Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 965: Not Just A Speed Bump

We continued our testing of the new Pentium Extreme Edition 965 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 needed to complete the tasks is recorded. As is the case with all of the individual Worldbench tests, a lower score here indicates better performance.

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

Worldbench 5.0's 3DStudioMax benchmark tells essentially the same story as the Photoshop 7.0 test on the previous page. In this benchmark, the new Pentium Extreme Edition 965 is the fastest of the Intel-built processors, but AMD's Athlon 64 X2 4800+ and FX-60 had clear 20 to 30 second advantages.

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.

The Windows Media Encoder benchmark tells a similar story as well. In this test, the Pentium Extreme Edition 965 finished the encoding process a full 20 seconds faster then the 955XE, but again the Athlons finished in the first and second positions. The Athlon 64 X2 4800+ finished about 14 seconds faster than the 965XE, and the FX-60 came in a full 30 seconds faster.


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

Related content