Velocity Micro Edge Z55 Intel Core i7 Gaming System

Name: Velocity Micro Edge Z55 Intel Core i7 Gaming System - Page 5
Brand: Velocity

by Sarah Miller — Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 08:36 AM EDT

Test Setup & SiSoft SANDRA

Page 5: Test Setup & SiSoft SANDRA

We tested the Edge Z55 Intel Core i7 Gaming system exactly as it came configured from Velocity Micro.

HotHardware's Test Systems

Performance Comparisons

System 1:

Velocity Micro Edge Z55 Intel Core i7 Gaming System

Intel Core i7 920 (over clocked to 2.93GHz)

Intel "Smackover" DX58SO, X58 Chipset

6GB Corsair DDR3-1333 Triple Channel Memory with Heat Spreader (3x2048)

2 x 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4850 GDDR3 in CrossFire

750GB Hitachi 7200rpm 32MB Cache SATA 300 w/NCQ

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

System 2:

Dell XPS 730 H2C

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770

(3.2GHz @ 3.8GHz - Quad-Core, 1600MHz FSB)

Nvidia nForce 790i Ultra SLI

2GB Corsair Dominator DDR3-1333

(overclocked to 1600MHz)

2x 1024MB ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2

(Quad-Crossfire)

2x160GB Western Digital HDD

(10,000RPM, SATA)

1x1000GB Hitachi HDD

(7,200 RPM, SATA)

Windows Vista Home Premium

ATI Catalyst v8.3

Preliminary Testing with SiSoft SANDRA XII SP2

Synthetic Benchmarks

We began our testing with SiSoftware's SANDRA XII, the System ANalyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. We ran three of the built-in subsystem tests that partially comprise the SANDRA XII suite: Processor Arithmetic, Processor Multi-Media, and Memory Bandwidth.

SiSoft SANDRA's various benchmark modules reported scores for the Edge Z55 Core i7 Gaming System that are in-line with what we would have expected. The Processor Arithmetic test measures almost pure raw CPU power, and the Z55’s Core i7 quad-core outshines the competition. The other systems in the bunch are all quad-cores as well, with the exception of the Athlon X2 6400 64+, which is a dual-core processor.

The Processor Multi-Media test is influenced by processor clock speed, but it is also affected by the amount of CPU cache. With the Core i7, Intel’s engineers concluded that a shared L2 cache as used before wasn’t suited to their new quad-core architecture. As a result, the engineers started from scratch and gave each of the cores a Level 2 cache of its own. There’s also 8MB of Level 3 cache for managing communications between cores.

The Edge Z55 greatly outshines the other systems on the Memory Bandwidth test with its 6GB of 1,333MHz DDR3 memory in triple channel mode. As you can see, there's up to 3X the measured available memory bandwidth with Intel's new Core i7 architecture that is employed in the Velocity Micro Edge Z55. For reference and comparison, the Intel-based systems here are utilizing 1,333MHz DDR3 memory, and the AMD-based systems are using 1,066MHz DDR2 memory.