E2140 vs XP1700 and benchmarking

suomi · 11 Jul 2007 at 14:05

Looking to have a new system at Christmas, should have all the pennys saved then.

The base of the system is going to be a Giga GAP35CDS3R M/B with a E2140 C2D. Was going to be E6600 but it is at the moment £100 more. Hopefully in a year's time the price will be down or I may start looking at a quad :eek:

Now I expect to see some improvement over the old AMD XP1700.

I would like to measure what both chips are doing as stock. Can any one recommend a good brenchmarking programme (better if its free

) that will work with both chips.

Cheers

Results below

benktlottie · 11 Jul 2007 at 14:09

suomi said:
Looking to have a new system at Christmas, should have all the pennys saved then.

The base of the system is going to be a Giga GAP35CDS3R M/B with a E2140 C2D. Was going to be E6600 but it is at the moment £100 more. Hopefully in a year's time the price will be down or I may start looking at a quad

Now I expect to see some improvement over the old AMD XP1700.

I would like to measure what both chips are doing as stock. Can any one recommend a good brenchmarking programme (better if its free ) that will work with both chips.

Cheers

Super PI, Cinemark 9.5, SiSoft Sandra and 3dMark06

Richdog · 11 Jul 2007 at 14:10

Ahh-so suomi-san, you want brenchmarking programs?

Good mainstream programs for testing the difference between CPU's are...

Super PI
SANDRA 2007
3DMARk 2001
Aquamark 3

People will likely add loads more...

melbourne720 · 11 Jul 2007 at 14:26

3d mark 01 is good at testing cpus, even though it is supposed to test graphics cards!

If you do try games, supreme commander on a low resolution might be a good test.

suomi · 10 Jan 2008 at 15:52

Finally got the new rig at Christmas, it is basically

Artic 7 Pro cooler
C2D E6400
Gigabyte M/B GA-P35C-DS3R
Gainward Bliss 7900GS
2x1GB Ge.IL PC2-6400C5

Was going to originally get an E2180, but the chance of an E6400 came along at no extra cost. So 1.8GHz L2 1MB v’s 2.13GHz L2 2MB seems to make sense to me.

Originally was after a ATI 3850 , but ended up with the Gainward. It seems fine to me for what I have done so far ( I am not a big gamer). Want to get Crysis in a couple of months. Is the Gainward ok for this or should I think about an ATI3870?

With memory so cheap at the moment, getting another 2x1GB seems to be a no brainer. Guess with the O/S being XP 32-bit I won’t see the full amount.

Sadly not had the chance to overclock it yet. How far can the E6400 go on air? As looking on here they don’t seem to be as popular as E2180 or E6600. When i can get back to Cumbria, where the rig is, I will have a go at over clocking.

I can now encode 10 minutes (650mb) of video in 15 minutes, where as before it took 1 hour 20 minutes.

Benchmarking

XP1700

3DMark2001 2,523
AquaMark3 4,592

E6400

3DMark2001 31,259
AquaMark3 113,427 (GFX 20,856 - CPU12,432)

Now wanting to get the video encoding down below a minute for a minute of video.

May think about changing the chip at the back end of the year to either E8400 or maybe a Q6600.

Hesky82 · 11 Jan 2008 at 14:36

You picked a good chip, it has a fairly decent multiplier. The overclocking potential of both the E2180 and E6400 will be pretty similar, 3.2ghz is a given that’s for sure, on that mb maybe more. The Artic 7 Pro for the price can’t be beaten.
If you think it encodes well at the moment, wait until its running a decent overclock!!

Crysis is a monster game, with a 7900gs you should get it just about playable at 1280x1024 on medium settings with FSAA off.

More than 2gig of ram on XP is just not needed in most cases, and more than 3 will not be utilised fully.

melbourne720 · 11 Jan 2008 at 14:40

Crysis is a game that eats high end rigs for breakfast. Get either a 8800 GT or a 3870 before you attempt to run it.

well done for getting the rig ordered and built.

Hesky82 · 11 Jan 2008 at 14:51

Not really dude, if you’re happy with it on medium settings and you don’t game at high resolutions you can happy run crysis on a fast last gen system.

Saying you need an 8800gt or 3870 minimum to run the game is not correct.

A lot of people aren’t concerned about running games with max eye candy switched on and not everyone has huge widescreen tft's that demand high native resolutions.

I’m not one of those people though

melbourne720 · 11 Jan 2008 at 15:34

Why play Crysis on low settings? You might as well play Far Cry and save yourself 25 quid?

imho

J.D · 11 Jan 2008 at 15:36

melbourne720 said:
Why play Crysis on low settings? You might as well play Far Cry and save yourself 25 quid?

imho

Lol , so true

.

Lightnix · 11 Jan 2008 at 15:39

Where in FarCry can you kill an enemy by throwing a tree at them that you just knocked down with your bare hands?

You should see some quite significant improvement over your old Athlon XP, though.

