Intel Core 2 Duo & Core 2 Extreme Processors, Chipsets And Performance Analysis
Futuremark PCMark05: CPU and Memory
For our next round of synthetic benchmarks, we ran the CPU and Memory performance modules built into Futuremark's PCMark05 suite.
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"The CPU test suite is a collection of tests that are run to isolate the performance of the CPU. The CPU Test Suite also includes multithreading: two of the test scenarios are run multithreaded; the other including two simultaneous tests and the other running four tests simultaneously. The remaining six tests are run single threaded. Operations include, File Compression/Decompression, Encryption/Decryption, Image Decompression, and Audio Compression" - Courtesy FutureMark Corp.
From this point forward, we'll be comparing Intel's new Core 2 Duo E6700 and Core 2 Extreme X6800 processors to a Pentium Extreme Edition 965, an Athlon 64 FX-62, and an Athlon 64 5000+. Also note that we've benchmarked the Core 2 Extreme X6800 on a trio of different chipsets, the 975X Express, the new P965, and the nForce 4 SLIX16. Our goals were to give you all an idea as to how Intel's new processors perform versus their main competition and on a variety of platforms.
As you can see, the chipset used has little bearing on performance in PCMark05's CPU benchmark when coupled to a Core 2 Extreme processor. Both Intel chipsets and the nForce 4 SLIX16 perform similarly. The Core 2 micro-architecture, however, gives Intel's new processors a marked edge over its competition, besting the Athlons and the XE965 by considerable margins.
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"The Memory test suite is a collection of tests that isolate the performance of the memory subsystem. The memory subsystem consists of various devices on the PC. This includes the main memory, the CPU internal cache (known as the L1 cache) and the external cache (known as the L2 cache). As it is difficult to find applications that only stress the memory, we explicitly developed a set of tests geared for this purpose. The tests are written in C++ and assembly. They include: Reading data blocks from memory, Writing data blocks to memory performing copy operations on data blocks, random access to data items and latency testing." - Courtesy FutureMark Corp.
PCMark05's memory performance module tells a similar story. Both the Core 2 Duo E6700 and Core 2 Extreme X6800 significantly outperform the Pentium Extreme Edition and both Athlons. The Core 2 processors' increased cache size, deeper buffers, and Smart Cache technology can be credited with the performance boost here, as the XE965 was tested using the same 975X Express chipset and Corsair DDR2 memory.
