System setup and notes

System name	Vadim Fusion Cetus	MESH Elite Extreme SLI	SCAN FX-62 SLI
Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 overclocked (3.40GHz, 340MHz FSB 4MiB L2, S775	Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93GHz, 266MHz FSB, 4MiB L2, S775)	AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8GHz, 200MHz 'FSB', 2MiB L2 cache, AM2
Motherboard	ASUSTek P5W DH (i975X)	ASUSTek P5N32-SLI Deluxe (nForce4 SLI x16)	Foxconn C51XEM2AA - nForce 590 SLI
Memory	2GiB (2 x 1024) OCZ PC800 EL Platinum XTC	2GiB (2 x 1024) OCZ PC6400	2GiB (2 x 1024) Corsair PC8500 EPP
Memory timings and speed	4-4-4-14-2T @ 1021MHz	4-4-4-15-2T @ 800MHz	5-5-5-15-2T @ 936MHz (EPP)
Graphics card(s)	NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 1GiB (600/1600)	2 x NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX 512MiB in SLI)	NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 1GiB (500/1200)
Disk drive(s)	2 x Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA in RAID0 (640GB) WD 250GB SATA	Maxtor 6H500S0 500GB SATA	WD 150GB Raptor (WD150ADFD) 10,000RPM, 16MB cache 2 x Seagate 7200.10 750GB (1.5TB)
PSU	Enermax Liberty 620W modular	HEC 550W	Tagan 600W Dual Engine
BIOS revision	07/06/06		612W1P14
Mainboard software	9.34	6.70	9.34
Graphics driver	ForceWare 91.31	ForceWare 91.33	ForceWare 91.29
Operating System	Windows XP Home SP2 32-bit	Windows XP MCE 2005 32-bit	Windows XP Pro SP2 32-bit

Benchmark Software

ScienceMark 2.0 (21st March 2005)
HEXUS Pifast Benchmark
HEXUS.in-house MP3 Encoding benchmark using LAME 3.97a (Intel HT compiler) - 701MB WAV
HEXUS.in-house DivX encode using DivX 6.01 and VirtualDub on 416MB DV file
CINEBENCH 2003 multi-CPU render
KribiBench v1.1
HDTach 3.0.1.0

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 - HEXUS custom benchmark
Quake 4 v1.04 HEXUS Custom Benchmark
Far Cry v1.33 - HEXUS custom benchmark

Notes

Can you say fast? It's not running at 1.2V, either.

We had no stability problems at the overclocked speed. The system was unpacked from the box and worked first time. We ran a modified version of Prime95, that stresses dual-core systems, overnight. The Vadim Fusion Cetus was happily churning away FFTs after 10 hours, with CPU temperature at 52C and the motheboard's at 55C. We note that ambient temperatures hovered between 27-31C and fan speeds were set to 7V (default).

We're comparing the Vadim Fusion Cetus against a couple of high-end systems from MESH and Scan, respectively. Coinciding with the launch of Intel Core 2 Duo/Extreme processors a couple of weeks' ago, MESH delivered a Core 2 Extreme-powered PC that was based on an nForce4 chipset. In view of this, it was also equipped with 2 GeForce 7900 GTX SLI cards in SLI. Scan's effort, which showcased Athlon 64 FX-62 AM2 power, was another well-built system with attention to detail.

Overclocking

So how much further would it go? We managed to increase system speed up to 3.48GHz before instability set in. Vadim's obviously stringently tested this model and found 3.40GHz to be the sweetspot, and we agree.

You've read over 2,000 words now, so let's break up the monotony and cut to some performance graphs.