RED LINE DYNO RESULTS

I had my first trip to the dyno at JMS yesterday. Despite my RL being factory rated at the flywheel for 205hp @ 5600rpm and 200 lb-ft of torque at 4400rpm, it actually made 238hp @ 6400 and 209 lb-ft of torque at 4400rpm at the front wheels. Factoring in a conservative 10% drivetrain loss, that means my Saturn is actually making 260hp at the flywheel. With these excellent results, I'm looking forward to the GM Performance Stage II upgrade which should put me close to 300 flywheel horsepower!

Check out the video I threw together and the dyno chart below:

ION STORM!

It's hard to believe (for me, at least) that May 1st 2010 was the twentieth anniversary of Pirate Press Publications. Pirate Press began life in the Computer Science lab at South Alabama where I toiled away creating the article on a word processor and printing it off on a dot-matrix printer. Despite that milestone, I'm afraid I have to admit that Pirate Press is a victim of the old adage, "The more things change, the more they stay the same". Two decades ago, the first issue of Pirate Press was devoted to a test drive of a 1991 Toyota MR2 Turbo. It was a complete redesign from the first generation MR2 and as such boasted an all-new 2.0-liter turbo four-cylinder generating 200hp. It was quite a sports car for that time period, but I was sure (like most of Generation X) that by 2010 we would have flying cars. Unfortunately, the concept of flying cars is laughable now as our future utopia never materialized and the global economy is on the verge of collapse. As such, and completely without intention, my new car ended up being remarkably similar to the one that launched Pirate Press a fifth-century ago.

I decided on another Saturn primarily because the Ion Red Line is the car I always desired my 1997 Saturn SC2 to be. Early on, I wanted to add a supercharger or turbocharger to the SC2 but it wasn't feasible from a practicality or expense standpoint. A full custom turbo kit could run as high as $4000 and require near daily ministrations to prevent an oil spill similar to BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. On the other hand, a supercharger was only slightly less expensive and necessitated removing the air-conditioning, something not acceptable during half of the year in Mississippi. Furthermore, the stock 1.9-liter LL0 motor was not built to withstand more than 5 lbs of boost or two hundred horsepower (whichever occurred first).

Sure, GM killed Saturn along with Hummer, Oldsmobile and Pontiac last year but I have a history with Saturn, unmatched by any other car brand, that stretches back to 1992 when we purchased our first one. In that time, my family and I have accumulated over half-a-million miles in Saturns. We accrued nearly half that amount on our 1992 SL1 which was sold to a family friend in 2002 with 220,000 miles on its odometer. Next up, was a 1997 SL2 which we sold with 125,000 miles, and following that was my wife's 2001 L300 which we traded-in with 110,000 miles on it. Finally, there's my SC2 daily-driver that is fourteen-years old and has 167,000 miles on it.

In fact, the whole weekend of driving to Daytona Beach on May 1st to pickup my Red Line after purchasing it on Ebay was eerily similar to how we procured our Saturn L300 from nearby Jacksonville, Florida six years earlier. And in fact, it almost didn't happen because I nearly pulled the trigger on a 2004 Red Line in Las Vegas last year. Now, I'm glad I waited as the Red Line I bought has to be one of the nicest in the country. It was purchased new at Saturn of Daytona Beach and was registered in nearby New Smyrna Beach. With a total production run of just 5,827 vehicles between 2004-2007, there are actually fewer Ion Red Lines than Ferrari Testarossas. My silver one-owner example has a low 29,000 miles on it and is one of only 274 built in 2006. The '06 model is actually the most desirable, as the 2004-2005 cars had the wiring reversed on the intercooler pump causing it to malfunction or burnout, and the 2007 lineup did not have the Recaro seats. The Red Line was in concours condition and still even had the original 215/45-ZR17 Dunlop tires. Normally, I wouldn't be thrilled about the factory rubber but in this case it proved that the car wasn't abused. As it stands, I think the former owner was probably a little neurotic and possibly obsessive-compulsive as well. I base this assumption on evidence I gathered while stranded in a deserted Daytona Beach Industrial park. You see, MapQuest steered us wrong on Tomoka Farms road so we were the recipients of an unwanted twenty-five mile urban sightseeing tour of downtown Daytona that culminated at the dead end of a dirt road that looked like something out of Resident Evil. It was here that I discovered that I could not engage the reverse gear so I dutifully retrieved the owner's manual from the glove box. Upon so doing, I discovered a Da Vinci code of highlighted passages in the owner's manual. Sentences and sometimes entire paragraphs were swathed in vivid marker colors such as sky blue, fluorescent pink, day-glo orange and bright yellow. Clearly, the previous owner had some system of correlation between the colors and the subject matter but I never did crack the code, nor did I figure out how to back the Saturn out of there. Fortunately, I was able to pull forward and we escaped the abandoned area before the seemingly imminent horde of zombies arrived.

Once back at the hotel, I called my salesman to inquire about the reverse gear problem. As soon as I told him I couldn't get the vehicle into reverse, he erupted into uproarious laughter which was somewhat comforting, but also a little disturbing. "I thought you had owned a Saturn!?!" he blurted out before instructing me on how to disengage the reverse-gear lockout. I informed him that I had owned four other Saturns, and had driven many performance cars including several Ferraris, and had never come across such an issue. Despite that, the Gary Yeomans Ford dealership we visited is actually one of the largest in the U.S. as well as the top-selling Roush Mustang dealer in the nation. This is somewhat paradoxical because despite Daytona's reputation as the most popular beach in the world, it's pretty small as far as Florida's metro cities are concerned. With a population of just 65,000, that's scarcely grown any in twenty years; it's larger than Panama City but smaller than Pompano Beach. And with a median family income of $33,000, most of the residents cannot even afford one of Gary Yeomans' best-selling $50,000 Roush 427R Mustangs. Due to that, a large amount of the business the dealership does is out-of-state and overseas. In fact, the very first Ford GT was delivered to Gary Yeomans and promptly shipped to the Middle East. The same goes for their initial allotment of 2011 Shelby GT500s which also were all sold abroad.

