During our benchmarking sessions we used the configuration listed below. Between our benchmarking sessions the only different device was the CPU being tested and also the motherboard, since AMD processors use a different socket from Intel processors.

Hardware Configuration

• Motherboard (Athlon 64 socket 754): Chaintech ZNF3-150 (nForce 3-150, October 13th, 2003 BIOS)
• Motherboard (Athlon 64 socket 939): ABIT AV8 (VIA K8T800, June 20th, 2005 2.1 BIOS)
• Motherboard (Athlon XP): Gigabyte 7NNXP (nForce 2 400 Ultra, September 12th, 2003 F14 BIOS)
• Motherboard (Pentium 4): Soyo P4I875P (Intel 875P, August 19th, 2003 BIOS)
• Motherboard (Pentium 4 “Prescott”): Intel D875PBZ (Intel 875P, P21 BIOS)
• Memory: Two 256 MB PC3200 modules from TwinMOS, in DDR Dual Channel configuration on Soyo P4I875P, Intel D875PBZ, Gigabyte 7NNXP and ABIT AV8 motherboards.
• Hard Drive: Maxtor DiamondMax 9 Plus (60 GB, ATA-133)
• Video Card: Gigabyte Radeon 9800 Pro
• Screen Resolution: 800x600x32

Software Configuration

• Windows XP Professional installed using NTFS
• Service Pack 1A
• Direct X 9.0B
• ATI video driver version: 7.95 (6.14.10.6396)
• Intel Inf Driver: 5.0.2.1003
• nVidia nForce driver version: 3.13
• VIA Hyperion driver version: 4.55 VP1

Used Software

• SYSmark2002
• PCMark04 Business
• 3DMark2001 SE
• 3DMark03 Pro 3.40
• Quake III Arena 1.32
• Sandra 2004 9.89

We adopted a 3% error margin. Thus differences below 3% cannot be considered relevant. In other words, products with a performance difference below 3% should be considered as having similar performance.