System setup and notes

Hardware and Software

Test Platforms

System	Armari Pantheon FX	HEXUS Intel Presler System
Processor(s)	AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 @ 2.8GHz	Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 955 @ 3.46GHz & 4.26GHz
Mainboard	ASUS A8N-VM CSM nForce 430	Intel D975XBK
Chipset driver	ForceWare 4.50	Intel INF Update Utility 7.2.2.1006
Memory	2GByte (2x1024MB)Corsair TwinX3200C2PT	1GByte (2x512MB) Corsair XMS2-5400UL
Memory timings	3-3-3-8 @ 400MHz	3-2-2-8 @ 533MHz
Graphics Cards	XFX GeForce 7800 GTX DDR3 512MB XXX Ed	ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB
Graphics Card Driver	ForceWare 81.95	ATI CATALYST 5.12
Disk drive(s)	2x Hitachi 250GB SATA	Western Digital 200GB (200JD) SATA
Operating system	Windows XP Pro SP2	Windows XP Pro SP2

Benchmark Software

ScienceMark 2.0 (21st March 2005)
HEXUS.in-house Cryptography Benchmark
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
Realstorm Raytracing 2004
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding Benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
picCOLOR 32-bit b568
KribiBench v1.1

Quake 4 - HEXUS custom benchmark
F.E.A.R - HEXUS custom benchmark
Need For Speed: Most Wanted- HEXUS custom benchmark

Notes

We'll be comparing the Armari Pantheon FX's performance against a high-end system based on Intel's Pentium Extreme Edition 955 processor that we reviewed recently. It can be considered the AMD Athlon 64 FX-60's main rival and considering the pre-overclocked nature of the Armari system, we've run our Intel comparison machine, in a standard desktop case, at both default (3.46GHz) and overclocked (4.26GHz, 16x multiplier, 266MHz FSB, default VCore) configurations.

Using the cooling provided by the Silverstone SFF chassis, we were unable to run the FX-60 at 3GHz (15x multiplier) without compromising stability. 2.8GHz, therefore, can be considered a normal air-cooled overclock for a chassis with comparatively limited ventilation and airflow.

Let's hit the benchmarks, shall we.