We wanted to push the processor to its thermal and performance limits, so we picked Prime95 as our primary stress tool.

Prime95, version 23.8.1, under Windows XP Professional using Service Pack 2.

This option seems to be made for our purpose.

For measuring the temperature of Intel's zone 1 and 2 we used Chipzilla's Active Monitor, version 2.0.11.46.

Each specified temperature maximum is provided on the Intel Website under Thermal Zone Information. Of course we used the numbers provided for reference.

Next, we also wanted to monitor what the CPU did. For this job we used a non public utility that displays continuously the core clock speed and shows if a CPU throttles.