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Performance

Although we did get some useful information from our preliminary tests, we'd still like to see whether or not they  translate into more applicable situations - games. So we ran some of our usual game benchmarks at default settings - 1024 x 768 without AA and AF. These tests are ran under three different configurations - 7 x 400 MHz, 6 x 400 MHz and 7 x 333 MHz. This is the order the results are arranged - the first group is results we got with 7 x 400 MHz and so on. An extra benefit of doing these tests is that we can see how much of an impact lowering processor clock and FSB have on performance (with these benchmarks).

Here is again our test setup - it's still the same setup as before.

Our test setup
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 and E6550 socket LGA-775
4 x 512 MB A-DATA Vitesta 5-5-5-18 PC6400 DDR2-SDRAM
2 x 1024 MB Samsung  7-7-7-20 PC8500 DDR3-SDRAM
Gigabyte Radeon X1950 Pro 256 MB graphics card
Gigabyte P965-DS3P Intel P965, P35-DS3P Intel P35 (DDR2) and P35-DQ6 Intel P35 (DDR3) motherboard
Hitachi Deskstar 250 GB Serial ATA 16 MB buffer 7200 rpm hard drives
LiteOn 1673S DVD-RW
FSP Epsilon 800 watts ATX/BTX power supply

Settings:
Core: 1.25 volt
DDR: 1.9 volt (default motherboard voltage)
DDR3: 1.5 volt (default motherboard voltage)
PCI-E clock: 100 MHz
DDR clock: 800 MHz for DDR2 (except when testing E6550 with P965 - memory is synchronous with FSB)
Memory Timings: SPD except otherwise specified

Windows Vista Home Premium Edition with the latest updates installed
ATI Catalyst 7.8 reference driver
Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility 8.3.0.1011
Realtek Semiconductor High Definition Audio System Software Ver:R1.72
DirectX 9.0c
all respected games used for benchmarks have been updated to their latest, final builds.

The results:

P35 to P965 - DDR2	E6300			E6550
	7x400	6x400	7x333	7x400	6x400	7x333
	Difference	Difference	Difference	Difference	Difference	Difference
Min	0.82%	2.00%	0.00%	-0.80%	7.21%	8.57%
Avg	1.52%	0.56%	2.14%	0.80%	2.86%	3.58%
Max	2.66%	1.92%	2.40%	4.98%	7.70%	9.67%

This game maybe old, but it is one game that have proven sensitive to FSB increases. The graph does show this, but as we can see this happens mostly on maximum fps. We'll have to dig a little deeper and look at the scores. The table above shed some additional light on the situation. From looking at average and minimum frame rates, the difference between the P965 and P35 is small if you pair it with the E6300. With the E6550, it's a different story. Remember, the larger difference at 7x333 MHz with the E6550 is likely due to synchronous memory settings - the memory is only running at DDR2 667 MHz rather than its rated speed of DDR2 800 MHz. However, that doesn't explain the difference at 6 x 400 MHz, which is still on the same level as the 7 x 333 MHz results. So, chances are this behavior is not entirely related to asynchronous memory settings.

P965	E6300		E6550
	7x400	6x400	7x400	6x400
	Compared to 7x333	Compared to 7x333	Compared to 7x333	Compared to 7x333
Min	31.18%	7.53%	19.05%	5.71%
Avg	6.95%	3.45%	6.66%	1.87%
Max	13.03%	4.61%	23.16%	4.36%
P35	E6300		E6550
	7x400	6x400	7x400	6x400
	Compared to 7x333	Compared to 7x333	Compared to 7x333	Compared to 7x333
Min	32.26%	9.68%	8.77%	4.39%
Avg	6.30%	1.85%	3.79%	1.17%
Max	13.31%	4.11%	17.89%	2.48%
P35 DDR3	E6300		E6550
	7x400	6x400	7x400	6x400
	Compared to 7x333	Compared to 7x333	Compared to 7x333	Compared to 7x333
Min	29.17%	7.29%	11.61%	5.36%
Avg	6.80%	1.99%	4.36%	0.90%
Max	11.65%	3.11%	18.15%	2.35%

The E6300 with the smaller cache appreciates the additional bandwidth from overclocking the FSB far greater than the E6550 on both the P35 and P965 chipset. This is expected since its very likely have to fetch data from memory more often (due to its smaller cache). The numbers on the table above illustrates this better than the graph earlier. Of course, this are in percentages - the additional frame rates are nice to have but we actually don't really need it anymore since the game is already very fast for fluid gameplay.

P965	E6550 to E6300
	7x400	6x400
	Difference	Difference
Min	2.46%	11.00%
Avg	9.20%	7.83%
Max	60.28%	46.74%
P35	E6550 to E6300
	7x400	6x400
	Difference	Difference
Min	0.81%	16.67%
Avg	8.43%	10.30%
Max	63.90%	55.08%
P35 DDR3	E6550 to E6300
	7x400	6x400
	Difference	Difference
Min	0.81%	14.56%
Avg	8.45%	9.79%
Max	66.43%	56.12%

In this table, we compare the E6550 performance relative to the E6300. We like to see if the behavior we saw with Sciencemark's Membench and SuperPi manifest again in this scenario. Of course, the E6550 with the larger cache is faster, but the question here is just how much faster? And more importantly, is there a difference between the P965 and P35 here. We also saw with higher FSB the role of a larger cache becomes less important - is that also true here?

Obviously, the difference can be clearly seen on the maximum frame rates. Its obvious the E6550 does run slightly faster with the P35 chipset. Interestingly enough, on lower clocks (6 x 400 MHz), we can also see differences on average and minimum frame rates. This confirmed our assessment that given a high enough FSB and bandwidth (and also processor clock apparently), you don't actually need a  larger cache.

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