Daytona is a sleepy beach town that just happens to host a NASCAR Speedway and the infamous Bike Week. But what really attracted me was the copper-streaked sand, which stands in stark contrast to Florida's typical sugar-white beaches. However, the unusual sand is what makes Daytona Beach one of the few places in the world where a car can be driven on an ocean beach without fear of getting stuck. This was the impetus for the original Daytona Beach Road Course and is what spawned the Daytona Speedway in 1959. We drove by the Speedway and you just can't miss it. It's a foregone conclusion that it has to be big for race cars to circulate at 200 mph, but television coverage simply doesn't do it justice. Honestly, the size of it reminds me of Downtown Disney.


DELTA FORCE

The 2003 Saturn Ion was the first car to debut with GM's all-new Delta platform. Obviously, it's a tremendous improvement over my 1997 SC2's tired Z platform which (unbelievably) traces its roots all the way back to the 1965 Corvair. Furthermore, the structural integrity of the Delta platform allowed the engineers to eschew any type of strut-tower brace which is usually necessary in such high-performance applications. The Red Line's wheelbase is only an inch wider than my SC2 but the extra five inches in length gives a lot more legroom and luggage space. And where the SC2 feels cramped and claustrophobic, the Red Line's cabin is positively cavernous in comparison. Adding to the driving comfort is a pair of grey leather Recaro sport seats which are hands down the best seats I've ever used. The deep side bolsters fit snugly and the firm lumbar support was a godsend for my lower back on the 550-mile trip. It's no wonder Recaros are standard equipment on both the new Ferrari 599 and Lamborghini Gallardo.

With the Red Line being the first vehicle I've owned that came from the factory with a CD player (I know-- I'm an audiophile luddite) I'm a little ashamed to admit that I haven't so much as turned on the radio. And it even has a factory amp mounted in the trunk which is another first for me. I can pretty much cop to using everything else during the 8-hour trip like the cruise-control, headlights, turn signals and windshield wipers which I painfully discovered were in dire need of replacing. Eventually, I suppose I'll have to turn on the radio if for no other reason than to change the clock from Eastern to Central time.

The Delta frame's front-strut and torsion-beam rear suspension provides a lot more stiffness over my SC2 without a harsh ride. Larger antiroll bars, heavier springs and firmer damping work in conjunction with the aggressive Dunlop 215/45 Z-rated tires on 17x7-inch forged wheels. GM engineers lowered the ride height by 10 millimeters over the regular Ion while raising the braking performance. Bosch 4-channel, 11.6-inch anti-lock vented front rotors replaced the 10-inch stock units while the rear drums are swapped out for 10.6-inch solid rear rotors. The brakes work so well that they halt the Red Line from a 70 mph panic stop in a scant 165-feet. In contrast, my SC2 needs another twenty feet to stop from the same speed. And as anybody who's ever been in an accident can attest, sometimes even a few inches can be the difference between danger and disaster.

RED WHINE

The Red Line's raison d'être is the Eaton M62 supercharger. If that names sounds vaguely familiar, it's because the M62 has been used in a variety of applications from the pedestrian Pontiac Bonneville SSEi to the exotic Lotus Exige. It's a real workhorse that doesn't even require a fluid change until 100,000 miles and is still going strong on several Red Lines with mileage's north of 150,000. To make the standard Ion's mild-mannered 2.2-liter Ecotec capable of handling the forced induction, GM's Performance Division destroked the engine to 2.0-liters and fitted new oil jet-cooled pistons with larger connecting rods that dropped the compression from 10.0:1 to a more supercharger-friendly 9.5:1. The Ecotec was also beefed-up in other areas too: A new 8-bolt steel crank protects the bottom-end while bigger intake valves enhance the breathing up top. A heavy-duty alternator helps cope with the extra power demands and the Red Line also gets Electronic Throttle Control (ECT) which utilizes an electronic signal, rather than a traditional cable, for immediate throttle response. Lastly, the engineers even borrowed the old drag-racer's trick of moving the battery to the trunk for better weight distribution.

To keep the Red Line out of the redline, a factory air intake with a cone-shaped filter was designed and it flowed so well that Chevrolet adopted it for the Trailblazer SS's 400hp LS2. Further cooling takes place courtesy of a Laminova air-to-liquid intercooler that circulates engine coolant through a heavy-duty radiator with larger fans. Maximum boost is limited to 12 psi which generates 205 hp and 200 lb-ft of torque for increases of 60 hp and 55 lb-ft over the standard Ion. The Red Line also benefits from a lighter flywheel and a stronger F25 five-speed transmission with one-inch shorter throws. Additionally, the driveline has a higher torque capacity and thicker, equal-length half shafts are used to minimize torque steer. Finally, to expedite delivery of the spent gasses, the narrow 1.75-inch factory exhaust was scrapped for a larger 2.5-inch system with a high-flow catalytic-converter and low-restriction muffler.

QUICKSILVER

With more mechanical upgrades than Iron Man, the Ion Red Line leaves my hot-rodded SC2 in the dust. A standard Ion with the 2.2-liter 140hp engine pokes along with a 0-60 time of 8.4 seconds and a quarter-mile in 16.5 seconds at 85 mph. My modified SC2 with an Injen intake, JG Big-Bore throttle-body, high-performance motor mounts, Hotshot header, test pipe and Thermal R&D Exhaust has run a 7.1-second 0-60 and a 15.8 at 91 mph. The Red Line rips to 60mph in 5.9 seconds and speeds through the quarter in 14.4 seconds at 100 mph. That performance even puts it ahead of the 15.2 at 96 mph I recorded in my modified Mustang GT at Gulfport Dragway. And it will match the Mustang in top speed also by charging up to 145 mph.

