System setup and notes
| Motherboard | MSI Eclipse SLI | Intel SmackOver | MSI X48 Platinum |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | |||
| Chipset | Intel X58 + ICH10R |
Intel X48 + ICH9R
|
|
| CPU | Intel Core i7 965 Extreme Edition (3.20GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 6400MHz QPI, LGA1366) | Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 (3.20GHz, 12MB L2 cache, 1600MHz FSB, LGA775) | |
| Actual CPU frequency |
3208.8MHz
|
3200.1MHz
|
3200.0MHz
|
| BIOS revision |
V1.1B2 (11/06/2008)
|
??? (??/??/2008)
|
V2.3 (07/07/2008)
|
| Memory | 6GB (3 x 2GB) Corsair Dominator TR3X6G1600C8D | 4GB (2 x 2GB) Corsair TW3X4G1333C9DHX | |
| Memory timings and speed | 9-9-9-24 2T @ DDR3-1336.6 | 9-9-9-24 2T @ DDR3-1333.33 | |
| Graphics card (single GPU tests) | Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MB | ||
| Graphics driver | Catalyst 8.10 Hotfix
(8.551.1-081027a-071310E-ATI)
|
Catalyst 8.10 | |
| Graphics cards (Multi-GPU tests) |
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB /
2 x HD 4870 / 3 x HD 4870
|
N/A | |
| Graphics driver |
Catalyst 8.10 Hotfix
(8.551.1-081027a-071310E-ATI)
|
N/A | |
| Chipset driver |
Intel Inf 9.1.0.1007 + Intel Matrix Storage Manager 8.6.0.1007
|
Intel Inf 9.0.0.1008 +
Intel Matrix Storage Manager 8.6.0.1007
|
|
| Disk drive(s) | Seagate 500GB SATAII (ST3500320AS) | ||
| Operating system | Windows Vista Business x64 SP1 | ||
Tests
| Benchmarks |
ScienceMark 2.0 memory latency HD Tach 3.0.4.0 - SATA average read speed Company of Heroes: Opposing Forces v2.301 DX9 - 1,024x768 0xAA, 1,920x1,200 4xAA, 2,560x1,600 4xAA |
|---|
Testing notes
Due to the differences and thus incompatibility between the LGA775 socket used on the X48 Platinum and the LGA1366 socket used on the MSI Eclipse, it wasn't possible to run identical processors, obviously.
Thus the X48 Platinum was run with the QX9770 instead of our usual QX9650 CPU. In addition we've added the numbers for the Core i7 965 EE on Intel's SmackOver board which was used for our Core i7 performance analysis.
We would have liked to include DDR3-1,600 numbers for some of the tests, but as mentioned on the previous page, it wasn't possible to get our Corsair DDR3-1,600 triple-channel kit running stable on this board.
When running the tests with Intel Turbo Boost tech. enabled, the BIOS defaults of x26, x25, x25, x25 (1-core, 2-cores, 3-cores, 4-cores) were used, thus resulting in a CPU clock-speed of 3.46GHz in single-threaded applications and 3.33GHz in multi-threaded apps.
We'd normally include three games in our 3D analysis when testing motherboards, however due to extremely high variances noticed in the Quake 4 results on both MSI boards, they wouldn't reflect the true performance in that game and thus were omitted.