We measured the overall performance of the CPUs included in this review using SYSmark2004, which is a program that simulates the use of real-world applications. Thus, we consider this the best software to measure, in practical terms, the system performance.

The benchmarks are divided into two groups:

• Internet Content Creation: Simulates the authoring of a website containing text, images, videos and animations. The following programs are used: Adobe After Effects 5.5, Adobe Photoshop 7.01, Adobe Premiere 6.5, Discreet 3ds Max 5.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia Flash MX, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.
• Office Productivity: Simulates the use of an office suite, i.e. simulates sending e-mails, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. The following programs are used: Adobe Acrobat 5.05, Microsoft Office XP SP2, Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1, NaturallySpeaking 6, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.

This software delivers several results, all of them using a specific SYSmark2004 unit. First we have a SYSmark2004 overall score. Then we have a group result for each batch listed above. And for each batch, we have specific results: 3D Creation, 2D Creation and Web Publication for Internet Content Creation and Communication, Document Creation and Data Analysis for Office Productivity.

The results you can see on the chart below.

Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.4 GHz) achieved an overall SYSmark2004 score similar to Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8 GHz) and 7.58% higher than Athlon 64 FX-60 (2.6 GHz), 9.23% higher than Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6 GHz), 21.89% higher than Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4 GHz), 45.64% higher than Athlon 64 3800+ (2.4 GHz) and 54.35% higher than Pentium 4 550 (3.4 GHz).

Core 2 Extreme E6800 (2.93 GHz) achieved an overall SYSmark2004 score 8.10% higher than Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66 GHz), 10.04% higher than Athlon 64 FX-62 (2.8 GHz), 16.29% higher than Athlon 64 FX-60 (2.6 GHz), 18.08% higher than Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.6 GHz), 31.76% higher than Athlon 64 X2 4600+ (2.4 GHz), 57.44% higher than Athlon 64 3800+ (2.4 GHz) and 66.85% higher than Pentium 4 550 (3.4 GHz).

On Internet Content Creation batch, however, Core 2 Duo E6700 achieved the same performance level of Athlon 64 X2 4600+, losing to other dual-core CPUs from AMD we reviewed: Athlon 64 FX-62 was 21.31% faster, Athlon 64 FX-60 was 14.10% and Athlon 64 X2 5000+ was 11.80% faster.

On this same batch Core 2 Extreme achieved the same performance level of Athlon 64 FX-60, losing to Athlon 64 FX-62, which was 3.93% faster, and beating Athlon 64 X2 5000+ by only 4.40% and Athlon 64 X2 4600+ by 13.74%. It was also 16.72% faster than Core 2 Duo E6700 on this batch.

Office productivity, on the other hand, is where Core 2 made AMD CPUs to eat dust – probably propelled by their 4 MB L2 memory cache. The MINIMUM performance difference between Core 2 CPUs and other CPUs included in our review was 100%, meaning they were at least twice faster.

Here Core 2 Duo E6700 was 102.86% faster than Athlon 64 FX-62, 113.00% faster than Athlon 64 FX-60, 114.07% faster than Athlon 64 X2 5000+, 146.24% faster than Athlon 64 X2 4600+, 147.67% faster than Athlon 64 3800+ and 161.96% faster than Pentium 4 550.

On this same batch Core 2 Extreme X6800 was 23.24% faster than its brother Core 2 Duo E6700, being 150.00% faster than Athlon 64 FX-62, 162.50% faster than Athlon 64 FX-60, 163.82% faster than Athlon 64 X2 5000+, 203.47% faster than Athlon 64 X2 4600+, 205.23% faster than Athlon 64 3800+ and 224.07% faster than Pentium 4 550.

Results from individual benchmarks you can see on the above graph. In summary these new Intel CPUs lost to AMD dual-core CPUs on multimedia applications but won on office applications. Very interesting.