But while the Mustang was a one-trick pony, the Red Line is as adept on a race track as it is on a drag strip. GM's Performance Division spent months tuning the Red Line's suspension and handling characteristics at Germany's famed Nürburgring. According to Performance Division chief Mark Reuss, the Ion's much-maligned electronically-assisted steering has been tightened from 3.5 turn’s lock-to-lock to 2.9 which results in much more realistic feedback. The result is a stock Red Line covered the 33 left turns, 40 right turns and 170 bends of the Nürburgring’s 14-mile-plus Nordschleife circuit in a tick over nine minutes. By comparison, a Corvette C5 does it only twenty seconds faster.

THE DAWN PATROL

Determined to get an early start for the eight-hour drive ahead of us, we left Daytona Beach at 6 a.m. Unwittingly, my route to I-95 had us taking A1A through Ormond Beach to Flagler Beach. Granted, it wasn't the most efficient path but the scenic thirty-mile drive between the sand dunes and yucca bushes as the sun rose over the Atlantic was absolutely breathtaking. On that early Sunday morning, there wasn't any other traffic and it gave the experience a strangely surreal quality. Every car enthusiast has a mental list of their unforgettable drives and it ranks right up there with a trip I'd taken down Pacific Coast Highway from Monterey to Pfeiffer Beach in 1994.

Flagler Beach is split in two by the Intracoastal Waterway and sits on the Atlantic Ocean. It's also the only place I even remotely dipped into the boost for the length of the trip. We had been caught by a red light at the bottom of the Flagler Beach Bridge and I was beside a small Audi that looked maybe to be an A4 or A6. As the light turned green, we both accelerated away briskly and I short-shifted into third at around 40mph. I then flat-footed the throttle and the Red Line's demeanor immediately changed. It surged ahead with a startling urgency and I could hear the intoxicating whine of the supercharger. Within a couple seconds the speedometer was passing 80 mph and I was hard on the brakes. Hard to believe, but it's been 18 years since I've had that kind of a rush behind the wheel of a car I owned.

LIFE IS A HIGHWAY

Once on I-95, I settled in for the long haul with the cruise-control on 75 mph. The a/c was blowing a steady stream of cool air and it was a welcome relief from Florida's famous humidity, particularly since the air-conditioner hasn't worked in my SC2 for the past two summers. The interior of the Ion features a styling exercise that leaves people fiercely divided-- they either love or hate the McLaren F1-style center-mounted dash. Granted, to a casual observer the placement looks awkward, but I found it to be remarkably intuitive and after a few minutes I completely forgot it was there. The Red Line's euro-influences are abundant in the chrome-rimmed instrumentation where the gas gauge doesn't have a traditional "F" for full and "E" for empty. Instead, a full tank is denoted by a full-circle and an empty tank is a quarter-full (or some would argue, quarter-empty) circle. When the needle completely drops to empty, a "Low Fuel" warning message is activated and I've deduced that exactly one gallon remains in the tank. Depending on driving style, I've heard of owners averaging 22 mpg with a heavy foot while I managed 27.75 mpg from the combination of city and highway driving. The Red Line's gearing has been leveraged so that the supercharged motor turns fewer revolutions per minute than the one in my SC2. At 70 mph, the Red Line is loafing along at 2750 rpm while the higher-strung SC2 hits 3100 rpm. Obviously, this is favorable for fuel-economy as well as reduced engine wear, but I still can't expect the Ion to match the SC2's fuel economy since it carries more mass and has more horses to feed.

By sheer coincidence, we ended up at the same Florida Mile Marker 162 rest area that we had stopped at on our trip back from Jacksonville in 2004. I evangelized the thrills of it then in my Pirate Press review, and was pleased that it had not changed any. Looking like it was designed by an out-of-work Formula 1 architect, the asphalt snakes around with elevation changes and sweeping turns on both the entrance and exit. The stock Dunlops were not in the best condition for such an exercise but it did give me a brief opportunity to probe the Red Line's performance envelope. On one of the heavily-radiused turns, I began dialing in more speed, feeling what the car was doing. The speed-sensitive steering was nicely-weighted, with just the right amount of communication. The harder I pushed, the more the Red Line flattened out into a very neutral arc with safe and predictable handling. As the speed climbed, I heard the tires start to squeal in protest so I knew the limit was very close and backed off. Unlike a legitimate road course, there wasn't the safety of a run-off area if I overcooked a corner.

NEGATIVE IONS

At a dry weight of around 2,800 lbs, the Red Line outweighs my SC2 by a whopping 500-lbs and the additional high-performance parts bump it 100-lbs over an Ion 3 Quad-Coupe. Despite Saturn's celebrated use of plastic for the ground-effects, spoiler and many interior pieces, it's a heavy car. Of course, heavy is relative when most new performance cars tip the scales close to 4,000 lbs. A decade of engineering separates my SC2 from the Red Line and it's no secret that those intervening years of safety-Nazi features and watchdog electronics have ballooned the weight. A drive-by-wire throttle is great until the sensor jams and the cruise control doesn't work for the two-hundred miles between Jacksonville and Tallahassee. With my sciatica flaring up, I began to ruminate about the simplicity and effectiveness of my SC2's ancient, cable-actuated throttle linkage. It also developed a check-engine code, P01189, when I got to Alabama that turned out to be for the supercharger inlet pressure sensor. Apparently, this is a common malady among Red Lines and I had Joe Bullard Cadillac (my nearest authorized Saturn repair facility) replace it for $250. They also found a leaking front axle seal that was fixed for an additional $300.

