Looking very carefully todays current trends, the equipment parts required for such a massive undertaking and drew up the following systems.  Therefore the test system configurations were constructed as listed below:

Intel Test Platform (System Cost = $2165 US Dollars, £1165 UKP, €1391 Euros)
1 X Akasa Zen Chassis
1 X Akasa Power80+ 500W Power Supply Unit
1 X Akasa 965 Heatsink Fan
1 X Intel Q9300 (2.5GHz) Quad Core CPU
1 X Intel X38 Bonetrail Mainboard
4 X 1GB Crucial DDR3 Ballistix PC3-12800, Memory Modules
1 X AMD FireGL V5600 (Current Driver Release 8.453.1)
1 X Plextor SATA DVDRW+ PX-760A (Designated Drive D)
1 X Akasa 120mm Intake Fan
1 X Akasa 120mm Exhaust Fan
1 X Western Digital Caviar® GP 500GB IntelliPower Hard Disk, SATA 3 GB/s, 8MB Cache.
      Boot Disc Designated Drive C
1 X Western Digital Caviar® GP 1TB IntelliPower Hard Disk, SATA 3 GB/s, 16MB Cache.
     Data Disc Designated Drive E

Intel very kindly supplied the Q9300 Quad Core CPU and X38 Bonetrail mainboard to match.   The mainboard has an abundance of energy efficient & recyclable parts built into place  

Akasa, supplying the important chassis, PWM Heat Sink Fans, Intake and Exhaust fans, most importantly of all the Power Supply.   The 80-plus is qualified by EPRI solutions (USA) and meets EPS and Blue Angel conservation standards.

Hard Discs, once more we chose the new Green Powered drives from Western Digital which we have found to date live fully up to the stated claims of saving energy but maintaining optimal productivity output.

Graphic card of choice – the FireGL V5600 came from ATI.  A mid range professional workstation graphics card that has excellent performance though, minimal costings and all importantly draws less than 80 watts of power which in turn means we can implement the lower wattage energy efficient power supply.  Most importantly providing the end users a very high degree of productivity output.

This left the memory supplied by Crucial memory whose parts are fast and efficient; though also comply with current RoHS Standards.   Although these high end parts of memory may seem as if they would consume huge amounts of energy, they are actually very efficient.

With those parts in place the methodology of the previous green articles and papers were followed in accordance with our laid down protocols.  This way we could ensure that at each direct point of the commentary, accurate and unbiased comparisons could be seen immediately.   Continuing with the stringent standard operating procedures here; but to also ensure that like for like was completed fully; each hard disc that was used on the previous outing and it was completely low level formatted.   This would then ensure that no residue MBR was in place and this would give both Test Platforms a true identical like for like fresh set of hard drives.   Important point of note.  Using an APC UPS Back-Up ES 700.   This would ensure that no spikes or outages would interrupt the testing.   This backup unit maintains enough energy of 10 minutes to safely backup all work and safely shut down the system in the event of an outage.

Software Used.

Maintaining the like for like as covered within previous International White Papers, we utilised the exact same software packages looked at before found within systems within Corporate Workplace, Studio’s and the SoHo users and primarily used here to show both systems and graphic cards at their best.   

Previously, the final output of benchmarks results were not to be as important as we need to see that no productivity is lost but the actual wattage consumption has dropped, which in turn means less energy consumed but the productivity deadline output has been met!   Within this paper we look closely at the actual cost/performance ratios of the mainboards, CPU’s and actual performance output and therefore individual will be able to draw upon their own decisive conclusion at what suits each best.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3 with complete updates
SPECviewperf 10 ®
HD Tach Version 3.0.4.0  
SiSoftware Sandra XII SP1
MAXON CINEBENCH 10
Autodesk 3ds Max 9 SP2
SPECapc for 3ds Max™ 9
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
Diskeeper® 2008 Pro Premier Edition

Testing Procedures

General procedures:

1. Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3 had a full update of all current operating system fixes and security patches.  The system drivers and Microsoft .Net 3.5 & .NET 2.01 fixes were applied as they are essential requirements for the testing applications and ATI Catalyst Control drivers.

2. In order to provide unequivocal, accurate results each set of tests has been carried out in the order shown within pages 9 – 10 and page 19. This process ensures that the SPECviewperf® 10 & SPECapcTM fair-play rules are properly adhered to, while simultaneously allowing a constant build of application software which, in turn, allows the hard disk to build up a natural state of fragmentation.

3. Programme files have been installed to their default locations.

4. Before installation of Microsoft Windows XP Professional, the hard disks were low-level formatted (to eradicate any trace of the Master Boot Record and File Tables embedded on the hard disks).   All programme files and applications have been installed with the same parameters described in paragraphs 2 and 3.

5. The full installation of all software and professional applications used in this test totalled 13.7GB’s for Test System.   With this configuration Autodesk 3ds Max 9 SP2, SPECapcSM for SolidWorks 2007, SiSoftware Sandra XII Professional and finally HD Tach; the whole system I/O will be stretched to their fullest workload capacities.

6. Results obtained.   The results obtained are taken from the first run of each test after programmes installation.   This ensures the complete accuracy of the test and not an average of 3 runs which some think to be correct.   Certain programmes cache previous run results and therefore a true reflection of the first run and its factual result cannot be seen from supplementary runs.   This in turn means we see inaccurate recording of KWH consumption and time taken to run the test.

7. Before each test/render was completed, all temp folder files and system logs files were deleted.  Windows Prefetch folder was left intact.

8. The test systems had mild fragmentation levels that were promptly eliminate within the Diskeeper Test