Features
Features (cont...)
Test Setup and Methods
Test Suite
Synthetic Tests
3DMark06
PCMark05, SuperPI
ScienceMark 2.0
Sandra 2007
Game Tests
Quake 4
F.E.A.R
Half-Life 2: Episode 1
Call of Duty 2
Oblivion
Multitasking
Overclocking
Final Thoughts and Conclusions

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Test Suite
When it comes to choosing the products that will be included in our benchmarking suite, we often have a hard time making the decisions. We don’t simply use the benchmarks that we have used in the past, because they may not be as applicable for the specific component we are trying to test. We have chosen the following tools based on the way the tests are run, the kind of results they generate, and the current interest/demand for them in the community:

• Kanada Lab - Super PI (mod 1.5 XS)
• SiSoftware - Sandra Lite 2007
• ScienceMark - ScienceMark 2.0 Benchmark Suite
• Futuremark - PCMark05 CPU Test Suite
• Futuremark - 3DMark06
• Id Software - Quake IV
• Monolith - F.E.A.R
• Valve - Half-Life 2: Episode 1
• Infinity Ward - Call of Duty 2
• Bethesda - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

It’s a shorter list than we wanted, but we had to make do with the time we had. In the same fashion as they did with the Core 2 Duo embargo date, Intel pulled the NDA on the QX6700 in from November 14th to November 1st. When it really comes down to it, we wouldn’t have added too many other applications to this list. What we would have done, however, is combined several of them in an attempt to paint a better picture of the multi-tasking performance of this processor. As is, this benchmarking suite is very solid and represents a good sample of what is out there, what people want to see, and what we think will yield the most meaningful results.

Tests
Please note that every result you see from this point forward is representative of the calculated average of the results of at least three tests and often times many more. This is to eliminate performance fluctuation anomalies and other random occurrences that may have the potential to throw off results.

3DMark06

As mentioned before, multitasking is going to be a major focus during this review. However, when not multitasking, it would be nice to have your processor able to use all of its cores on the one thing you are doing. This is what we call multi-threading, and unfortunately, it is something that must be implemented in the code of the specific application you are running. More unfortunately still is the fact that there are not too many multi-threaded applications out there. That said, Futuremark’s benchmarking suite has several tests that can make use of more than one core, and 3DMark06 is one of them. We tested the processors at stock settings, overclcoked settings, and while running an instance of Prime95 for the multi-tasking aspect.


As you can see, the QX6700 performs exceptionally in this test. It performs so well, in fact, that at stock settings it beats out its predecessor, which is running nearly 1GHz faster, by a solid 100 3DMarks. When a processor beats out another, faster processor, you would think something is wrong. However, as we mentioned, 3DMark06 IS a multi-threaded application. This means that the performance will increase substantially by adding more cores. The difference here might not seem like much, but 3DMark06 is very taxing on any system, and squeezing out an extra 100 3DMarks is often easier said than done. Clearly, we can see from this test that there is indeed some potential with the QX6700.