Budget E6600 Core 2 Duo System Test Results

[Coby]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd share my test results:

Results generated on:  Tuesday, June 19, 2007


Benchmark Results

Test Name: This Computer
CPU - Integer Math: 215.8
CPU - Floating Point Math: 585.7
CPU - Find Prime Numbers: 612.8
CPU - SSE/3DNow!: 5155.2
CPU - Compression: 5348.3
CPU - Encryption: 33.0
CPU - Image Rotation: 1079.8
CPU - String Sorting: 3409.4
Graphics 2D - Lines: 113.8
Graphics 2D - Rectangles: 156.1
Graphics 2D - Shapes: 37.1
Graphics 2D - Fonts and Text: 168.4
Graphics 2D - GUI: 216.5
Graphics 3D - Simple: 886.3
Graphics 3D - Medium: 192.4
Graphics 3D - Complex: 45.7
Memory - Allocate Small Block: 2323.3
Memory - Read Cached: 1857.9
Memory - Read Uncached: 1819.1
Memory - Write: 1148.5
Memory - Large RAM: 451.2
Disk - Sequential Read: 103.0
Disk - Sequential Write: 76.0
Disk - Random Seek + RW: 3.7
CD - Read: 6.3
CPU Mark: 1432.7
2D Graphics Mark: 505.0
Memory Mark: 561.9
Disk Mark: 660.6
CD Mark: 772.8
3D Graphics Mark: 359.8
PassMark Rating: [B]803.5[/B]

The system:

E6600 Core 2 Duo
ASUS P5VD2-MX SE Motherboard (*)
2 x 1GB Generic 533 DDR2 RAM
2 x 320GB SATA Maxtor Drives (in RAID 0 Configuration)
1 x 400GB IDE Drive
6600GT Graphics Card (*)
Onboard Sound

I'm quite pleased with that, not too shabby for a system that cost only £400.

I recently installed the RAID config and it increased the disk test results by about 25-30%

* - I know these components are not the best, it is a budget PC afterall. I'll get around to upgrading them soon.

[ice]

I'd say upgrade your RAM as well, 533mhz is slow for today's standards, overall not a bad score, i got 1080 (or something like that) with my core 2 duo e6600, (NO RAID 0, 1 HD).

[Brian]

Your RAM score isn't too bad. When I dont OC me E6600 and run the RAM at 667 Mhz or even 800mhz, I only score 20 (@667) points higher.

Your garphics card is def. hurting the score alot, one of my ATI 1950 Pros gets over 1000 on the 3D portion of the test, while you scored ~350.

-Brian

[ice]

But if you're going to upgrade your Direct-X 9 card, which would be a total waste of money now, do not upgrade to the ATi X1950 Pro, because they are much slower than the ATi X1950 XT, and the ATi X1950 XTX. The Pro would be just a waste of money.

Good luck

[Brian]

ice, I wasn't telling him to buy a x1950 pro, I was telling him to get any better card (decent budget cards these days are X1950 pro and 7600 GS). Perhaps you are missing the point of the word "budget", a X1950 XT, and XTX are higher end, more expensive cards.

My point was that a 150-199$US card could more than double his 3D graphics score.

BTW, My 2 ATI X1950's beat a 8800 Ultra, so they aren't exactly slow. But they are also not top of the line either. They do however have the internal ATI connector (I actually traded in about 2k worth of 3Dmark06 score because I hated the external dongle so much).

-Brian

[ice]

1) 8800 Ultra is a joke, it underperforms in some applications, even to the GTS, not talking about GTX....

2). Crossfire is a joke, you mostly get only about 20% (at most) increase in performance (in only some applications, as in some you actually lose performance...)

So 20% increase for 100% price?

Yes i bet the Pro version of ur budget-line card should need another one, for... support...

And No, your cards cannot beat a 8800, as a 8800GTX owns SLI'd x2 7950GTX... so yeah... maybe in some applications, but definately not all, most it loses for sure.

