Gateway FX530: Mad Cows and Quad Core Overclocking
by Jarred Walton on February 9, 2007 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
Test Setup
As we tried to determine what sort of systems we should include in our FX530 comparison, the logical choice became the various quad core systems tested in our AMD Quad FX article. That will allow us to compare results of the overclocked QX6700 with a base configuration, and we also get to look at how the current AMD quad core (dual socket) solution stacks up. Needless to say, given that QX6700 was already faster in almost every benchmark, the results aren't going to be too favorable towards AMD right now. The fact that a major OEM is willing to release an overclocked QX6700 system, however, is a testament to the excellent design of Intel's Core 2 architecture. The overclocked QX6700 definitely consumes a lot of power compared to many of the Core 2 Duo solutions, but the truth is that it's really not that much more power-hungry than many of the faster Pentium D offerings.
We will be running most of the benchmarks used in the AMD Quad FX article, although we will have to omit the Blu-ray plus video encoding multitasking benchmarks as we did not have a Blu-ray drive on hand for this review. What we're primarily interested in determining is how much of a performance increase we get with the 20% overclock, given that we're also running slightly slower memory than in previous tests. We expect to see an average performance improvement of around 15% in solutions that are CPU limited. We will also include a few additional synthetic benchmarks to further investigate the FX530's performance. In a few instances, we will also provide results from previously tested systems for comparison.
The system we tested was initially shipped with Windows XP MCE 2005 installed, but recently Vista officially became available. Right now, the choice to get XP MCE is still there, but in the near future the FX530 will likely become a Vista-only solution. Those looking to move to the new OS will not have a problem with this, though we're still not ready to make the switch on most of our PCs. Vista has its good points, but the driver situation still needs work. If you choose to get XP installed, a free upgrade to Vista is currently available. That is set to end in March, after which customers might be forced to get Vista. Most people are eventually going to move to Vista, but waiting for things to settle down a bit more certainly won't hurt.
As we tried to determine what sort of systems we should include in our FX530 comparison, the logical choice became the various quad core systems tested in our AMD Quad FX article. That will allow us to compare results of the overclocked QX6700 with a base configuration, and we also get to look at how the current AMD quad core (dual socket) solution stacks up. Needless to say, given that QX6700 was already faster in almost every benchmark, the results aren't going to be too favorable towards AMD right now. The fact that a major OEM is willing to release an overclocked QX6700 system, however, is a testament to the excellent design of Intel's Core 2 architecture. The overclocked QX6700 definitely consumes a lot of power compared to many of the Core 2 Duo solutions, but the truth is that it's really not that much more power-hungry than many of the faster Pentium D offerings.
| Gateway FX530XT | |
| Motherboard: | Intel BTX 975X (custom) |
| Processor: | Core 2 Extreme QX6700 Overclocked (12x266MHz 3.20 GHz 2x4MB shared L2 cache) |
| Heatsink/Cooling: | Custom BTX CPU HSF with dual 120mm fans at front and rear of case |
| RAM: | 2x1024MB Hynix DDR2-667 5-5-5-15 |
| Graphics: | ATI Radeon X1950 XTX CrossFire with ATI Radeon X1950 XTX EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX |
| Hard Drives: | 2x150GB Western Digital Raptor 16MB 10000 RPM in RAID 0 |
| Optical Drives: | HL Data Storage GSA-H11N 16X DVD+RW Lite-On SOHC-4836V 16X DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo |
| Audio: | Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi |
| TV Tuner: | ATI Theater 550 |
| Power Supply: | 700W Delta Electronics |
| Operating System: | Windows Media Center Edition 2005 SP2b |
We will be running most of the benchmarks used in the AMD Quad FX article, although we will have to omit the Blu-ray plus video encoding multitasking benchmarks as we did not have a Blu-ray drive on hand for this review. What we're primarily interested in determining is how much of a performance increase we get with the 20% overclock, given that we're also running slightly slower memory than in previous tests. We expect to see an average performance improvement of around 15% in solutions that are CPU limited. We will also include a few additional synthetic benchmarks to further investigate the FX530's performance. In a few instances, we will also provide results from previously tested systems for comparison.
