Benchmarks and System Setup
We compared performance of the Skulltrail platform to one using an Intel's Core 2 QX9770 (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,2218441,00.asp). We figured it was a fair comparison, since neither platform is actually shipping yet. The QX9770 is an LGA 775 CPU that runs in X48 motherboards natively, and so clocks identically to a single QX9775 supplied with the Skulltrail platform.
Model Model
Processor 2 x Intel QX9775 CPUs @ 3.2GHz (1600MHz FSB) 1 x Intel QX9770 CPU @ 3.2GHz (1600MHz effective FSB)
Motherboard Intel 5400 chipset w/ Nvidia Nforce 100 for SLI support ASUS P5E3 Premium, Intel X48 Core Logic
Memory 2 x 2GB Micron 800MHz FB-DIMM 2 x 1GB Corsair DDR3-1800 XMS3 modules running at DDR3-1600 speeds
Graphics Card PNY GeForce 8800 GT; 2 x eVGA 8800 Ultras for SLI testing PNY GeForce 8800 GT
Hard Drive 320GB Seagate 7200.10 320GB Seagate 7200.10
Optical Drive Sony 16x DVDRW NEC 16x DVDRW
Power Supply PC Power & Cooling (OCZ) 1KW Silverstone SST-ST75ZF 750W
CPU Cooler 2 x Zalman 9500CNPS Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
System Setup
Note that the Skulltrail system has a memory size advantage, with 4GB of 800MHz FB-DIMMs versus 2GB of DDR3-1600 in the X48 system. This isn't as big a deal as it sounds, as we tested using Windows Vista 32-bit. Still, that did give Skulltrail about a 1GB edge in memory size, while the X48 system had a substantial advantage in memory bandwidth. So one of the questions we had was: what makes more difference: more, slower memory or a still-adequate, but lesser amount of very fast memory?
We tested with Windows Vista will all updates installed, plus a pair of hotfixes to improve gaming
performance. The hard drives were defragged prior to each benchmark session. Before we ran each benchmark, we executed the command rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks. This immediately executes all background idle tasks to completion, including tasks such as the Windows prefetcher.
We also used the latest Nvidia 169.28 drivers for the GeForce 8800 GT and 8800 Ultras in SLI mode.
The Benchmarks
Our standard platform benchmarking suite consists of the following:
* BAPCO's SYSmark 2007 Preview (1.02) . Based on real applications, the benchmark gives us a taste of how real applications might run on the system. SYSmark 2007 updates the applications mix in this workload-oriented benchmark.
* POV-Ray 3.70 beta 24. The POV-Ray freeware software rendering application has been around since the days of MS-DOS. The current 3.70 version for Windows is still a work in progress, but it does support multithreading. Beta 21 now shows the rendered scene in progress.
* 3ds Max 8. 3ds Max 8 is Autodesk's popular 3D modeling and animation tool. Note that we used both the SPEC APC 3ds Max test and a couple of pure rendering tests. The new SPEC APC test for 3ds Max 8 incorporates a number of new scenes. For platform testing, we've shifted to pure software mode, rather than using either OpenGL or Direct3D, to further minimize the effect of the GPU.
* 3ds Max 9. For rendering, we use the more recent 3ds Max 9. We use one new scene, Dragon, and one older scene, Radiosity, for 3ds Max 9 rendering tests.
* Newtek Lightwave 9.0. This is a popular 3D modeling and animation tool used primarily for special effects in a number of television shows, plus a variety of other applications. We used the current "Radiosity-Box" rendering benchmark. This latest version of Lightwave also ships with a 64-bit version in the box.
* Adobe After Effects CS3, which ran a variety of filters using a fixed script on identical content to generate a final animation. These include radial blur, frame blends, depth-of-field and other effects based filters.
* Maxon's Cinebench 10.0, their latest 3D content creation benchmark based on Maxon's Cinema 4D engine.
* Windows Media Encoder. We also installed Windows Media Player 10, so we could encode a fixed 127MB, WMV-HD video clip using Windows Media Encoder Advanced Profile. The encoder was configured to encode the video as streaming media. Microsoft has also released a beta version of a new Advanced Profile codec, which can encode to VC1, used in many HD DVD and Blu-ray movies.
* Mainconcept H.264 and MPEG-2 Encoders. We now use Mainconcept's encoders instead of DivX. We're now using a new file, which is a 1080p WMV-HD clip from The Magic of Flight. We use the "DVD" profile for the MPEG-2 encoding and the "iPod" profile for H.264 encoding.
* Imagenomic's Noiseware. Noiseware is multithreaded noise reduction tool used to remove noise artifacts from digital photographs.
* 3DMark 06 and PCMark05. While these are synthetic benchmarks, they can yield insights into individual subsystems within the PC. Continued...
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