IV. Benchmarking

Stock Settings
For benchmarking, the stock settings will serve as the baseline scores. Note that all settings here are on automatic, with the RAM frequency running in sync with CPU system bus. With the advent of this new processor, the minimum speed of RAM to be used must be a DDR2-533MHz.

For the stock settings, all benchmark results will be acquired from three(3) runs, removing the highest and lowest score, but not averaging the total score of the three. This limit the number of random peaks of scores, and hopes to reduce the number of random unusual results. There will be no online submission of score because of time constraint and software limitation.

Temperature at idle hovers at 16C, while shoots to just top of 26c. The cooler used is the stock cooler provided by AOpen* on its motherboard, and interestingly, just suitable for such processor. I can't feel any warmth with the heatsink that I am beginning to worry whether I have installed the HSF properly and that it is making contact. I turned off the fan and run dual instances of Prime95 and this is when I noticed the heatsink getting really warm. With such low profile and small fan, the system is virtually silent, being overwhelmed only by the sound of chassis and power supply fan.

::Multimedia Rendering::

Cinebench 9.5

::Subsystem Test::

SuperPi 1M

PCMark02

PCMark05

Sandra-CPU

Sandra-Multimedia

Sandra-RAM Bandwidth

::3D Test::

3DMark03

3DMark05

3DMark06

::Gaming::

Doom3 640x480

The processor has been beaten in most benchmarks except with Cinebench, and 3DMark06 CPU where it comes next to last. Note that the all desktop processors have 4MB of L2 cache (even the E6300 because it is an early ES) versus the Yonah with 2MB of L2 cache. While it has higher clock speed, the 2MB difference and lack of other features of a full Conroe is impacting its performance. However, as can be seen with Cinebench, and 3DMark06, this processor can really be a bad ass system. Pushing this with 200MHz (800MHz) FSB should give this processor a really nice boost in score.

PCMark05 shows a very nice CPU power. Gaming scores on 3DMark05 all shows consistent outstanding scores reflecting a huge portion of CPU muscle on the result. The score is almost unbelievable, with such lower L2 cache compared to its desktop brothers, it can still perform with so much power in reserve.

Cinebench is another wonder, video buff and multimedia fanatics will be rejoicing for such an unbelievable performance. It shows that even with such less L2 cache, the CPU performance is not much impacted.