Battle 4: AMD vs. Intel

Coming to our fourth and final battle of this Doom 3 comparison we have the comparison we've all been waiting for, AMD vs. Intel. For this comparison we benchmarked quite a few different CPUs, all K7 based processors (e.g. Athlon XP, Sempron 2800+) are colored green, all K8 based processors (e.g. Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Sempron 3100+) are colored orange and all Intel processors are blue in the graphs:

The first thing you'll notice is that the top of the chart is dominated almost exclusively by AMD Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX processors. Even the Athlon 64 3400+ manages to outperform the almighty Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4, not to mention that the FX-53 distances itself from Intel's fastest by no less than 18%.

Making our way further down the chart we see that the Athlon 64 3000+ is quite possibly the best buy for excellent Doom 3 performance, weighing in right between the two Extreme Edition processors at less than 20% of the cost of those chips.

Next we have all of the Pentium 4s that manage to offer middle of the road performance under Doom 3, although we do see the K8 based Sempron 3100+ wedged in between the Prescott 3.2 and Prescott 3.0GHz CPUs.

Finally at the bottom we have the Athlon XPs as well as the lonely Celeron D, which is barely saved from a disappointing last place showing.

The standings remain the same at 1280x1024 as you can see below:

Celeron D vs. Sempron Final Words
Comments Locked

59 Comments

View All Comments

  • Thorne - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link

    SMP Anyone? Doom III should support smp... has anyone found it?
  • Thorne - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link

  • jrphoenix - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link

    Intel and gaming don't mix. Where is Peteroy when you need him? LOL. My 3800+ is looking better and better each day :)
  • magratton - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link

    Is there any possibility that you could produce some numbers for the cpu overclockers who placed their bets on the Athlon XP2500M instead of the A64? Great article, thank you!
  • ceefka - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link

    Oh my, I guess the Pentium EE is indeed the Extra Expensive Emergency Edition.

    I'm not much of a gamer though. It's a shame I wrecked my car a few weeks ago. I wanted to build a 939 since they also perform so well on sound and video. Have to wait now. Well there's one upside to that, prices will drop a bit, or so I hope.

    Say AT, how about soundbenchies, especially Cubase SX, or similar, with a fixed arrangement, sound & midi with VST instruments and then add stuff like plug-in effects until the system throws up. I have read that Dual Opteron systems can handle 100 audio channels with about 80 realtime plug-ins. How far does say the top 20 of these CPU's carry you. I suppose Hyper Threading would help out Intel here. So I'm very curious.
  • msva123 - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link

    If only you could download hardware...
  • Sonic587 - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link

    I find it remarkable how the A64 3000+ manages to get within 2FPS of the 3.4GHz EE. We have a lowly $160 processor almost besting a $1000 EE. Wow.
  • Adul - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link

    drool :D cant wait to upgrade
  • mkruer - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link

    LOL im still not buying and AMD 64 chip til the end of the year, but its good to know that the 3500+ on socket 939 still beats*ntels best

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now