NOT talking about DirectX 10....

GG. GL. HF.

[Brian]

The difference between the 8800GTX and my setup is about 2,000 3Dmarks06. I score about ~9,000, while an 8800GTX hits ~10,000 or over 11k if you OC it.

Ofcourse I only paid 360 dollars for my setup. I wanted to go dual card, to give it a try, see how the water was. And I didn't feel like buying 2 8800 cards. Too much money, much too much money.

I can personally tell you that if crossfire has an alternate frame rendering profile for the app you are running, you will see more than 20%. I get a 60-80% increase on every game that I play.

If the profile is not found, the best you can expect is 1.15 the performance.

The only reason I got the Pro line of these cards, is because they use the internal Crossfire connector. They are the first ATI cards to incorperate this technology, and I had to try it. Because frankly, the extrenal dongle is the worst POS ever made IMHO.

You are right, the Pro series is not the fastest, like it use to be, now XT and XTX are quicker. But price is always a factor, and people asking for budget recommendations usually don't want anything todo with XT or XTX cards of any series.

You are right in saying that crossfire and sli, still have their issues. However I love trying new technology first hand, I bought the Dual Core cpu the day it was released. I am skipping the Quads and buying an 8 core cpu that should be out next year.

Anyway, Coby you should consider OCing your computer. If you are looking for more power. ALot of people have no problem going upto 333 fsb with little or no vcore increase. If you goto 333 fsp, i'd try to OC your ram to 667 to keep the 1:1 ratio. You might have to highten the latencies to get it up there though.

If you play any games, I'd consider a low-mid range graphics card. If you run Vista, it will make the UI work a little smoother and faster when alot of stuff is happening.

If you play alot of games, save up for something decent.

-Brian

[ice]

Brian, what is your total 3D Graphics Mark in the final score?

[Brian]

It is 1079.5 (32bit color, what I use to play games, in CC set to Balanced. SO 4xAA and a few other forced visual goodies.) However this is only one card rendering because the first 2 tests are windowed (which does not work with SLI or Crossfire at all, so if you play games windowed, don't get ATI or SLI). And the last test does not have an alternating frame profile (I don't think anyway). It uses the checkerboard pattern rendering which at max is +15%.

My cards are not stock, they are the HIS Turbo edition ones. That have 590 mhz core (stock: 575) and 770mhz memory (stock 700). Interesting enough, the cards can be OCed even more with the HIS cooler.

So nothing miraculous over here to report. Sometimes if you rename apps to farcry.exe they get much better FPS because it uses an agressive profile. I didn't try that tho, bc I am fairly lazy.

Anyway, 3Dmark06 is very pixel shader heavy, ATIs are very good at this, hence my high score. It seems like most games are going that way, and the realtime physics engines seem to be taking off. It is now possible to get a 3rd Crossfire card to run as the physics only engine. But I am not there yet.

I literally almost double my 3Dmark score with Crossfire, I think the internal connectors and the R5XX chips are much better than the dongle. That damn dongle has given me nothing but aggrivation in the past.


*edit, as a referrence an ATI X1650 Pro 512 scores 279.2 <- have one in another machine.

-Brian

[Brian]

Well apparently a little OCing and resolution makes a big difference.

[Coby]

Thanks for the comments guys.

The system was something I picked up off ebay, so I wasn't expecting anything spectacular. It came with a 7300LE, which I replaced with the 6600GT (a hand-me-down from a friend).

Just finished upgrading the motherboard to a EVGA 650i Ultra, which although keeping with my budget theme, finally allows me to do some overclocking (and it was my first motherboard installation). Got a lovely new Antec 900 case, and put a new heatsink on the CPU too.

Temps are now around 25degrees idle and around 37 under load, thats overclocked at 2.55Ghz.

Passmark is now 880

Next upgrades will be some new memory and probably a 8800GTS (all the old components will be put together into a second system)