Test Systems:

V8 Test System:
Intel Xeon X5365 x 2 - 3.0ghz
Crucial Fully Buffered DDR2 667mhz - 4x1GB 5-5-5-15
Samsung Fully Buffered DDR2 667mhz - 4x1GB 5-5-5-15
Total 8GB Ram
Intel S5000VXN Motherboard 1333mhz (333mhz Quad Pumped)
XFX 8800 GTX XXX Edition
Coolermaster 850W PSU
Raptor X 150 GB 10K HD
Thermaltake Armor V2 Chassis
Liteon DVD Burner
Vista 64bit Enterprise Edition

Intel Test System:
Core 2 Extreme QX6800 - 2.93ghz
Core 2 Extreme QX6700 - 2.66ghz
Core 2 Quad Q6600 - 2.4ghz
Core 2 Extreme X6800 - 2.93ghz
Core 2 Duo E6700 = 2.66ghz
Intel D975XBX2 Motherboard (266mhz quad pumped)
Corsair Twin X 2048 8500 C5D DDR2 - 800mhz 4-4-4-12
XFX 8800 GTX XXX Edition
Coolermaster 850W PSU
Raptor X 150 GB 10K HD
Thermaltake Armor V2 Chassis
Liteon DVD Burner
Vista 64bit Enterprise Edition

AMD Test System 1:
Athlon 64 FX-74
Athlon 64 FX-72
Athlon 64 FX-70
Asus L1N64-SLI WS Motherboard (1ghz Hypertransport)
Corsair Twin X 2048 8500 C5D DDR2 - 800mhz 4-4-4-12
XFX 8800GTX XXX Edition
Coolermaster 850W PSU
Raptor X 150 GB 10K HD
Thermaltake Kandalf Chassis
Liteon DVD Burner
Vista 64 Bit Enterprise Edition

AMD Test System 2:
Athlon 64 X2 6000+ 3.0ghz
Athlon 64 X2 5600+ 2.8ghz
Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2.6ghz
Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe (1ghz Hypertransport)
Corsair Twin X 2048 8500 C5D DDR2 - 800mhz 4-4-4-12
XFX 8800GTX XXX Edition
Coolermaster 850W PSU
Raptor X 150 GB 10K HD
Thermaltake Kandalf Chassis
Liteon DVD Burner
Vista 64 Bit Enterprise Edition

52inch Sharp 1080p HDTV (1920x1080) DVI-HDMI and Dell 2407 (1920x1200) used to test all systems.

Special thanks to:
Intel for all the test equipment and processors.
AMD for all their CPU's.
Crucial for supplying additional fully buffered DDR2 ram for testing.
XFX for the 8800 XFX XXX Edition graphics card and their continued support.
Microsoft for Vista 64 Bit Enterprise Edition.

Gaming on the Xeon dual Cpu system?:
With extensive testing over a 3 week period we have found that no current mainstream game utilises all 8 cores, in fact only Supreme Commander would partially load 4 cores at population limit at "supreme AI" with multiple CPU opponents. Therefore testing games right now is a waste of time to ascertain the outright performance of the octo core system, however we will test "Ice Storm Fighters" a technology demo produced by Futuremark for Intel designed to showcase Intel's Quad Core CPU's. We will explain this later in the review. For those interested we can sum up that the Xeon 8 core system is no faster than the Quad core systems powering Supreme Commander and is actually slightly slower than the Extreme Edition X6800 with Oblivion.

Good Benchmarking Practice:
All tests were ran 3 times, over a period of 3 weeks to ensure results as accurate as possible. All tests were performed on fresh installations on Vista 64 bit Enterprise Edition with all drivers and updates performed. Nvidia Forceware drivers V158.18 were used throughout the testing.