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LOSTCIRCUITS	SHORTCUTS: A Higher Bus Frequency Test Configurations Memory Subsystem Power Consumption 3D Rendering Energy Efficiency Cinebench AV Encoding: DVD-Shrink, DrDivX, MainConcept AV Encoding: Virtualdub / DivX and SSE4 Gaming: 3DMark '06 FarCry F.E.A.R. The Down and Dirty Dis-Illusions Give Us Some Feedback on this Review
Intel's Yorkfield QX9770 at 3.2 GHz I have the Power!!
(Review by Michael Schuette, November 25, 2007)

Test Configuration

)* For a direct comparison we ran all available LGA 775 processors on the ASUS P5K3 in selected benchmarks such as Cinebench10 and VirtualDub/DivX

)** The QX9770 was run at 8 x 400 MHz with DDR3 1600 at 8-8-8 latency settings

)*** We ran a bunch of benchmarks in both Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista Ultimate edition.

** AMD uses the same model numbers for different revisions. To allow a better distinction between the processors shown, we use the * to flag the 65 nm G-stepping in the relevant graphs. In addition, we are labeling the 65 nm CPU running at 2.4 GHz with a memory frequency of 800 MHz as 4600* for a direct apples to apples comparison to the 4600+

Benchmark Overview

Given the lack of multithreading support in most current games, along with the still not materialized nVidia drivers to enable SLI on non-nVidia chipsets it appears counterintuitive to label the 8-Xeon system as a gaming platform. Moreover, the only only "gaming application" supporting heavy duty AI that could take advantage of eight CPUs, namely "Ice Storm Fighters" does not run on non-Intel platforms, therefore, what's the point of running one application on a single platform for "non-comparison purposes".

In addition, some benchmarks don't run in Vista-64, Dr.DivX OSS is one example, however, there is the other issue that installing WindowsXP on an 8-CPU system will not take advantage of the system architecture, with a case in point being ccNUMA. All of this said and done, we settled on the following applications:

• SiSoft Sandra 2007 / 2008
• Caligari TrueSpace 5.1 (we are in the process of gathering data on TrueSpace 7.5 which is not backwards compatible with our benchmark files)
• Cinebench 9.5<
• Cinebench 10
• MainConcept H.264
• DVD-Shrink 3.2
• Dr. DivX OSS 2.0
• VirtualDub 1.76 with DivX 6.7
• F.E.A.R. Built-in benchmark
• FarCry "Steam" custom demo
• Futuremark 3DMark'06

Power Measurements

Looking at system power consumption is interesting to a certain degree, however, for all practical purposes we are more interested in the isolated CPU power consumption. To estimate the latter, we used the same power measurement setup as in previous reports. Briefly, we used a Fluke 80i-410 AC/DC current probe in combination with a Wavetek Meterman 30XR multimeter to measure current through the isolated +12V supply lines feeding into the CPU VRM. To increase granularity of the measurements, we ran the supply lines in a triple loop through the clamp. The clamp itself was calibrated using a BK Precision model 1692, 30V 40 A DC power supply. Since there is a temperature dependency of the probe, we monitored the zero-current offset at the beginning of each measurement as well as at the end of each run. If the values drifted we retook the measurements. Despite these precautions there are possible deviations of the read-out from the real current, however, these errors mostly affect the lower (processor idle) measurements. We estimate that the errors should not be more than 10% at the lower end of the data and less than 5% in the mid and higher data range. Moreover, since the same procedures were applied to all processors tested, there may be an offset in the absolute numbers, however, the relation of the individual cores to each other with respect to power consumption should be fairly accurate.

In addition to the method outlined above, we used a modified PSU to run the 12V line directly through the Wavetek Meterman and read out the current. Both methods gave identical results.

(BX80557E6300)

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