The first owner was obviously not a gear head because he opted for the fog lights in the $1,375 Competition Package over the boost gauge and Quaife limited-slip differential. I like to see that I'm getting what I paid for, and as such would appreciate knowing how many pounds of boost the blower is generating. Also, it seems GM purposely underrated the motor as Sport Compact Car measured 197 hp at 6450 rpm at the wheels on their Dynojet, which works out to 217 flywheel horsepower given a conservative 10-percent drive train loss. The bad news is that research and development constraints kept the car from being even better: The 6450 rpm rev-limiter abruptly cuts the fuel to the cylinders even though the engine is still building power and the ECU artificially limits the supercharger's boost to 12 psi. Rick Kewley, GM Performance Division Manager, cites a truncated durability cycle as the reason for scaling back the Red Line's power.

Also, some interior materials don't seem to be as sturdy as in my 1997 SC2 which is three times as old and has over five times the mileage. The Red Line's black vinyl shifter boot is worn at the top and pieces began flaking off around the seams. The Saab-sourced five-speed is surprisingly notchy and the rubber clutch and brake pedal pads also need replacing as they are pretty filed down from use. Funny thing is, GM wants $50 for another vinyl replacement shifter boot or I can order an aftermarket handmade leather one with custom stitching for the same amount. Checking the cabin air filter behind the glove box revealed that it had never been changed and explained why the air flow felt weak. It also proved that virtually nothing on the car is easily accessed as I sliced my index finger on the sharp plastic edges. Such doesn't bode well for my maintenance plans of changing the fuel filter, oil filter and air filter. I've read comments that just changing the air filter is a two-hour job as it's tucked under the supercharger. In the Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not category, our seven-seater Freestyle SUV boasts a dead-pedal but the performance-oriented Ion does not. Additionally, rearward visibility is crippled by the optional Ferrari F40-style deck lid spoiler and the exemplary Recaros seem very vulnerable to stains; I spilled some water on the driver seat and it left a nasty spot. However, a Recaro representative suggested that I use Blue Coral's Dry Cleaning Foam to remove such blemishes.

Saturn recommends 91 octane for the Red Line, but I doubt the Ford dealer sprang for premium fuel so I was conscious not to exercise it too hard until I had a chance to fill-up with Chevron's 93 octane which was $3.35/gallon in Tallahassee. And speaking of expensive fluids, the Red Line, like the Dodge Viper, Nissan GT-R, and entire Porsche lineup ships from the factory with Mobil 1 synthetic oil. Furthermore, the Red Line requires a staggering seven quarts for its small 122 cubic-inch motor which is more than was required by my Mustang's 302 cubic-inch V8. At around $7 per quart, it looks like I may have to take out a small loan for each oil change.

CONCLUSION

Aside from the 550-mile trip back from Daytona Beach and the 60-mile trip to the dealer, I've only driven the Red Line a handful of times in the first two months of ownership. However, I did manage to run it once down my legendary test strip, which is a stretch of pavement near my home. If I had to guess, I'd say it's roughly 1000-feet, as it's longer than an eighth-mile but shorter than a quarter-mile and I've tested every vehicle I've owned (and even some I haven't) since 1990 on it. My SC2 consistently pulls 79 mph through it and my Red Line's one run yielded 90 mph which is right in line with expectations. Tack on another 10 mph for the last 320-feet and it has my Red Line clearing the quarter-mile at 100 mph. Regrettably, prior to that run I tagged the rev-limiter when I discovered that the motor revs so furiously that the tachometer lags behind the actual engine revolutions by about 500 rpms. As such, I have to shift at an indicated 6000 rpm to match the 6500 rpm redline on the instrument cluster.

Regardless, the build and ride quality makes the Ion feel like a Cadillac in comparison to my SC2. And GM offers three different Stage kits with such things as larger fuel injectors and a smaller supercharger pulley to significantly increase the Red Line's horsepower. In fact, Eaton even makes a bigger, direct-replacement supercharger that's good for 300 horsepower. With the SC2, the addition of the header, off-road pipe and Thermal R&D exhaust made for a very raspy, ear-ringing exhaust. So as much as I'd like to get rid of the catalytic converter on the Red Line, I'm going to resist the temptation. I'm determined to upgrade it but not at the expense of the daily driveability. That notwithstanding, I'm looking forward to a lot more seat time and even a trip to the dyno this fall.

Fourplay: Q9650 Quad-Core Benchmarks

It's been almost exactly four years since I first upgraded to a dual-core processor. Prophetically, I concluded the article with the statement, "Make no mistake, dual-core CPUs are here to stay". In retrospect, perhaps I should amend that to read, "multi-core CPUs are here to stay" because it's clear that with future applications, there is no room for just a single-core or even dual-core processor. In fact, it's becoming increasingly difficult for a mono-core processor (even a relatively fast one like a 3.2GHz Pentium 4) to successfully handle several tasks at once such as running a virus scan, checking email and editing a Word document.

For the past couple years, I've observed the maxim that it's better to run a high-clocked dual-core rather than a slow-clocked quad-core as few applications and games utilized more than two cores. However, with the release of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and DiRT 2, I can no longer ignore the need for a quad-core processor. Granted, they're both demanding games, so I initially dismissed the occasional choppiness as a limitation of the video card. But I was still puzzled as to why my brand new Radeon 5850, one of the fastest video cards available, would be struggling. Finally, I spotted the problem when I checked the task manager and saw that both games were completely maxxing out my dual-core E8500.

