System Set-Up and Software Used

On gaining the basic price point of the mainboard and CPU we therefore decided to build as an efficient system as possible and see what we could get for £1000.00 UK Pounds before VAT and Taxes.  For a mid range system here is what we came up with and it is after all a very professional system.   So for once the mid range units are now affordable and we have at our disposal another excellent workstation to clarify oddities that some might see or hear about within the community.

Hardware Suppliers for the Review

Intel EU for the supply of the 2.93GHz Intel® Core™ i7-870  and the Intel® Mainboard DP55KG (Kingsberg)

Kingston Memory  for the HyperX  DDR3 Memory  1333MHz Unbuffered Validated P55 mainboard memory.
 
ATI for the supply of the FirePro V5700 professional graphics cards.

Akasa for the supply of the Zen Chassis and  500 Watt Power Green 80+ PSU

Coolermaster for the supply of the Hyper TX3 Heatsink Fan

NVIDIA for the supply of the Quadro FX1800

Western Digital for the ever so reliable 300GB 10K rpm VelociRaptor

Systems Integrators, OEM’s and VAR’s should contact all companies directly for pricing and availability of all components.    Members of the public should contact their respective suppliers requesting the parts directly.

With the support and help of all the companies involved.   It gives you the reader a new choice on upgrade  paths that many of you look for here with the performance ratio’s each system has to provide.  One main e-tailer that can supply the EU reader readily all the parts listed you should pop over to SCAN and see what  todays best bottom dollar deal is on the parts listed.  System Integrators should be taking stock of their mainboards and CPU's soon after going to print, and we are in this instance predicting a sudden uptake of this technology as many have been waiting patiently for it to arrive.   Therefore get your orders in now

Benchmarks and Software used in 64-bit Mode

To maintain our target audience within the professional market place, though we are now seeing many old readers coming back who like the style we produce; we opted for this outing a complete set of professional applications benchmarks.   This in turn means all walks of life have a very good idea what they are about to buy and just how fast it really is from this factual article.  The test system shown within will be readily found within many arena's soon, therefore those just wishing the simple upgrade of either the ATI FirePro V5700 or NVIDIA Quadro FX1800 they can see readily how much performance gain has been achieved.   A dedicated page for each professional graphics card has been given so that the results will be clearly seen on how each company has performed individually.

Microsoft Windows XP Professional 64-bit SP2
SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP4 64-bit tests only
Everest Ultimate Ver. 5.02
POV-Ray Ver. 3.7 beta 33 64-bit
Cinebench 10 64-bit
SPECapc for SolidWorks 2007™
SPECviewperf® 10.0 64-bit tests only.   Tests ran at 1280 X 1024 Resolution.

Each set of tests has been applied on the clean system hard drives shown above to ensure that no residue drivers were left installed with all updates/patches applied.   A test/render has been completed many times over different periods of the system uptime.   Maintaining the fair play rules of SPEC® and following the lead of recently submitted results - HyperThreading disabled and Turbo Boost enabled and the memory left at Auto showing the default of 1333MHz.     Tests have been conducted at 1280 X 1024 @ 60Hz in 32 bit colour.   Results that have been shown within this article are from the application/benchmarks first run in accordance with the SPECviewperf® and SPECapc™ fair play rules.  Not an average of 3 runs as some places seem to think is right. 

The results speak very clearly for themselves as a picture paints a thousand words; so there is absolutely no need for a running commentary of the results gained from each system. 

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - The New Intel® P55 Mainboards
Page 3 - System Build Pictures
Page 4 - System Set-Up and Software Used
Page 5 - SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP4 64-bit tests  Part 1
Page 6 - SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP4 64-bit tests  Part 2
Page 7 - SiSoftware Sandra 2009 SP4 64-bit tests  Part 3 Memory Tests
Page 8 - Hard Drive Benchmarks
Page 9 -  HD Tach Ver. 3.0.4.0 and EVEREST ULTIMATE Ver. 5.03
Page 10 - PC MARK 2005 ADVANCED
Page 11 - ATI FirePro® V5700 Professional Graphic Card Tests
Page 12 - NVIDIA Quadro® FX1800  Professional Graphic Card Tests
Page 12a - Conclusions and Award