Testbed and Methods

The participants of today’s performance session were tested only in a closed system case with the following configuration:

• Mainboard: abit IX38 QuadGT (Intel X38), LGA 775, BIOS v1.2.
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 (3.0GHz, 1.25V, 2x6MB L2 cache, 4x333MHz FSB, Yorkfield, C0)
• CPU cooler: APACK ZEROtherm BTF80 (~1400RPM, AVG)
• Thermal interface: Arctic Silver 5
• Graphics card: XFX GeForce 8800 GTX GDDR3 768MB / 384bit, @612/1566/2052MHz
• Memory:
  • 2 x 1024MB DDR2 Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-9136C5D (1142MHz / 5-5-5-18 / 2.1V);
  • 2 x 1024MB DDR2 CSXO-XAC-1200-2GB-KIT DIABLO (1200MHz / 5-5-5-16 / 2.4V).
• Memory cooler: CoolIt RAMFan (70x15mm, ~1800RPM)
• Disk subsystem: Samsung HD501LJ (SATA-II, 500GB storage capacity, 7200rpm, 16MB cache, NCQ)
• Optical drive: Samsung SH-S183L SATA-II DVD RAM & DVD±R/RW & CD±RW
• System case: System case: ASUS ASCOT 6AR2-B Black&Silver (ATX) with 120mm ~900RPM Scythe Minebea fans for air intake and exhaust, and a 120mm ~940RPM GlacialTech SilentBlade GT12025-BDLA1 fan on a side panel
• Control and monitoring panel: Zalman ZM-MFC2
• Power supply: Enermax Galaxy EGA1000EWL 1000W (a 135mm ~850RPM fan for intake)
• Monitor: LCD 24" Acer AL2416WBsd (1920 x 1200, DVI, 60Hz)

Our quad-core processor was moderately overclocked from its nominal frequency to 3.8GHz with the Vcore increased to 1.45V. DDR2 SDRAM worked at 940MHz with 2.175V voltage.

The testing programs were installed under Windows XP Professional Edition SP2. We used DirectX 9.0c libraries, and ForceWare 171.16 drivers.

The graphics card was loaded up by running 3DMark06’s Firefly Forest synthetic test ten times in 1920x1200 with 16x anisotropic filtering and 4x FSAA activated. We overclocked the graphics card and then monitored its temperatures using RivaTuner v2.0.6 utility. We performed at least two test cycles for each cooler and waited for 10-15 minutes for the temperature to stabilize between each test cycle. The ambient temperature remained at ~25°C during the tests and is used as a starting point on our results charts.

The noise level of each cooler was measured according to our traditional method using CENTER-321 electronic noise meter. The subjectively comfortable level of ~34.5dBA is marked with a blue dotted line in the diagrams; the ambient noise from the system case including a processor cooler didn’t exceed ~33.2dBA measured at a 1m distance.

XFX GeForce 8800 GTX GDDR3 768MB graphics card that will be used for our today’s tests is equipped with a reference cooler by default:

With this cooling solution we managed to overclock the card to 612/1566/2052MHz frequencies (shader GPU unit was overclocked independently of the main one):

This way we lacked some 100MHz for the memory speed to hit the standard frequencies of a GeForce 8800 Ultra graphics card.