Test setup & Benchmark methodology

Geoffreys' Test Setup
CPU	Intel E6600
Cooling	Zalman 9700 LED
Mainboard	MSI P7N SLI Platinum
Memory	2x1Gb TEAMGROUP Xtreem 800MHz 4-4-4-10-35-4-10-10-10-2T
Graphics	Leadtek WinFast PX9600GT 512MB Extreme
Other	FSP Epsilon 900 PSU Maxtor 80Gb PATA HDD Seagate 200GB SATA HDD Antec Nine Hundred housing 20" Dell UltraSharp 2007FP TFT monitor

In order to represent mainstream and high-end setups I used the setup at stock settings as well as at overclocked settings. Therefore I increased the CPU clock up to 3000MHz (333MHz x 9) and changed the CPU Core Voltage with 0,25V inside the BIOS (which puts it up to 1,48V read in Windows). The board allowed for more but since there is no active cooling on the Northbridge and MOSFET's I did not take the chance to go any higher, these components already became barely touchable when there is still more then 0,1V to add to the CPU Core voltage.



2 physical cores mean that we have to use multithreaded software in order to properly stress a Dual Core E6600 CPU. wPrime is an excellent tool to push the CPU to 100% load, we used its 1024M test in loop for 1/2h and measured the CPU core temperature with MSI Dual Core Center.