Experiment: Comparing Four Quad-Core Architectures At 2.8 GHz

Test System

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System Hardware
Hardware Details
Performance Benchmarks
Motherboard (Socket AM3) MSI 790FX-GD70 (Rev. 1.0) Chipset: AMD 790FX, BIOS: 1.7 (11/13/2009)
Motherboard (LGA 775) Gigabyte EP45T-UD3P (Rev. 1.0) Chipset: Intel P45, BIOS: F7 (04/16/2009)
Motherboard (Socket LGA1156) MSI P55-GD65 (Rev. 1.0) Chipset: Intel P55, BIOS: 1.5 (11/13/2009)
Motherboard (Socket LGA1366) Asus Rampage II Gene (Rev. 1.0) Chipset: Intel X58, BIOS: 1033 (11/11/2009)
CPU AMD AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition (45nm, 3.4 GHz, 4 x 512KB L2 and 6MB L3 Cache, TDP 125W, Rev. C3)
CPU Intel I Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550S (45nm, 2.83 GHz, 12MB L2 Cache, TDP 65W, Rev. E0)
CPU Intel II Intel Core i5-750 (45nm, 2.66 GHz, 4 x 256KB L2 and 8MB L3 Cache, TDP 95W, Rev. B1)
CPU Intel III Intel Core i7-920 (45nm, 2.66 GHz, 4 x 256 KB L2 and 8MB L3 Cache, TDP 130W, Rev. C0)
RAM DDR3 (Dual) 2 x 2GB DDR3-1600 (Corsair CM3X2G1600C9DHX) 2 x 1GB DDR3-2000 (OCZ OCZ3P2000EB1G)
RAM DDR3 (Tripple) 3 x 2GB DDR3-1600 (Corsair TR3X6G-1600C8D 8-8-8-24)
Graphics Zotac Geforce GTX 260² GPU: Geforce GTX 260 (576 MHz), Graphics RAM: 896 MB DDR3 (1,998 MHz) Stream Processors: 216, Shader Clock: 1,242 MHz
Hard Drive Western Digital VelociRaptor, 300GB (WD3000HLFS), 10,000 RPM, SATA/300, 16MB Cache
Blu-Ray Drive LG GGW-H20L, SATA/150
Power Supply PC Power & Cooling, Silencer 750EPS12V 750W
System Software and Drivers
Operating System Windows Vista Enterprise Version 6.0 x64 Service Pack 2 (Build 6000)
Drivers And Settings
AMD Chipset Drivers Radeon 9.4
Intel Chipset Drivers Chipset Installation Utility Ver. 9.1.1.1019
Intel Storage Drivers Matrix Storage Drivers Ver. 8.8.0.1009
Nvidia GeForce Driver Forceware 185.85