The system we tested was initially shipped with Windows XP MCE 2005 installed, but recently Vista officially became available. Right now, the choice to get XP MCE is still there, but in the near future the FX530 will likely become a Vista-only solution. Those looking to move to the new OS will not have a problem with this, though we're still not ready to make the switch on most of our PCs. Vista has its good points, but the driver situation still needs work. If you choose to get XP installed, a free upgrade to Vista is currently available. That is set to end in March, after which customers might be forced to get Vista. Most people are eventually going to move to Vista, but waiting for things to settle down a bit more certainly won't hurt.
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JarredWalton - Friday, February 9, 2007 - link
I've used a Dell XPS 410, and other than the top-end 700/710 most of the XPS cases are pretty drab as well. That said, I'm one of those people that prefers function over form, and in some instances PCs that others think look great I find to be downright gaudy. It's all up to personal preference, and the case is generally well designed in my view. Unfortunately, BTX appears to work well for cooling and noise but doesn't do much for compatibility.I can't say that I've had any experience with Delta Electronics beyond supporting a ton of PCs and laptops that used that brand (all Dell systems). Many PSUs failed after a few years, but that was in a warehouse environment where dust was a real problem. That they could last even two years is pretty good, and the failure rates were probably only on the order of 5% or so (compared to a motherboard failure rate of at least 15% after three years). However, I don't have any equipment to really test PSUs, so I can't speak from any standpoint other than personal experience when discussing what PSUs are good and which aren't.
Operandi - Friday, February 9, 2007 - link
Dust will kill any PSU regardless of quality. Typically speaking Dell builds very reliable machines so the fact that Dell would source Delta is a testimate to their quality.sprockkets - Saturday, February 10, 2007 - link
They used to use Delta all the time, then, like HP and probably others, went to using HIPRO, and those die all the time.Zebo - Friday, February 9, 2007 - link
Dust kills, how so? How important is it to keep computer in general clean? Only time I ever clean is when I rebuild them- about every 6 months, not due to any kind of failure though. TIAJarredWalton - Friday, February 9, 2007 - link
Dust buildup on heatsinks reduces their ability to dissipate heat. I've seen a few GPUs where the fans literally melted because they got too hot! Besides that, dust can gum up the insides of the fans, causing the bearings or whatever else to stop working. I can't even guess at how many fans I've had fail over the years due to dust. So, if you live in a dusty environment, a good cleaning every 3 months probably isn't a bad idea. Most parts will last at least a year, even with neglect, but after that a lot of parts will start to fail if they aren't regularly cleaned.ddogsoldier - Wednesday, November 4, 2015 - link
so here it is nov,2015 . i have the fx530 q6600 do to my wife turning a nalgene botle full of water over own my asur pc witch was a lot newer and qiut fast with a nice turbo factory overclock when needed. had a friend who had 2 of these and new to the pc world i wanted to get one checked out with my pc guy to make sure it would run fps gmaes like warface , or planetside 2 and so on. one of the 2 was a d6600 and the other was a q6600 little did i know at the ime that one was quad and one was a duol core but i just had gotten lucky and grabbed the q6600. the pc set at my repair man shop for 4 months as i found the acer for a still didnt need the fx530 until the wife and her great spilledge of water . ya all 38 ounces . so now i have been running this q6600 for about 4 months with aMSI gtx560 ti twin frozer 2g/ddr5 .
holly cow guys. with nothing over clocked i scoring on windows 7 score a
7.1
7.4
7.4
7.1
5.9 <<hints hard drive
i running 166 fps in warface and running faster than 89% of windows users are with a blazing boot time of 27seconds
processor intel (R) Core (TM) 2 quad cpu Q6600 @ 2.40 GHz 2.39GHz
ram 4.00 (3.50) usable
hard drive 467gb with 416 gb free
on a 64bit windows 7 system
so i couldnt be any happier my self . all these years latter and this thing is pumping out power with no heat at all after hours and hours of hard core gaming for 8 to 12hr days '.
i payed a total of zero dollars and no cents . i have a total of 40 and its in the video card off of craigslist and stolled it might as well say . cant find another for under 250 $ hope this is helpful to maybe a budget gamer that just might run up on one of these beast of a pc still holding its own