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

We continued our testing of the new Pentium Extreme Edition 955 processor with a few more tests that are part of the Worldbench 5.0 suite. Up next we have some performance results of WB 5.0's 3Ds Max (Direct 3D) test. A number of different 3D objects are rendered and animated in this test, and the entire time to needed to complete the tasks is recorded. As is the case with all of the individual Worldbench tests, a lower score here indicated better performance.

PC World's World Bench 5.0: 3ds Max
More Real-World Application Performance

AMD's Athlons once again show their mettle, and outpace the best Intel currently has to offer by significant margins. AMD's flagship singe-core processor, the FX-57, was the top dog here with a score of 220, followed closely behind by the dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4800+ which clocked in at 231 seconds. The 3.73GHz Pentium Extreme Edition finished in third, with the new 955XE right behind it at. The 955XE took 44 seconds longer to finish than the FX-57, and 33 second longer than the 4800+, differences of 20% and 14%, respectively.

Windows Media Encoder 9
Digital Video Encoding

For our next text, we moved onto a benchmark based on Windows Media Encoder 9.  PC WorldBench 5's Windows Media Encoding test reports encoding times in seconds, and like the tests above and on the previous page, lower times indicate better performance.

Windows Media Encode 9 is a multi-threaded application that benefits greatly by the additional processing horsepower offered by a second execution core. In this test, the new Pentium Extreme Edition 955 clearly outpaces the Athlon 64 FX-57, 840XE, and 3.73GHz XE by a margins of 23 seconds, 25 seconds, and 57 seconds. The dual-core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ though performed exceptionally well here, besting the 955XE by 34 seconds, or roughly 13%.


Marco Chiappetta

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

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