Intel V8 Media Creation Platform - Dual Sockets - Dual Xeons


Test Systems and SANDRA XI SP3

How we configured our test systems: When configuring our test systems for this article, we first entered their respective system BIOSes and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High performance Defaults".  The hard drives were then formatted, and Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit Edition was installed. When the Windows Vista installation was complete, we installed the drivers necessary for our components, performed a disc clean-up, disabled UAC, and set up a 2048MB permanent page file on the same partition as the Windows installation. Lastly, we enabled Vista's AERO interface, installed all of our benchmarking software, defragged the hard drives, and ran all of the tests.

HotHardware's Test Systems
AMD & Intel Inside!

System 1:
Intel Xeon X5365 x 2
(3.0GHz - Quad Core)

Intel S5000XVN
(Intel Chipset 5000X)

4 x 1GB Samsung FB-DIMM
DDR2-667

GeForce 8800 GTX
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio

WD150 "Raptor" HD
10,000 RPM SATA

Windows Vista Ultimate x64
Intel Inf Drivers v8.3.0.1013
NVIDIA Forceware v158.24
DirectX 9.0c June 2007

System 2:
Intel C2E QX6800 x 2
(2.93GHz - Quad Core)

Intel D975XBX2
(Intel 975X Express)

4 x 1GB Corsair PC2-6400
DDR2-800

GeForce 8800 GTX
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio

WD150 "Raptor" HD
10,000 RPM SATA

Windows Vista Ultimate x64
Intel Inf Drivers v8.3.0.1013
NVIDIA Forceware v158.24
DirectX 9.0c June 2007

System 3:
AMD Athlon 64 FX-74 x 2

(3.0GHz - Dual Core)

Asus L1N64-SLI WS
(NVIDIA nForce 680a SLI)

4 x 1GB Corsair PC2-6400
DDR2-800

GeForce 8800 GTX
On-Board Ethernet
On-board Audio

WD150 "Raptor" HD
10,000 RPM SATA

Windows Vista Ultimate x64
NVIDIA nForce Drivers v9.53
NVIDIA Forceware v158.24
DirectX 9.0c June 2007

 

Preliminary Testing with SiSoft SANDRA XI SP3
Synthetic Benchmarks

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA XI, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran six of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA XI suite with the Athlon 64 X2 6000+ ( CPU, Multimedia, Multi-Core Efficiency, Memory, Cache, and Memory Latency) . All of the scores reported below were taken with the processors running at their default clock speeds of 3.0GHz.

  

 
Xeon X5365 x 2 @ 3.0GHz
CPU Arithmetic


 
Xeon X5365 x 2
@ 3.0GHz
MultiMedia

 
Xeon X5365 x 2
@ 3.0GHz
Multi-Core Efficiency



 
Xeon X5365 x 2
 @ 3.0GHz
Memory Bandwidth


 
Xeon X5365 x 2
 @ 3.0GHz
Cache and Memory

 
Xeon X5365 x 2
 @ 3.0GHz
Memory Latency

The SiSoft SANDRA results presented above are a mix of good and bad. The processor arithmetic tests that can reside completely in L2 cache allow the 8-cores to run flat out, which results in some extremely high performance in those tests - nothing in SANDRA's database can touch the V8 here.  Inter-Core and Cache bandwidth are also very high with this platform, but it does falter in regard to raw memory bandwidth and latency. The V8 rig barely broke the 6GB/s mark in the bandwidth test and its access latency was the highest of the bunch.


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