I was planning on running a similar test with my old P3 (1.12Ghz Tualatin) and an underclocked Celeron 420 to see if I could get a decent comparison.

melbourne720 · 11 Jan 2008 at 15:45

Lightnix said:
Where in FarCry can you kill an enemy by throwing a tree at them that you just knocked down with your bare hands?

There was a secret level no-one told you about

Hesky82 · 11 Jan 2008 at 16:09

melbourne720 said:
Why play Crysis on low settings? You might as well play Far Cry and save yourself 25 quid?

imho

you know thats rubbish dude

low is not medium settings anyway :rolleyes:

Dont you get annoyed that your shinny new "DX10" card still cant play crysis all flat out in "DX10" mode?

pegasus1 · 11 Jan 2008 at 16:28

Hesky82 said:
you know thats rubbish dude low is not medium settings anyway

Dont you get annoyed that your shinny new "DX10" card still cant play crysis all flat out in "DX10" mode?

My 8800GTX is neither new or shiny but at 650/1600/2130 it will have a good go at Crysis. So no i personnaly dont get annoyed.

Hesky82 · 11 Jan 2008 at 16:43

High in DX10 mode yes, but thats not flat out is it.

Try very high with shader and post processing set to very high, running at your native resolution of 1920x1200 with 4x AA.

J.D · 11 Jan 2008 at 17:12

Hesky82 said:
High in DX10 mode yes, but thats not flat out is it.

Try very high with shader and post processing set to very high, running at your native resolution of 1920x1200 with 4x AA.

Wow. Throw out settings to use that just about no machine could run that smoothly and wait for a reply. That's the decent thing to do

.

I know what you are saying though. Top end hardware isn't needed but what Melbourne posted about playing Far Cry instead wasn't far off the mark either. Well from the benchmark I can run it pretty well (not tried the game yet).

This is only one game though so please let's not start a war over one title with high expectations as it's pretty pointless.

melbourne720 · 11 Jan 2008 at 17:26

Hesky82 said:
you know thats rubbish dude low is not medium settings anyway

Dont you get annoyed that your shinny new "DX10" card still cant play crysis all flat out in "DX10" mode?

Touché

Although I am still on XP

Hesky82 · 11 Jan 2008 at 17:42

J.D said:
Wow. Throw out settings to use that just about no machine could run that smoothly and wait for a reply. That's the decent thing to do .

I know what you are saying though. Top end hardware isn't needed but what Melbourne posted about playing Far Cry instead wasn't far off the mark either. Well from the benchmark I can run it pretty well (not tried the game yet).

This is only one game though so please let's not start a war over one title with high expectations as it's pretty pointless.

No wars intended dude, but fact is Suomi pc will run Crysis at medium settings at completely acceptable resolutions. Melbourne recons if he doesn’t have a modern card he might as well play far cry instead. How’s that statement even remotely correct lol

Far cry was a great game at the time, but it simply doesn’t have the physics or the slick gaming dynamics Crysis has. If you can only play Crysis on low you will no doubt struggle to play Far Cry at max, so in any case Crysis would look better.

I’m sure Melbourne is just like me, we must have games looking at their best or in Crysis case the best they can look within reasonable settings (ie not super mega high at 2560 x Whatever) But fact is we account for probably 10% of pc gamers

melbourne720 · 11 Jan 2008 at 17:55

Crysis on medium

Far Cry on Highest

Make up your own minds people

J.D · 11 Jan 2008 at 18:05

Hesky82 said:
No wars intended dude, but fact is Suomi pc will run Crysis at medium settings at completely acceptable resolutions. Melbourne recons if he doesn’t have a modern card he might as well play far cry instead. How’s that statement even remotely correct lol

Far cry was a great game at the time, but it simply doesn’t have the physics or the slick gaming dynamics Crysis has. If you can only play Crysis on low you will no doubt struggle to play Far Cry at max, so in any case Crysis would look better.

I’m sure Melbourne is just like me, we must have games looking at their best or in Crysis case the best they can look within reasonable settings (ie not super mega high at 2560 x Whatever) But fact is we account for probably 10% of pc gamers

I did say that he wasn't far off the mark which means that I get what he is meaning and a small part of me agrees even though I know Crysis is a better game all round. It's only one title though and I don't think anyone in the world should build a rig to run this game. I've got the game installed but have only ran the benchmark on it as I'm not a big fan of or was eagerly waiting on Crysis.

I agree, when you're a part of forums like these and know a bit more than the average joe we get picky as hell when it comes to gaming and then we sit puzzled as our friends are gaming away happily on lower cards, slower CPU's etc, etc. We tend to forget what we can find playable.

Being in the that 10% isn't easy

. We are all performance snobs

.

Well that screenshot above speaks volumes about how pretty Far Cry still looks and it does look better than Crysis at medium. I know that doesn't make up for physics and game play but just looking at the above screenshots, you cannot deny what looks more attractive to you?

.