It was September 2006 when Intel unveiled the first quad-core processor at their annual developer conference. The Core 2 Extreme QX6700 was built on the Kentsfield core, featured 8MB L2 Cache, a 65nm fab, and a 1066MHz FSB. It was clocked at 2.66GHz and cost $1,000. Originally, it was used to showcase the game Alan Wake and its multi-threaded ability to utilize four processor cores and run entirely on DirectX 10. However, this has become a sore spot among computer enthusiasts as it was recently announced that when Alan Wake arrives this summer, it will be an Xbox 360 exclusive. The irony is palpable as the Xbox features neither a quad-core processor nor DirectX 10.

Despite that letdown, Alan Wake did provide us a glimpse into how a brand-new multi-threaded PC game such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2 might use a quad-core processor. The game spawns five independent threads which are for Audio, Physics, Rendering, Streaming, and Terrain Tessellation. Obviously, the Audio thread is responsible for all sound in the game, and it is also said to be one of the least CPU dependant. Conversely, the Physics thread can be the most demanding, consuming up to 80% of one core by itself, particularly if there is no hardware support such as PhysX. The Rendering thread organizes the data to be sent to the GPU for display, while the Streaming thread loads the game off the hard drive. By dedicating one thread to this, it helps the game seamlessly transition from one area to the next. Finally, the Terrain Tessellation thread is tasked with procedurally generating the environment as it unfolds, which helps minimize objects popping into view. A key benefit of DirectX 11 is hardware tessellation but to what degree it is implemented in the DX11 portion of Battlefield is currently unknown. Regardless, with new and future multi-threaded games, it's very easy to see why even dual-core processors are no longer capable of properly supporting them.

After much deliberation, I decided on a 3GHz Core 2 Quad Q9650 to replace my 3.16GHz Core 2 Duo E8500. It was the path of least resistance and allowed me to keep my current setup and simply swap out the CPU. Frankly, with Intel's over-inflated prices of their last-generation Core 2 lineup, I could have purchased a new Socket 1156 motherboard and Core i5 processor for the same $330 that the Q9650 cost. But that's just Intel's way of trying to force customers to buy their newest chips. Still, it's quite a premium considering that the 2.83GHz Q9550 is $100 less and the 2.66GHz Q9450 is $200 cheaper. Essentially, I'm paying two benjamins for a paltry 340MHz. However, as I learned later with the benchmarks, megahertz still plays a very important role no matter how many cores are available.

HEATSTROKE

The Q9650 benefits from several architectural improvements over Intel's original quad-core QX6700. For starters, the Q9650's core is code named Yorkfield and possesses 50% more L2 Cache (for a total of 12MB), a smaller, more efficient 45nm fab and a faster 1333MHz FSB. In essence, it's basically two 3.0GHz E8400's joined together. However, the stock fan and heatsink are the same that shipped with my two year-old E8500 and is remarkably cheap considering the $330 price tag. In retrospect, I'd have been better off removing the motherboard and spending $25 on an aftermarket cooler rather than struggling with Intel's bargain-bin unit. Locking the heatsink in place so that it maintained direct contact was quite a feat and several times the entire PC shut down from overheating. At one point, I thought I might actually snap the motherboard in half trying to secure the fan. When I did manage to get it up long enough to check the BIOS, the CPU was hotter than a George Foreman grill. The temperature was a sizzling 200 degrees Fahrenheit, nearly double the safe operating limit. Eventually, with the motherboard removed (something I'd tried to avoid) and the fan fully secured, temps were closer to room temperature. And thankfully, like that New Year's Eve 1999 party, there was no permanent damage. But out of curiosity, I checked one of our new Dell workstations outfitted with a 2.4GHz Q6600 quad-core processor and noticed that Dell also eschews the ill-functioning Intel cooler. Dell's custom unit is comprised of a towering aluminum heatsink ventilated by a massive 120mm fan. It's both ultra cool and quiet-- resting temps were a chilly 30 degrees Celsius and even under full load it only spiked a little past 40 degrees. In comparison, my sweltering system operates at nearly double those values. Finally, it's worth noting that with the new Core i7 980X, Intel has adopted an entirely different cooling design that attaches via a back plate and four screws. My question is what took them so long?

DISCLAIMER: It's worth noting that these tests are more of an apples to oranges comparison, because the E8500 is heavily overclocked to 3.66GHz versus my choosing to run the Q9650 at its factory setting of 3.0GHz to get an accurate baseline. Had I chosen to return the E8500 to its original 3.16GHz speed, the difference would have been much more pronounced. However, because I run the E8500 continuously at 3.66GHz, I figured it would most accurately represent the true increase on a daily basis. Unfortunately, synthetic tests such as the ones below don't seem to accurately reflect the improvement I'm seeing in actual games. For this reason, I declined to use the results I'd gathered from SiSoft Sandra 2010 as they likewise seemed well off the mark.

3DMARK VANTAGE

Futuremark's DX10 extravaganza is growing long in the tooth, and a DX11 replacement is due soon, but it's still a very demanding benchmark. Typically, 3DMark is used to test the video card, but in this case I was more interested in the CPU tests. Sure enough, the GPU score was virtually identical, but the CPU tests reflected nearly a 70% improvement with the score leaping from the E8500's 7,250 to the Q9650's 12,260. Additionally, the CPU Test 1 bounced from 671 with the dual core to 1,070 with the quad-core and CPU-dependant physics tasks such as the Futuremark flags whipping in the wind were noticeably more realistic. Although Futuremark doesn't explicitly advertise Vantage as supporting four cores, it's clear that it does.

