Review: Allan "Zardon" Campbell

 

Not much really needs to be said about UT2003, we have been using it in our benchmarks and testing for many months and its a good real world test for gaming. It will be interesting to see how this system @ 245 with the OCZ ram compares to systems used in previous benchmarks including a 64 bit opteron.

Amd Opteron 146 (2050mhz)
ASUS SK8V
4x512mb ddr266(dual channel) / 1x 512mb ddr266 (Samsung) CL 2.5
1x512mb ddr333 CL 2.5 Supplied by and thanks to Crucial - visit them here http://www.crucial.com/uk
Thermaltake Silentboost K8
Nvidia Geforce FX 5950 Ultra 256mb
Sapphire Radeon 9800 XT 256mb
IBM Deskstar 120 GXP 40GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
Sony CRX300E DVD/CDRW
Sony Floppy Drive
Mercury 400W PSU
AOC 19” 9GLR CRT

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) @ 3200+
ABIT NF7-S V2.0
512MB of ddr400 (2x256mb) Dual Channel (crucial) CL 3
Coolermaster Aero 7 Lite
Nvidia Geforce FX 5950 Ultra 256mb
IBM Deskstar 120 GXP 40GB 7200rpm Hard Drive
Sony CRX300E DVD/CDRW
Sony Floppy Drive
Mercury 400W PSU
AOC 19” 9GLR CRT

Barton @ 2450mhz @ 245 fsb 2x256 OCZ 4200 9800 XT

Amd Opteron 146 (2050mhz) 4x512 ddr266, 5950U

AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (Barton) @ 3200+200fsb, 5950u

Even though the video card used on the comparitive systems is a 5950u compared to the main system 9800 XT, its interesting to see only a 10 fps differential between the 245fsb OCZ based barton and the opteron in flyby and a 6 fps differential in botmatch. The stock 3200+ barton system @ 200fsb is really lagging to the higher fsb and it shows that higher rated memory plays such a large part in squeezing every ounce of performance out of the 32 bit platform.