SYSmark2004 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.

For a better visualization, we separated the results into three graphs: overall score, Internet Content Creation score and Office Productivity score.

SYSmark2004 – Overall	Score	Difference
Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (2.66 GHz)	368	6.36%
Core 2 Extreme X6800 (2.93 GHz)	367	6.07%
Core 2 Duo E6700 (2.66 GHz)	346	0.29%
Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66 GHz)	345
Pentium 4 550 (3.4 GHz)	203	70.44%

On the overall score Core 2 Duo E6750 achieved the same performance of Core 2 Duo E6700.

Core 2 Duo E6750 achieved a performance similar to Core 2 Duo E6700 on Internet Content Creation score and in all of its individual tests. Here you can also see that Core 2 Extreme QX6700 had a good advantage because of its four cores, even though these three CPUs run at 2.66 GHz.

Core 2 Duo E6750 achieved the same performance level of E6700 on the Office Productivity score. However, on Communication Core 2 Duo E6700 was 10.63% faster, but this CPU was 4.83% slower than the reviewed CPU on Document Creation. On Data Analysis both CPUs achieved the same performance level. Here you can see that the extra cores brought by Core 2 Extreme QX6700 made no difference, as office applications do not take benefit of having more than two cores (or two CPUs) on the system. Thus the CPU with the highest clock – Core 2 Extreme QX6800 – was the fastest.