BATTLEFIELD: BAD COMPANY 2

I've joked that I bought a $330 processor to play a $50 game, but it's really not that much of a stretch. Although BC2 doesn't have a proper benchmark, the tangible difference between my overclocked E8500 and the Q9650 was extremely pronounced here. Prior to this installment, I'd never been a fan of the Battlefield series having just briefly tried the Vietnam chapter in 2004. I was hooked on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and was skeptical that BC2 could challenge it, but it certainly made a believer out of me from the first few moments. Unfortunately, the intermittent frame rate stuttering was distracting and was not letting me enjoy the game to its fullest degree. So when I forced the DX9 render path (instead of DX11) and saw no improvement, I knew the bottleneck was not the video card. A little research turned up my dual-core processor as the culprit and even after upgrading to a quad-core, CPU ultilization spread over all four cores was still heavy at 70%. Given the processor load, it seems like the Xbox 360's 3.2GHz PowerPC Tri-Core Xenon will be on the ragged edge of running this game.

CINEBENCH RELEASE 10

Ever since I first used Cinebench a couple years ago, I've been eager to try it with a quad-core processor as it can actually support up to 16 cores. For this test, I also threw the Dell quad-core workstation into the mix as I was curious how it would stack up against my homebuilt quad-core. However, the multi-threaded Cinebench made it clear in no uncertain terms that clock speed is still king. The 3.66GHz E8500 rendered the high-resolution image on one core in just 3 minutes and 30 seconds, the 3GHz Q9650 took nearly a full minute longer at 4 minutes and 25 seconds, and the 2.4GHz Q6600 labored behind at a lengthy six minutes. The roles were somewhat reversed on the Multiple CPU rendering as the Q9650's 3GHz and two extra cores helped it win the fastest time in a scant 1 minute and 14 seconds. Meanwhile, the megahertz-muscle of the dual-core E8500 posted a valiant effort of 1 minute and 56 seconds but the slower four-cores of the Q6600 barely edged it out with a time of 1 minute and 42 seconds. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after I'd benchmarked all three processors (and sold the E8500) that I discovered there was a newer version, Cinebench Release 11.5, available.

CONVERT X to DVD 4

Aside from the obvious benefit to gaming, I was equally excited to try the Q9650 for video encoding. I typically download several 700MB and 1.5GB AVI files per week and it takes anywhere from 12-24 minutes to encode one. The latest version of Convert X to DVD has an option whereby you can set the number of cores for the program to use. I converted a 1.5GB copy of Avatar with my dual-core E8500 overclocked to 3.66GHz which took exactly 24 minutes. With the Q9650's two-additional cores, it chopped the time in half to 12 minutes. Interestingly, Convert X doesn't seem to care about processor speed, as the time was exactly halved going from a faster dual-core to a slower quad-core.

DiRT 2

Without a doubt, DiRT 2 benefited the most from the quad-core upgrade. But as with the other programs, the DirectX 11 in-game benchmark failed to accurately confirm the significant improvement. It showed a minor increase in the minimum frame rate from 50 to 55 FPS and the maximum frame rate from 60 to 64 FPS. Yet those statistics fail to convey the sense of speed that had been missing from the game. I feel intimately acquainted with DiRT 2 because I played many hours of it in DX9 before I received my Radeon 5850. Following that, I started the entire game over because I wanted to experience it in its entire DX11 splendor. Now, despite nearly finishing it again, I have once more restarted it because the difference with four cores is so profound. In fact, the frame rate is so fast now that the game feels like it's perpetually stuck on fast-forward as the action unfurls like a projector reel that has jumped its sprockets. With the drop-dead gorgeous visuals and ultra-high definition environments, DiRT 2 is like watching car porn on Blu-Ray.

INTEL ICE STORM FIGHTERS

Surprisingly, not only is this the oldest benchmark in the group, but it's also the only demo that visibly displays the load on all four cores. That's because it was commissioned by Intel as a selling tool to promote their quad-core processors. Designed by Futuremark, it's not even DX10, but the blizzard of activity (think of the climatic snow battle on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back) dragged my E8500's frame rate into the 30s. However, the Q9650 easily juggled the multi-core onslaught, while maintaining a solid 50-100 FPS depending on the action.

WINDOWS EXPERIENCE INDEX

This software first debuted in 2007, a not-so-subtle application designed to inform dim-witted customers why their computer was running so slowly with Vista. The arbitrary tests attempt to accurately rate your system on a scale of zero to 7.9 in Windows 7, but as I mentioned before, Windows seems to discriminate against anything less than four cores. My overclocked 3.66GHz E8500 registered a 6.9 on the scale, while the 3GHz Q9650's processor calculations per second net it a 7.3 score. Naturally, I take these "assessments" with a grain of salt, but they're still interesting nonetheless.

OVERCLOCKING

Obviously, I couldn't resist the urge for long before I tinkered with the front side bus. Overclocking from 333MHz to 370MHz yielded a new speed of 3.33GHz that made it faster than any Intel consumer quad-core you can buy-- the pricey QX9770 and Core i7-960 both top out at 3.2GHz. Considering each of them sell in excess of $500, it makes my overclocked 3.33GHz Q9650 suddenly seem like a bargain. Additionally, the 11-percent FSB hike didn't noticeably affect the CPU temperature, which was a blessing in itself considering what I had gone through with the overheating. As for the benchmarks, every application save Convert X benefited from the extra megahertz. Echoing what I observed earlier, Convert X required the same time to encode Avatar at 3GHz as it did at 3.33GHz, indicating that it is limited more by physical cores that processor speed. 3DMark's CPU score was boosted from 12,260 to 12,950 and CPU Test 1 went from 1,070 to 1,770. An additional 25 seconds was sliced from the single-core Cinebench test but the four-core test was just 8 seconds quicker. And finally, the Windows Experience Index reassessed my CPU with a 7.4 score.

