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As shown on the last two pages, we used two separate test platforms to pit the Pentium4 against itself and its speed grade siblings:

• the latest Intel dual Rambus channel production board (Intel D850EMV2) featuring the new i850E chipset capable of running either at 100-400 or 133-533 MHz FSB and using PC600/PC800/ PC1066 RDRAM interface with any combination of the FSB / memory frequencies listed.
• the ASUS P4S333 featuring the SIS 645 chipset. We couldn't get our hands on the P4S533 but we figured that the older P4S333 would do since it is essentially the same chipset. As it turned out, the board correctly ID'd the 533 MHz FSB Pentium4 and adjusted the FSB as well as FSB : DRAM bus ratio accordingly, e.g. 4:5 instead of 3:5 for the 166 MHz memory bus. All benchmarks were run at the 166 MHz memory bus setting.

Memory As the Crucial Performance Parameter

Along with the processors and mainboard, Intel also supplied us with four 128 MB PC800 RDRAM RIMMs rated at 45 ns. Those RIMMs were "inofficially" tested at 40 ns and can probably run in PC1066 mode if the mainboard supports it. Some production boards will allow to manually set the memory frequency, the Intel board itself will not allow these manipulations. The Deus ex Machina in this case was Bill Mushkin who happened to have two 128 MB PC1066 RIMMs lying around which allowed us to run the memory interface on the Intel board at full speed.

PC800 RDRAM as supplied by Intel and the PC1066 RDRAM loan from Mushkin

If the best is good enough for the Rambus platform, we need to use the same standards for the DDR platform and nothing would be more suitable than the trusted Level2 PC2100 Mushkin 512 MB DDR DIMMs.

Level2 PC2100 512 MB DIMM

System configuration

* It's nice to have a quiet test setup

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