Testing and Results

Before I begin any benchmarking or overclocking, I thoroughly stress the CPU and memory by running Prime95 on all available cores for 12 hours. If no errors are found, I move on to a gaming stress test. To do this, I use Prime95 again to stress the processor, while running an instance of FurMark's stability test on top of this. If the computer survives this test for 2 hours without lockup or corruption, I consider it to be stable and ready for overclocking. After achieving what I feel is stable overclock, I run to these tests again for certainty. The goal of this stress testing is to ensure the clock speeds and settings are stable before performing any benchmarks. I adopted this method from another writer here at Benchmark Reviews and it seems to do a great job of flushing out what only seem to be stable overclocks.

Once the hardware is prepared, we begin our testing. Each benchmark test program begins after a system restart, and the very first result for every test will be ignored since it often only caches the test. This process proves extremely important in the many gaming benchmarks, as the first run serves to cache maps allowing subsequent tests to perform much better than the first. Each test is completed five times, with the average results displayed in our article.

In this review, we will be comparing the performance of the Athlon-II X3-445 against two other Athlon-II processors, the X2-255 and the X2-260. These dual-core processors run at very similar clock speeds to the Athlon-II X3-445. We have overclocked the X2-260 from it's original 3.2GHz to 3.6GHz, and we have also overclocked the Athlon-II X3-445 to 3.9GHz for the testing. In addition to these, we have tested an Intel Core i7 920 using almost all of the same test equipment, only changing the motherboard and RAM. All of the tests except for one set of the gaming tests were performed using the NVIDIA GTX 285 video card. This was to ensure that the performance of the CPU wasn't bottlenecked at any time by the GPU. The gaming tests were run using both the GTX 285 and the on-board Radeon HD 4290 video card.

Intel X58 Test Platform

• Processor: 2.66GHz Intel Core i7 920 Bloomfield/Nehalem BX80601920 ($280)
• Motherboard: MSI X58 Pro LGA1366 Intel X58 ATX
• System Memory: Kingston 6GB (3 x 2GB) KVR1333D3K3/6GR DDR3 1333MHz (PC3 10666) (CL7-7-7-20)
• Video: MSI N285GTX-T2D1G-OC NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB
• Disk Drive 1: OCZ Agility Series OCZSSD2-1AGT30G 30GB SSD
• Disk Drive: SEAGATE Barracuda ST31500341AS 1.5TB SATA
• Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-24B1ST DVD Burner
• PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W
• Enclosure: NZXT GAMMA
• Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium x64

AMD Socket AM3 Test System

• Processor: 3.1GHz AMD Athlon-II X2-255 ADX255OCK32GM ($75 - should drop after X2-260 launch)
• Processor: 3.2GHz AMD Athlon-II X2-260 ADX260OCK23GM (MSRP $76)
• Processor: 3.1GHz AMD Athlon-II X3-445 ADX445WFK32GM (MSRP $87)
• Motherboard: Biostar TA890GXX HD
• System Memory: 2x2GB Patriot Gamer Series DDR3 (1333MHz@7-7-7-21)
• Video: MSI N285GTX-T2D1G-OC NVIDIA GTX 285 1GB; Onboard ATI Radeon HD 4290
• Disk Drive 1: OCZ Agility Series OCZSSD2-1AGT30G 30GB SSD
• Disk Drive: SEAGATE Barracuda ST31500341AS 1.5TB SATA
• Optical Drive: ASUS DRW-24B1ST DVD Burner
• PSU: Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W
• Enclosure: NZXT GAMMA
• Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium x64

Benchmark Applications

• EVEREST Ultimate Edition v5.30.1900 by Lavalys
• Passmark PerformanceTest v6.1
• PCMark Vantage v1.0.2.0 by Futurmark Corporation
• SiSoft Sandra 2010.1.16.26
• Cinebench v11.5
• Resident Evil 5 Benchmark

• Devil May Cry 4 Benchmark

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