CONCLUSION

I learned from this exercise that whether it's one or one-hundred benchmarks, sometimes there's no substitute for simply playing the game to get a "real-world" feeling for the improvement. Granted, it's easy for cynics to dismiss such a practice because it can be unduly influenced by a host of outside variables-- namely enthusiasm and excitement which can unrealistically inflate the perceived performance of the product. But when you've scrutinized certain programs dozens of times over a series of months or years as I have with the preceding games and benchmarks, you tend to develop a trained eye for the subject matter. Prior to my purchase, I'd read a lot of forum reviews where owners spoke enthusiastically of never being able to go back to a dual-core after using a quad-core and I can certainly agree with that. However, Windows 7 doesn't seem to boot any faster, nor do programs appear to load quicker. If anything, single-threaded software feels more responsive with the overclocked dual-core and the benchmarks bear that out. And even in multi-threaded applications like Cinebench, an overclocked dual-core is still nearly as fast as a slower quad-core. So for now, quad-core adoption is only encouraged if the individual user has enough applications to warrant it and can afford a fast one. But don't say I didn't warn you, because multi-core CPUs are here to stay.

ATI Radeon 5850 DirectX 11 Benchmarks

Frankly, after the fiasco I had in 2003 with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (BIOS-modded to XT specs) I never thought I'd own an ATI video card again. After all, ATI's Catalyst drivers don't seem to be as stable as Nvidia's, most games run better on Nvidia silicon, and the proprietary PhysX effects in new games like Batman: Arkham Asylum are only capable on an Nvidia graphics card. But this year, after owning eight different Nvidia products (16MB TNT, GeForce 3 Ti 200, GeForce 4 Ti 4400, GeForce 6800 GT, GeForce 7800 GT, GeForce 7950 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS and GeForce GTX 260), Nvidia dropped the ball.

In a move reminiscent of their unveiling the first DirectX 9 card, the 9700 in 2002, ATI beat Nvidia to market with the first DirectX 11 card, the 5800-series. Codenamed "Evergreen", its existence was first noticed at an AMD Technology Analyst Day in July 2007. Even more amazing is that Nvidia was apparently caught flat-footed by this and does not have an answer to ATI's new lineup. And if recent reports are to be believed, it will not have a DX11 competitor in retail channels until possibly March or April at the earliest.

But not everything's coming up roses for ATI. Problems with the 40nm chip production at TSMC meant that current demand for the new video card far outstripped the supply. And despite cards trading for $100 over MSRP at Christmas, the 5800-series was rarer than a straight guy at a Clay Aiken concert. In essence, it was a "perfect storm" of unavailability: competition from Nvidia not expected until Spring 2010, production facility operating at reduced capacity, and everyone wanting one for the holidays. In my twenty-five years of working with computers, I've never seen such a desperate situation where people were clamoring and fighting to buy one.

In fact, the state of affairs for an ATI card was so dire that I enlisted ATI's 5800-series launch partner, Dell, in hopes of securing one under my tree for Christmas. I contacted our Senior Accounts Manager with whom we annually spend $30,000 or more on computer-related purchases and inquired about the Radeons. The good news was I could order it at MSRP but the bad news was that even they were out of stock.

I placed my order on November 18th with shipment expected by November 23rd. However, on the 24th I received word that Dell's distributors, Tech Data and Ingram Micro, couldn't get stock either so the order was bumped back to December 4th with shipment to follow on the 8th. Finally, after the 8th had come and gone, I notified Dell to cancel my order as I was tired of waiting. Christmas came and went but on New Year's Eve I received an overnighted package from FedEx. I opened it to find a 5850 and a 5870.

I weighed my options and decided to keep the 5850 as I calculated the extra $100 premium of the 5870 didn't justify the minor 10-15% performance increase.

So what makes the new 5850 so much more desirable than my year-old Nvidia GTX 260?

Apart from the apples-to-oranges difference in Stream Processors (Nvidia's architecture is scalar, while AMD's is superscalar) the 5850 doesn't look that much faster on paper. Perhaps the most interesting item is the bus width and memory type where Nvidia and ATI are clearly divided. Nvidia prefers to use slower DDR3 memory with a wider 448-bit bus, while ATI goes with faster DDR5 in a narrower 256-bit bus.


LESS IS MORE

The GTX 260 sucks down kilowatts like the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. At idle, it's consuming 160 watts and under load that spikes to 260 watts. Unfortunately, my five year-old APC 350 battery backup was not up to the tasking of powering it and my 22-inch LCD when the power unexpectedly went out during Hurricane Gustav in 2008. It took just three seconds to completely drain my battery backup. In retrospect, the GTX 260 probably consumes nearly as much wattage by itself as my whole system did when I originally purchased the APC 350. Amazingly, ATI has developed the 5850 with Ferrari performance on a Prius appetite. It idles at 27 watts and its full load of 151 watts is below what the GTX 260 consumes at rest. Considering how many hours a day my PC spends on, it's like replacing an incandescent bulb in my PC with a compact fluorescent light.

Although there are many brands of ATI 5850 cards, Dell was only able to get Visiontek cards. The first and last Visiontek card I owned was a GeForce 3 Ti 200 in 2001. It lasted maybe a year before it started artifacting heavily in games. I RMA'd it and received a new one promptly. About two years later, the replacement (then in my brother-in-law's PC) began turning the entire screen red during gaming. For whatever reason, Visiontek dropped off the map for a couple years only to emerge in 2005 selling Nvidia's chief competition, ATI video cards. And they seem to have done very well at it-- in 2008 they were ranked #1 among all ATI's North American channel partners.

