ABIT RX600XT-PCIE
System Tests: CPU
To get some general idea of the new system, we'll first demonstrate the results of testing the new line of CPU built on the Prescott core made in the LGA775 form factor. Three processors took part in the tests - P4 3.4XE, P4 3.6 and P4 3.2. To some tests, we added results produced with Socket 478 P4 3.2.
Comanche 4 is one of the most processor dependent applications. The rule is simple - the older the game, the better:
As we can see, the "processor-dependence" for Comanche 4 with X600XT is over at the 1920x1440 resolution, and the graph that's been produced quite vividly demonstrates the performance difference for new processors. The P4 3.4 Extreme Edition LGA775 leaves P4 3.6 LGA775 well behind, which was somehow of a surprise. But that makes it a bit clear why they ask $999 for P4 3.4 Extreme Edition LGA775.
"Far Cry" is the other extreme. At "Low quality", (in the High-mode the difference is minimum, of course) we get the following:
Well, what to say to that? ... The conclusion is evident: a card of ATI X600XT level is weak for this system - the gap is disastrous as the resolution goes up. The CPU is ready to feed up to 150 finished scenes to the graphic rendering pipelines of the video card, but at the "output" we get merely 66 fps at 1600x1200. In the ideal case (if a X800XT or GeForce6800 are used), at low quality settings these lines should turn to ideal parallel straight lines which characterize only the processor performance. No need to take these comments and graphs as a joke :-))). You would rather say "Who on earth ever plays on such a system in the low-quality mode?". But on that page we primarily estimate the CPU first...
For completeness and order, we'll show a graph for "Far Cry" in the high-quality mode with three new processors:
Another interesting option for demonstrating the difference in the processor clock speeds - the "UT2004":
The picture is absolutely standard and expected. Moreover, if we set the quality to the maximum, the difference remains unchanged:
That again proves the fact that the engine of the game is outdated, but we have been charged extra $60 only for the gameplay in a new package. The engine is old - it offers no version 2.0 shaders, nor anything of the arsenal of most recent graphic technologies. The game still remained at the DX8.1 level.
We tested the previous UT2003 in the Hi-Quality without any doubts of seeing a difference in any case (it is anyway more correct to reset the image quality settings when testing CPU). But nevertheless:
Isn't that a staggering graph? First, we added results produced on the old P4 3.2 Socket478 system with a Radeon 9600XT video card which competes with the three new processors + ATI X600XT. The 9600XT and X600XT is the same core, except the two things - the I/O block of the AGP standard has been revamped to the PCI-E (the native support itself). Secondly, the memory latency timings have been raised (600Mhz -> 760Mhz).
What do we see now? At 640x480 where the video card performance is of no importance, and the CPU clock speed is the same, - both readings are equal to 159 fps. But the difference in video cards performance is seen on the next step of the resolution ladder. The theory fitted ideally to the values taken. Basically, any reviewer would draw such graphs from scratch for any configuration, without any specific values, but the lines will be positioned in an absolutely correct manner. That is, when you start testing, you have an absolutely clear idea of what should be bent where and above what positioned... This allows instantly "seeing" erroneous results and irrelevant figures. It's always pleasant to see such canonical figures shape up in the end :)
And, a few more of "pure" processor load tests:
System Tests: DDR2 Memory
SiSoftware made us all happy - on 29 June, there was released the long-awaited Sandra 2004 Service Pack 2 (SP2) with included support for the DDR2 and Intel 91X, 925X chipsets (as well as for Athlon 64 939). Authors, hardware-related web-sites and test labs can freely make the commercial version of the program available - for details, read the press release.
In the configuration with two channels of DDR2 533 memory (512 MB for each channel), we got the following:
At the same time, we verified the theoretical difference in the DDR2 memory bandwidth when switching the system from the dual-channel mode of memory operation to the single-channel mode. By the way, after reboot the system displayed a message saying it was "not the most successful choice". The creators of BIOS had a riotous time :-)
| Dual-channel scheme: |
Single-channel scheme: |
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As we see, the drop amounts to 25% when switching to the single-channel mode. Now let's see what it is like in games:
With gaming applications, the difference is minimum. We tested a dozen more games - no difference in results were found with them. That is, if you have only a single DDR2 module and are not into video encoding, this is not a reason for worry. All in all, in modern games it is the speed of the video card which is decisive.
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