Test Setup
| System Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (Conroe 65 nm, 2.66 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache) |
| Motherboard | Asus P5K3 Deluxe, Rev. 1.01Chipset : Intel P35, BIOS : 0604 |
| Common Hardware | |
| RAM I | 2x 1024 MB DDR3-1800 (CL 7-7-7-20)Corsair Dominator TWIN3X2048-1800C7DF |
| RAM II | 2x 1024 MB DDR3-1800 (CL 8-8-8-27)OCZ DDR3 PC3-14400 Platinum Edition (OCZ3P18002GK) |
| Graphics Card | Zotac Geforce 8800 GTSGPU : Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS (500 MHz)RAM : 320 MB GDDR3 (1600 MHz) |
| System Hard Drive | 1x 150 GB 10,000 RPM, 8 MB Cache, SATA/150Western Digital WD1500ADFD |
| Data Hard Drive | 1x 150 GB 10,000 RPM, 8 MB Cache, SATA/150Western Digital WD1500ADFD |
| DVD-ROM | Teac DV-W50D |
| Software | |
| Nvidia Graphic | Forceware 162.18 |
| Intel Chipset | Version : 8.3.0.1013 |
| DirectX | Version : 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) |
| OS | Windows XP, Build 2600 SP2 |
Motherboard : Asus P5K3 Deluxe With P35 Chipset
Asus’ P5K3 Deluxe is the DDR3 top model of its P35 chipset motherboard line, ready for all current 65 nm processors up to the QX6580 quad core and the future 45 nm Penryn processor family. Although the chipset wasn’t designed for dual graphics modes, this model supports Crossfire graphics with one x16 and one x4 PCI Express slot. The x4 slot (the black one) can also be used for other PCI Express peripherals of any link width between x1 and x16. Three classic PCI slots are ready to accept existing add-on cards, which you might not want to throw away when upgrading your rig. However, using two dual-slot PCIe cards will prevent you from using the PCI slots adjacent to the PCIe slots.
The ICH9R Southbridge provides six SATA/300 ports with Native Command Queuing (NCQ) and the board has plenty of USB 2.0 ports and Firewire 1394a. The board comes with a massive copper heat pipe solution to cool the 8-phase voltage regulator, Northbridge and Southbridge. We had to use a fan when we overclocked this motherboard past the 500 MHz line (FSB2000).
