Everest Ultimate Edition 4.2 Performance

In order to give yet another view of memory performance, bandwidth and latency, we have incorporated the newest Everest Ultimate Edition 4.2 into our benchmark mix. With many platforms upgrading the CPU bus clock and DDR2/DDR3 memory speeds, the question of memory performance has never been more important. The Everest benchmarking suite offers several different memory performance modules, and has quickly become a standard for many hardware evaluations.

For this review, we have updated to the very latest Everest Ultimate Edition version 4.2, which is essential for valid Core 2 Duo/Extreme/Quad and Athlon 64 X2 platform testing. Our benchmark testing centers on the Memory Read, Memory Write and Memory Latency tests, which should give us an overall view of the various platforms, and exactly how the 45nm Core 2 Extreme QX9650 stacks up.

The Memory Read test is our first Everest benchmark, and while we do see a real division between the Intel 1333 and 1066 MHz processors, it's the AMD contingent that posts the highest overall scores. The Core 2 Extreme QX9650 still manages to outperform the other Intel dual and quad core models, and is very impressive from that point of view.

The Memory Write test may be another victory for the Athlon 64 X2 processors, but the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 shows once again that it's the class of the Intel field. It puts some real distance between itself and the Core 2 Extreme QX6850, finishing well ahead.

The Core 2 Extreme QX9650 posts a memory latency rating below the 70ns mark, but it still cannot compete against AMD and its integrated memory controller. This is an area where higher-bandwidth/higher-latency DDR2-1066 takes its toll, although overall memory performance is still better.