System Setup and Changes

This content was originally featured on Amdmb.com and has been converted to PC Perspective’s website. Some color changes and flaws may appear.

The system setup for these tests that follow are nearly identical to those of the Duron 1.1 GHz review that I did about a week ago. I do want to point a couple things out on this test system and setup here. Many of you will notice that the numbers that we come up with here are very different (sometimes higher, sometimes lower) than we have previously gotten. Well, for at least the next couple reviews, we changed several factors of the test setup, so the previous numbers are not valid.

First, we are using an AMD-supplied Gigabyte 7DX motherboard with as of yet unavailable bios for Morgan and Palomino core support. A new GeForce 3 card was also used, though we are using the same detonator drivers, so that should not make a considerable difference. Most importantly, is our switch to Windows XP as the base operating system for the test. I have been using XP here for a couple weeks now and am very impressed with the operating systems stability and performance. Since I think it will be catching on in the home market fairly soon, I thought it best to use XP for our current reviews (and probably future ones, as well).

So, in summary, please do not compare the test results we get today and in the future with ones previous of this. All the numbers you see in the graphs will show them being tested on the hardware below, so they are accurate. Here is the test system in its entirety:

Test System Setup
CPU 1 x 1.53 GHz AMD Athlon XP 1800+ Processor 1 x 1.4 GHz AMD Athlon Thunderbird Processor
Motherboard Gigabyte 7DX v4.3 Bios F5D
Memory 1 x 256MB TwinMOS PC2100 DDR DRAM
Hard Drive 20.5GB 7200 RPM IBM EIDE
Video Card GeForce 3
Video Drivers Detonator 12.90
Operating System Windows XP

Tests:

Quake III: Arena
3DMark 2001
SiSoft Sandra Memory Bench
SiSoft Sandra CPU Bench
Content Creation Winstone 2001
Business Winstone 2001
4 different SPEC view perf tests
Cachemem
ScienceMark
Sysmark 2001

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