Science Mark 2.0 is an attempt to put the truth behind benchmarking. In an attempt to model real world demands and performance, SM2 is a suite of high-performance benchmarks that realistically stress system performance without architectural bias.  Science Mark 2.0 is comprised of 7 benchmarks, each of which measures a different aspect of real world system performance.

Pov-Ray s a high-quality, totally free tool for creating stunning three-dimensional graphics. It is available in official versions for Windows, Mac OS/Mac OS X and i86 Linux. The source code is available for those wanting to do their own ports. We used Pov-Ray 3.7beta15 for all tests, since it supports Dual Core CPUs. We used the built-in benchmark as suggested by the developers.

In ScienceMark we have:

• Intel E6750 with DDR3 @ 1333MHz is 3.65% slower than Intel XE6800
• Intel E6750 with DDR2 @ 1000MHz is 4.74% slower than Intel XE6800
• Intel E6600 with DDR2 @ 1067MHz is 16.54% slower than Intel XE6800
• Intel E6300 with DDR2 @ 1067MHz is 40.97% slower than Intel XE6800

While in Pov-Ray:

• Intel E6750 with DDR3 @ 1333MHz is 9.57% slower than Intel XE6800
• Intel E6750 with DDR2 @ 1000MHz is 9.32% slower than Intel XE6800
• Intel E6600 with DDR2 @ 1067MHz is 23.26% slower than Intel XE6800
• Intel E6300 with DDR2 @ 1067MHz is 57.31% slower than Intel XE6800

- Nero Digital

One of the major advantages of having a Quad Core CPU becomes apparent when encoding Video. Nero Digital is one of the best known Digital formats, offering both ASP and AVC encoder profiles.

For our tests, we used the latest version of Nero Recode v2.3.1.8 as packaged with Nero Reloaded v7.5.0.1. As a source, we used a VOB file of 5 mins duration. We encoded for each processor in two modes (ASP, AVC) with exactly the same preferences (Same bitrate and Dual pass). The encoding time displayed below is what Nero Recode reported. The lower the time taken, the better. All results are displayed in seconds.

Summing the difference in both tests (AVC and ASP) we have

• Intel E6750 with DDR3 @ 1333MHz is 10.37% slower than Intel XE6800
• Intel E6750 with DDR2 @ 1000MHz is 11.64% slower than Intel XE6800
• Intel E6600 with DDR2 @ 1067MHz is 39.48% slower than Intel XE6800
• Intel E6300 with DDR2 @ 1067MHz is 69.37% slower than Intel XE6800