Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 965: Not Just A Speed Bump
Cinebench & 3DMark05: CPU Test
The Cinebench 2003 benchmark is an OpenGL 3D rendering performance test, based on the commercially available Cinema 4D application. This is a multi-threaded, multi-processor aware benchmark that renders a single 3D scene and tracks the length of the entire process. The time it took each test system to render the entire scene is represented in the graph below (listed in seconds).
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The Pentium Extreme Edition 965's performance in the single- and multi-thread Cinebench tests are a mixed bag. In single thread mode, the 965XE was the fasted Intel-built processor, but both of the dual-core Athlons we tested posted better scores. However, in the multi-threaded test, where the 965XE is recognized as four virtual processors, it was able to pull ahead of the Athlon 64 X2 4800+ and flagship FX-60.
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3DMark05's built-in CPU test is a multi-threaded "gaming related" DirectX metric that's useful for comparing relative performance between similarly equipped systems. This test consists of two different 3D scenes that are generated with a software renderer, which is dependant on the host CPU's performance. This means that the calculations normally reserved for your 3D accelerator are instead sent to the central processor. The number of frames generated per second in each test are used to determine the final score.
The CPU performance module built-into Futuremark's 3DMark05 puts the new Pentium Extreme Edition 965 at the head of the pack. The 965XE finished with scores 487 and 565 points higher than the FX-60 and 4800+, respectively. We'll see if 3DMark05's pseudo-synthetic game tests translate to increased performance in actual games on the proceeding pages, though.
