Test System Setup

Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 at different speeds (Supplied by Intel)

Memory: 2 x 1GB DDR2-1066 Corsair in Dual Channel @ 1:1 (Supplied by Corsair)

Hard Disk: 500GB Seagate 7200.9 SATA (Supplied by Seagate)

Graphics Card: MSI Radeon X1950 Pro (Supplied by MSI)

Cooling: Gigabyte Neon775 (Supplied by Gigabyte)

Operating System: Microsoft Windows XP SP2

Drivers: Intel INF 8.3.0.1007, ATI Catalyst 7.1 and DX9c

Today we are pitting our early and non-final P35 based motherboard (we can't say where we got it from due to NDA reasons) against the Gigabyte solid and well performing P965-DQ6 motherboard based on the Intel P965 chipset.

Since P35 is designed to replace the P965 chipset, we wanted to see how everything stacked up, even though the P35 motherboard we have is still in early development and using first revision chipset silicon. Since overclocking is not up to scratch yet, we didn't even bother attempting overclocking tests but naturally Intel will improve this and being based on 65nm process technology, we may end up seeing even better FSB OC results than the impressive P965.

We used our Core 2 Extreme CPU however we decided to run the FSB at 266MHz and 333MHz on both motherboards to determine just how much difference there is in performance on both chipsets when running at the exact same clock and FSB speeds. Since this chipset is designed to work with the new Core 2 1333MHz FSB processors, we simulated this with our Core 2 Extreme as we are able to select different multipliers and bus speeds and all E6000 series processors will all have 4MB of L2 cache.

We used 8 x 333MHz and 9 x 333MHz to simulate upcoming Core 2 E6750 and E6850 Dual Core processors speeds. We also simulated a current E6700 and X6800 by running the Extreme processor at 10 x 266MHz and 11 x 266MHz. Memory was also operating at 1:1 at all times.

Will we see any performance boost going from an FSB of 266MHz FSB to 333MHz FSB? Let's take a look!

SiSoft Sandra

Version and / or Patch Used: 2007

Developer Homepage: http://www.sisoftware.co.uk

Product Homepage: http://sisoftware.jaggedonline.com/index.php?location=home&a=TTA&lang=en

Buy It Here

SiSoft Sandra (System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a synthetic Windows benchmark that features different tests used to evaluate different PC subsystems.

This test we are only testing the differences between the two CPU setups. Moving to the 1333MHz FSB has improved the synthetic scores a little.