During our benchmarking sessions, we used the configuration listed below. Between our benchmarking sessions the only variable was the hard disk drive configuration.
 
Hardware Configuration

• Motherboard: Intel D975XBX2
• Processor: Core 2 Xtreme X6800 (Dual-Core, 2.93 GHz, 1,066 MHz FSB, 4 MB L2 memory cache)
• Memory: 2 GB DDR2-1066/PC2-8500, running at 800 MHz 5-5-5-15 (Corsair TWIN2X2048 memory kit)
• Cooler: Gigabyte Neon 775.
• Hard Disk Drives: Samsung HD080HJ (SATA-300, 7,200 rpm, 8 MB buffer).
• Video Card: XFX GeForce 7800 GTX.
• Video resolution: 1024x768x32@85Hz.
• Power Supply: Antec Neo HE 550.

Software Configuration

• Windows XP Professional installed using NTFS
• Service Pack 2
• DirectX 9.0c

Driver Versions

• NVIDIA video driver version: 91.47
• Intel Inf chipset driver version: 8.0.1.1002
• Audio driver version: Sigmatel 5.10.5143
• LAN driver version: Intel Pro/1000 9.5.12.0
• RAID driver version (Marvell): 1.1.0.38-beta
• RAID driver version (Intel): 5.5.0.1035

Used Software

• HDTach 3
• PCMark05 Professional 1.1.0
• SYSmark2004 – Patch 2

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.