max (Direct 3D) and Nero Burning ROM tests.
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A number of different 3D objects are rendered and animated in this test, and the entire time needed to complete the tasks is recorded. As is the case with all of the individual WorldBench tests, a lower time here indicates better performance.
Once again, we see Intel's latest flagship processors trouncing their competition. The 975X Express and P965 chipsets performed similarly, with the nForce 4 SLIX16 coming in a few seconds faster, but all of the Core 2 based systems were faster than their nearest competitor by about 10% to 15%. We need to point out a special case here, however. The Athlon 64 FX-62 score was recorded with the processor installed on a reference ATI RD580 board, the 5000+ score was recorded using an nForce 590 SLI. We uncovered a glitch with the nForce 590 SLI that causes lower performance than expected in this test, so to put the FX-62's performance in a more accurate light, we used the RD580's score. We've been in contact with NVIDIA over this issue and suspect a future driver update will bring the nForce 590 SLI's performance up to match other AM2 compatible chipsets.
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Here's one for the record books folks. The Core 2 Duo E6700 and Core 2 Extreme X6800 powered systems simply dominated the competition in WorldBench 5.0's Nero Burning ROM benchmark. We suspect the Core 2's dominant performance can be attributed to the new processor's Smart Cache and Smart Memory Access technologies. The E6700's and X6800's 4MB of Smart Cache and Smart Memory Access features lower the number of instances where the CPU must access main memory, which increases performance. If we run this same test with 2GB of RAM installed in a XE965 or Athlon system instead of 1GB like we did here, their scores drop significantly.
