How we test
Comparison systems |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 | Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P | ASUS P8Z68-V PRO | ASUS P8P67 PRO | Gigabyte P67A-UD3 | ASUS P8P67 Deluxe | ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme |
| Motherboard BIOS | FC | F4 | 8801 | 1401 | F5 | 1053 | 1102 |
| Processor | Intel Core i5 2500K (ES) | AMD Phenom II X6 1055T (95W) | |||||
| Chipset driver | Intel Inf 9.2.0.1019 and RST 10.1 (10.5 for Z68) | Catalyst 10.12 chipset driver | |||||
| Memory | Corsair 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 | ||||||
| Memory timings | 9-9-9-24-1T @ 1,600MHz | ||||||
| Graphics | AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB | ||||||
| Graphics driver | Catalyst 10.12 (15.22.54.64.2622 for IGP) | ||||||
| Disk drive | Corsair V128 SSD | ||||||
| Chassis | Corsair Obsidian Series 700D | ||||||
| Power supply | Corsair HX1000W | ||||||
| Operating system | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit | ||||||
CPU and memory benchmarks |
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| HEXUS.PiFast |
Our number-crunching benchmark stresses a single core by calculating Pi to 10m places | ||||||
| wPrime 2.0.4 | Another number-crunching benchmark that stresses all available CPU cores/threads | ||||||
| CINEBENCH 11.5 | Using Cinebench's multi-CPU render, this cross-platform benchmark stresses all cores | ||||||
| TrueCrypt 7.0a | An encryption/decryption benchmark that's partial to AES acceleration | ||||||
GPU benchmarks |
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| Call of Duty: Black Ops | DX9, 1,680x1,050, 4xAA, high quality | ||||||
| 3DMark Vantage b1.2 | Run at the default performance preset | ||||||
General benchmarks |
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| Storage performance | USB 2.0/3.0 read speed, SSD average read speed | ||||||
| Power consumption | While idling and when running wPrime | ||||||
Testing notes
We've loaded up the 'D3 with some older drivers. The reason for doing so means we can compare it against a selected number of Intel P67 and Z68 boards tested previously. Also added in for comparison is the AMD Phenom II X6 1055T (95W) chip. It's not based on the Bulldozer architecture, but it remains one of the better CPUs to come out of Austin, Texas, in recent times.