Intel's Pentium 4 3.06GHz: Hyper-Threading on Desktops

3D Rendering Performance - 3dsmax 5

When the Athlon was first released 3 years ago, 3D Studio MAX was a strong point of its performance. The Athlon's raw FPU performance was right up 3dsmax's ally and thus it put Intel's competing solutions (at the time, the Pentium III) to shame. Things have changed a bit, the latest version of 3ds max (R5) does have some Pentium 4 optimizations that keep things quite competitive between the Athlon XP and the Pentium 4.

For our 3ds max 5 benchmarks we chose all of the benchmark scenes that ship with the product - SinglePipe2.max, Underwater_Environment_Finished.max, 3dsmax5_rays.max, cballs2.max and vol_light2.max.

3D Rendering Performance 3DSMAX R5 - SinglePipe2.max (Render Time in Seconds - Lower is Better) Intel Pentium 4-HT 3.06GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (2.25GHz) AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (2.13GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz) AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0AGHz (400MHz FSB) AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) Intel Pentium 4 1.8AGHz (400MHz FSB) 168 216 226 231 241 268 274 295 300 320 334 | 0 | 67 | 134 | 200 | 267 | 334 | 401

Hyper-Threading helps performance incredibly here giving the 3.06GHz Pentium 4 a huge advantage (~20%) over even its 2.8GHz predecessor.

3D Rendering Performance 3DSMAX R5 - Underwater_Environment_Finished.max (Render Time in Seconds - Lower is Better) Intel Pentium 4-HT 3.06GHz AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (2.25GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (2.13GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0AGHz (400MHz FSB) Intel Pentium 4 1.8AGHz (400MHz FSB) 239 301 309 310 344 365 381 393 426 432 479 | 0 | 96 | 192 | 287 | 383 | 479 | 575

The performance advantage continues to be quite great in this scene, the Athlon XP 2800+ is not able to keep up at all.

3D Rendering Performance 3DSMAX R5 - 3dsmax5_rays.max (Render Time in Seconds - Lower is Better) Intel Pentium 4-HT 3.06GHz AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (2.25GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (2.13GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0AGHz (400MHz FSB) Intel Pentium 4 1.8AGHz (400MHz FSB) 18 21 22 23 25 27 28 29 31 31 35 | 0 | 7 | 14 | 21 | 28 | 35 | 42

Hyper-Threading doesn't help in all situations though and thus some scenes are much closer calls.

3D Rendering Performance 3DSMAX R5 - CBALLS2.max (Render Time in Seconds - Lower is Better) Intel Pentium 4-HT 3.06GHz AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (2.25GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (2.13GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0AGHz (400MHz FSB) AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) Intel Pentium 4 1.8AGHz (400MHz FSB) 33 43 43 45 48 53 53 57 60 62 66 | 0 | 13 | 26 | 40 | 53 | 66 | 79

The 3.06GHz Pentium 4 is able to hold a 20% lead over the Athlon XP 2800+, what was once a strength for AMD has fallen back into the hands of Intel it seems.

3D Rendering Performance 3DSMAX R5 - vol_light2.max (Render Time in Seconds - Lower is Better) Intel Pentium 4-HT 3.06GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.80GHz AMD Athlon XP 2800+ (2.25GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (2.13GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0AGHz (400MHz FSB) AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) Intel Pentium 4 1.8AGHz (400MHz FSB) 15 19 21 21 22 24 26 27 28 30 30 | 0 | 6 | 12 | 18 | 24 | 30 | 36

If you're a 3dsmax user it's clear what CPU offers the best performance for your needs...