Test Hardware

Under the B3 stepping, AMD’s recent improvements to its Phenom Line include the removal of TLB errata and improved overclocking capabilities. Its Phenom X3 8750 comes clocked at a relatively fast 2.40GHz.

AMD also makes chipsets, so we grabbed MSI’s CrossFire-capable K9A2-Platinum to compare its CrossFire-enabled 790FX to NVidia’s 780a SLI.

We tried Gigabyte’s factory-overclocked 8800GT to see what, if any, hybrid modes might be available with this particular model. Hybrid SLI was unsupported for this card using current drivers, but we still used it for benchmarks.

RAID controller performance tests are limitted by both drive size and transfer rate. Tired of waiting overnight for results using standard hard drives, we chose two Gigabyte I-RAM Box units for extreme performance.

The I-RAM Box doesn’t include memory, so Crucial sent eight 1GB DDR-400 CAS3 modules. Formerly top-value performance parts, DDR1 prices haven’t kept pace with DDR2. Still, these are a good value compared to competing DDR1 brands.

At least the motherboards themselves use somewhat modern memory. We chose two Crucial Ballistix PC2-6400 modules.