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Performance

Although we did get some useful information from preliminary test, we'd still like to see what do those settings translate in a more applicable situations - games. So we ran our usual game benchmarks with the same setup under several settings: the default 266 MHz FSB, slightly higher 343 MHz and 400 MHz FSB at 2.4 GHz and last, 400 MHz FSB at 2.8 GHz. This tests also provide some other valuable information - we can see which games are bandwidth and / or clock sensitive. Another way of looking at it is this: Will games be able to use the additional memory bandwidth? These results are the averages of three runs.

Our test setup
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 socket LGA-775
2 x 512 MB A-DATA Vitesta 5-5-5-18 PC6400 DDR2-SDRAM
Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro 256 MB graphics card
Gigabyte P965-DS3P Intel P965 motherboard
Maxtor DiamondMaxPlus9 80 GBs Serial ATA 8 MB buffer
LiteOn 1673S DVD-RW
Tagan TG530-U15 530 watts ATX/BTX power supply

Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 installed
ATI Catalyst 7.1 reference driver
Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility 8.1.0.1006
DirectX 9.0c
all respected games used for benchmarks have been updated to their latest, final builds.

The results:

	7x343 to 6x266	6x400 to 6x266	7x400 to 6x266	6x400 to 7x343
Min	23.71%	26.46%	45.02%	2.75%
Avg	20.07%	23.23%	35.45%	3.15%
Max	6.16%	7.49%	19.87%	1.33%

The table above provides us with a much more clearer view of the results. By raising the FSB to 400 MHz, we effectively raise both the FSB and real processor clock by 50 percent, however we're only seeing a 35 percent increase overall. It would seem Call of Duty, or at least the Dawnville demo, don't respond all that well to increases in bandwidth. Higher clock is still offer the reigning performance factor, allowing increases in minimum and average frame rates. If we compare the results we got from 6 x 400 MHz and 7 x 343 MHz FSB, we can see this benchmark falls in line with our performance increase expectations based on SuperPi results - around 3 percent.

	7x343 to 6x266	6x400 to 6x266	7x400 to 6x266	6x400 to 7x343
Min	66.52%	76.82%	119.74%	10.30%
Avg	19.60%	25.47%	39.77%	5.87%
Max	17.23%	24.43%	36.93%	7.21%

There's a nasty bug with the Catalyst 7.1 that causes very low frame rates when shadows are enabled in this game. To get any meaningful results, we had to turn off shadows during testing for this article. Looking at the results, it's clear that minimum frame rates on this benchmark are heavily system related. Look at the increase we got when we overclock the system - close to 120 percent at 2.8 GHz. Average frame rates gains are not as spectacular, but still significant (39 percent). What about bandwidth increases due to higher FSBs? Homeworld 2 seems to respond very well to bandwidth increases, almost twice the rate we saw with SuperPi. In low frame rate situations, it's even more responsive (10 percent), one proof that higher FSBs and higher bandwidth can offer something significant for the gameplay experience in this game.

	7x343 to 6x266	6x400 to 6x266	7x400 to 6x266	6x400 to 7x343
Min	30.09%	35.40%	53.98%	5.31%
Avg	25.56%	28.42%	46.57%	2.86%
Max	23.08%	23.81%	43.22%	0.73%

From the results, it's obvious this game is very system limited. Look at the increase from 2.4 to 2.8 GHz - we gain almost twice the increase (46.57 percent compared to 25.56 and 28.42 percent). Increases in minimum, average and maximum frame rates stays pretty close with each clock increase (23 to 35 percent at 2.4 GHz and 43 to 53 percent at 2.8 GHz). So, are the gains clock or bandwidth related? On average frame the gains are lower than what we saw with SuperPi. The more interesting is the difference of performance increase in minimum fps - 5.31 percent. It's obvious low frame rates situations are also bandwidth related, but processor clock is still the main performance factor here.

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