It’s been a long time since the zero-point system and benchmarks we use to test PCs and other components have been updated, and it shows. The enthusiast world has switched from AMD to Intel and a new OS is upon us.
To select our new hardware and benchmarks, a committee of editors sat around a box of doughnuts and debated the direction of performance computing. We discussed the typical tasks power users perform and how we could make our benchmarks pertain to those needs. Then, we discussed what PC configuration to use to test all new hardware in the coming year. Our zero-point rigs represent the basic level of hardware we expect a power user to have six months from now. These machines serve not only as a reference point for readers of our system reviews but also as test beds for almost all the hardware and software we review.
Generally, we update our zero-point config and all our benchmarks every 12 to 18 months, but this time, we’re breaking from convention. We’re sticking with old gaming benchmarks for the time being. Why? With high-profile titles like Crysis on the cusp of release, we decided to continue running Quake 4 and FEAR benchmarks until newer, more graphically intensive DirectX 10 titles are available. At that time we’ll fold those tests into our benchmark suite.
The Hardware
Although considered high end by most, our zero-point system really stacks up as a midrange machine
CPU
When we spec’d our new test machines, we decided quad core was a must-have feature. We would have considered both AMD and Intel, but as you know, AMD is a no-show in the consumer quad-core game. We normally reach for the top-tier CPU, but this year, we selected a CPU that most enthusiasts on a budget would buy, not what we all want. Intel’s fast, new QX9650 was out of our price range, so the company’s Core 2 Quad Q6700 got the job. At $500, it’s pricey but not a wallet breaker. For our zero-point, we’ll run it at its stock 2.66GHz clock even though we know it’ll run at 2.93GHz all day without breaking a sweat.
Motherboard
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| EVGA’s nForce 680i SLI board marks the fourth Nvidia-based chipset that we’ve adopted for our zero-point systems. |
EVGA’s 680i SLI will soon be supplanted by Nvidia’s follow-up to the chipset, but we’ve chosen it for its affordability and proven ability as a workhorse. Plus, BIOS updates from Nvidia have been timely and the chipset supports SLI. Maximum PC historians will note that the 680i SLI is the fourth generation of nForce chipsets we’ve adopted since we stopped being an Intel-only chipset shop.
Videocards
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| A pair of EVGA 8800 GTX boards gives our machine potent gaming capability at all resolutions. |
The best-performing card right now is EVGA’s GeForce 8800 Ultra, which sells for more than $700, making SLI cost prohibitive. That’s why our machine uses a pair of EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX warhorses. The duo gives us smooth performance at just about any resolution you’d play games at.
Memory
8GB? 4GB? Nah. Within the limitations of a 32-bit OS, the sweet spot for system RAM is sadly still 2GB. To meet our zero-point system’s needs, we reached for 2GB of Corsair DDR2/800 Dominator 8500C5D modules. The modules are rated to run at 1,066MHz, which will be useful when an individual machine has to be overclocked to test cooling gear.
Hard Drives
Because we constantly wipe our test beds with a clean hard disk image, we’re eschewing a RAID setup (disk imagers work inconsistently with RAID). We didn’t want to totally give up on performance, though, so our main boot drive is a single 10,000rpm 150GB Western Digital Raptor drive. A supplemental 7,200rpm 500GB WD Caviar pulls bulk-storage duties for holding drivers, benchmarks, and image files.
Optical Drives
Burning Blu-ray and HD DVD discs isn’t critical for every editor, but viewing high-resolution movies is an important part of testing many products. With that in mind, we reached for LG’s GGC-H20L drive, which reads both Blu-ray and HD DVD discs and gives us DVD and CD burning capability. The drive has a SATA interface and will likely mark the end of PATA in our Lab.
Soundcard
As good as the EVGA 680i SLI boards are, they still use Realtek’s onboard audio, with its fake-ass EAX support. To fill the void, Creative Labs’s X-Fi XtremeGamer gives us hardware audio support in XP (and the Vista drivers almost work too!).
Power Supply
We’ve long used PC Power and Cooling’s PSUs in our zero-point machines. In almost 10 years of testing, we’ve had only one supply ever fail, and that was due to impact damage that no editor ever owned up to (Josh!). In a shocking move, we’re stepping back from our previous test bed’s insanely high wattage in favor of a quieter Silencer 750 quad supply.