Despite the fact that the 5850 is nearly as large as my outgoing GTX 260, it shipped in a very compact box with minimal packaging. There was a single CD that included the Catalyst 9.11 drivers from November, and the hardware consisted of a 6-pin PCI-E power adapter and a strange DVI adapter. In fact, I had to forgo my fancy DVI cable and revert to a standard VGA cable to use ATI's proprietary display port. Also, I was bummed that they didn't include a demo disk or a free copy of DiRT 2 or Battlestations: Pacific as other 5850 vendors such as Polorcolor and Sapphire are doing.

Visually speaking, the Visiontek 5850 doesn't sport any wild or flashy graphics and instead comes in a basic matte black sheathed cover with a striking red fan. On the underside, the card is bare and doesn't even include a backplate. I tested it on my system which consists of Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit with an E8500 Core 2 Duo @ 3.66 GHz, GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3R mainboard, Antec 650W power supply, Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive and 4GB OCZ Fatal1ty DDR2 memory.

For maximum benefit, I used the latest Nvidia Beta drivers 195.81 released on December 15th for my GTX 260 and the December 9.12 Catalyst drivers and ran all benchmarks at my 22-inch LCD's native resolution of 1680x1050. After reading all the horror stories about ATI cards, I was expecting the worst when uninstalling my Nvidia drivers and loading the Catalyst drivers, but it went remarkably smooth. Interestingly, on the Windows 7 Experience Index, the 5850 recorded a score of 7.7 (with 7.9 being the maximum). Previously, I had scored a 7.1 with the GTX 260.

BENCHMARKS

3DMARK VANTAGE: Two years ago, this was the first DirectX 10 benchmark available and it's still a very viable one, although the built-in PhysX support tends to skew the numbers favorably for Nvidia cards. For instance, as soon as I loaded it, it locked up with a physxloader.dll error. After correcting that, the 5850 excelled by a healthy margin of 55%, pulling down a GPU score of 14,268 to the 260's 9,208. In the Texture Fill Feature Test, the Radeon really flexed its muscles by nearly tripling the results of the 260 with 1451 GTEXELS/S to 554 GTEXELS/S. And for the math-heavy, Perlin Noise Pixel Shader Test, which stresses the arithmetic computing power of the graphics card, the 5850 hit 122 FPS, quadrupling the 32 FPS of the 260.

BORDERLANDS: Not only was Borderlands my favorite game of 2009, it's also one of the few current games to ship with a built-in benchmarking tool (although to be fair, it didn't work properly until the first patch). Unfortunately, the game does have quite a few bugs that still exist even after two updates and this clearly affects the benchmarks. And like 3DMark Vantage, which relies heavily on the PhysX library, Borderlands also initially crashed with a physxcudart.dll issue. As such, the performance disparity between the two cards was closer here than anywhere else. The 260 managed a minimum framerate of 21.76, average of 57.07, and a maximum of 130.91 while the 5850 hit slightly faster numbers of 25.03, 63.12 and 154.16. Additionally, Borderlands would periodically freeze up with the error that the ATI Display Driver has stopped responding. Because of that, future updates should dramatically improve the game's performance with ATI cards.

DiRT 2: Having played DiRT 2 for nearly a month on my GTX 260 before the 5850 fell in my lap, I can attest that it looks quite good and performs really well in DX9, knocking off a minimum of 55 FPS and a maximum of 71. But the icing on the cake is that the 5850 enables DX11's Shader Model 5, advanced lighting, and tessellated water effects with virtually no framerate penalty. The Radeon's minimum FPS was 55 and the maximum was 69 with DX11. And trust me, once you played it in DX11, there's no going back. However, I noticed that in actual gameplay (and not the demo benchmark) that DX11's framerate sometimes dips into the thirties. This can cause an occasional hitch, particularly during crowded events, but fortunately isn't too distracting.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: CALL OF PRIPYAT: Personally, I love S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s X-Ray engine (see my initial review from February 21, 2007) but the actual game was a disappointment. Despite that, developer GSC Game World has done a great job incorporating DX11 into Version 1.6 of the X-Ray engine for Call of Pripyat. The full benchmark cycles through four tests: Day, Night, Rain and SunShafts and can be run in either DX9, DX10 or DX11. To stress-test the 260 as much as possible, I tested it against the 5850 in a DX10 head-to-head match as well as the 5850 individually in DX11. The 260 hit a minimum frame rate of 29 and a maximum frame rate of 138 while the 5850 achieved frame rates of 45 and 190. Amazingly, the 5850's frame rate dropped to just 38 and 184 when tested under DX11. However, this remains the only benchmark where I could not visually see an improvement with DX11.

UNIGINE HEAVEN: Unigine stole Futuremark's thunder by being the first to release a DirectX 11 benchmark and Heaven is presently the best showcase for DX11's hardware tessellation. Flat, two-dimensional walls and stairs magically gain depth and a dragon suddenly sprouts spikes sharp enough to cut you. Unfortunately, there also seems to be some issue causing missing textures as black bars randomly pop up throughout the DX11 demo. I've e-mailed Unigine about the issue and they explained a newer version of Heaven with more content would be available March 1st. Despite that, it doesn't seem to negatively impact the performance. Once again, the 5850 mopped the floor with the 260, pulling down better numbers under DX11 than the 260 could muster with DX9. The Radeon averaged 47.6 FPS for an overall score of 1198 while the GeForce trailed with 31.3 FPS and a 789 score. In DX11, the 5850 averaged 34.5 FPS for an 870 high score.

CONCLUSION
Primarily because the 260 performed so well in games like DiRT 2, I was hesitant to upgrade to a 5850. However, my fears were unfounded as I discovered not only was the 5850 a breeze to install, but it offers roughly 50% faster frame rates, full DirectX 11 support, and draws a heckuva lot less power. Plus, as the Catalyst drivers mature, the performance will increase. I'm not sure what Nvidia has up its sleeve for its GT100 "Fermi" DX11 card but I couldn't be happier with my 5850.