Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 & 975X Express Chipset: 65nm is Here

Name: Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 & 975X Express Chipset: 65nm is Here - Page 12
Brand: Intel

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, December 27, 2005, 10:00 AM EDT

We took a different approach for this next batch of in-game benchmarks. In a recent poll of our readers, we found that 1280x1024 is the most popular resolution that our readers use to play their games. So, for this next set of tests we configured Half Life 2 and Quake 4 to run at that resolution with anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled, and re-ran our benchmarks.

Benchmarks with Half Life 2: Mainstream Settings

DirectX 9 Gaming Performance

Although the framerates are lower, this Half Life 2 benchmark tells basically the same story as the one on the previous page. The Athlon 64 FX-57 was clearly the fastest CPU we tested, followed by the Athlon 64 X2 4800+, and then the Pentium Extreme Edition 955. The 840XE and 3.73GHz XE finished behind the 955.

Benchmarks with Quake 4: Mainstream settings

OpenGL Gaming Performance

When we re-ran our custom Quake 4 benchmark at a higher resolution with anti-aliasing enabled, the test systems were clearly limited by the 256MB GeForce 7800 GTXs we used. The Intel powered systems all posted the same framerate, as did the AMD powered systems. What may be surprising is that this time around, the Intel based systems were technically the "fastest", although only .6 FPS separated them from the AMD based systems. In GPU-bound circumstances, the type of CPU used in the system has a minimal impact on performance in most circumstances.

Tags: Intel, 65nm, Chipset, Pre, Chip, XP, chips, Xtreme, extreme, 975, edition, ium, Extreme Edition, Pentium, IPS, pen, express, XT, here, eme, IP

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com