To start off the benchmarking results for today, we’ll progress through the 32-bit results taken under WindowsXP SP2, and then make our way through the results obtained using the latest Beta Build of WindowsXP x64 Pro. I have to apologize for the lack of a comparison against AMD’s top processor offerings, as all I have currently at my disposal is a 3000+, certainly not an ideal measure against the processors we have today. I just wanted to address this issue before we delve into the results. In the graphs below, and on most subsequent pages, the dark blue bars represent EE’s, orange 6xx’s, and white 5xx’s. Now, onto the first of several benchmark results.

     First off, let’s examine the results obtained from SANDRA for Arithmetic ALU & FPU performance. As we can see from the results above, the 6xx series holds a fair performance lead over the 5xx series of processors, while both the 6xx and EE’s come in with similar results on a clock to clock ratio. The Extreme Edition CPU’s show a minor lead over the 6xx series, though one we factor in an error margin we see that these chips perform much in line with one another. When it comes to Arithmetic FPU performance, we find the same story as was seen in the ALU results.

     When it comes to both Integer and Floating Multimedia results, we see a similar story. In these results, we again see the Extreme Edition CPU’s holding a slight performance lead over the “Prescott 2” based 6xx processors. In turn, the 6xx series hold a minor performance lead over the 5xx series. In general, once again when error is factored in, each of these processors puts up similar scores overall. The “Prescott” core processors yield improved numbers over the “Northwood” core as we would expect, but the “Northwood” Extreme Edition CPU’s are still able to put up competitive results.

     Finally, we have the Integer and Floating results obtained from the memory bandwidth benchmark. Starting off with the Integer results, we see exactly what one would expect to find. The newer “Prescott 2” core 6xx processors put up negligible performance gain results than those posted by the “Prescott” core 5xx processors. Given that these two processors have the nearly identical architectural improvements, we should see these result similarities. The main item that stands out here in the performance difference between the 3.46GHz “Northwood” Extreme Edition and the 3.73GHz “Prescott 2” Extreme Edition. These results clearly show the bandwidth advantages of the “Prescott” core architecture over that of “Northwood”. When it comes to the Floating performance results, we see nothing different, with the 3.73GHz EE coming out well on top, as it should.