AMD Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition

Test Setup, Methodology, and Benchmarks Used:

Too keep things consistent and try to maintain and "apples to apples" comparison, we try to use as much common hardware across the board. Since the Athlon X2 is a DDR2 system, we went with that for the comparative Intel systems. Each system's BIOS was set to "Optimized Defaults", with a verification of CPU & Memory speeds and timings.

When reading over the benchmarks, please keep in mind that the Intel Q6600 & QX6850 are quad core, whereas the Intel E5200 and AMD X2 7750 are dual core.

We started out with a clean install of Vista and performed all the Windows updates to bring it up to current levels as of when this review was written. Then we installed all out benchmark programs and ran a disk defrag. Afterwards we disabled some un-needed Vista features that could affect results such as SuperFetch, System Restore, Defrag, Indexing, and Remote Assistance. Furthermore we ran the Bapco Auto-Configuration Tool and used its "Level 3" settings which disables a bunch more stuff:

• Disables screen saver
• Disables Windows Update
• Disables Desktop Cleanup Wizard
• Disables User Account Control (UAC)
• Disables the Sidebar
• Disables Windows Security Center warning messages
• Disables Windows Firewall
• Disables incoming Remote Desktop connections
• Disables Windows Error Reporting to Microsoft
• Prevents the Welcome Center from running at startup
• Disables Windows Defender

Each of the benchmarks were run at least five times, with the average being reported. The only exception being for a couple benchmarks that take a LONG time to run and have built-in redundancy. Thos benchmarks are SYSmark which has its own "3 Run" setting, and Vantage which was run twice.

The following tests were performed:

• General Application / System Performance:
  • Bapco SYSmark 2007 Preview - 1.05
  • Futuremark PCMark Vantage - 1.0.0 w/Nov 07 Hotfix
• Synthetic Benchmarks:
  • SiSoftware Sandra - 2009 SP1 (15.60)
  • WinRAR - 3.80
• 3D Rendering Performance:
  • POV-Ray - 3.7 beta 29
  • MAXON CINEBENCH - R10
• Video Encoding Performance:
  • Tech ARP's x264 Benchmark - v2.0
  • Windows Media Encoder 9 (x64 Edition)
  • Divx Encoder - 6.6.1 (Codec 6.8.5)
• Math Calculation Performance:
  • wPrime - v2.00
  • PiFast - 4.3
  • HyperPi - 0.99b (Note: Contains Super Pi Mod v1.5)
• Gaming Performance:
  • Lost Planet: Colonies Edition
  • Far Cry 2
  • Crysis Warhead
  • Enemy Territory: Quake Wars
  • Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark
  • Valve VRAD map compilation tool