AMD Opteron Coverage - Part 4: Desktop Performance

3D Rendering Performance - Lightwave 3D 7.5

While 3dsmax 5 is SSE2 optimized, the level of optimization is nowhere near what NewTek reported with Lightwave upon releasing version 7.0b. The performance improvements offered by the new SSE2 optimized version were all above 20% using NewTek's supplied benchmarking scenes.

We chose three benchmarks to use, two of the lesser SSE2 optimized scenes and another that is more optimized just to get an idea of the potential that lies for Pentium 4 users running heavily optimized application.

3D Rendering Performance Lightwave 3D 7.5 - raytrace (Render Time in Seconds - Lower is Better) Intel Pentium 4 3.0C AMD Opteron 244 (1.80GHz) AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (2.167GHz - Barton) AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz - Barton) AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz) 98.6 107.3 134.1 159.7 163.1 | 0 | 33 | 65 | 98 | 130 | 163 | 196

In the SSE2 optimized Lightwave test scenes, the Opteron's SSE2 core manages to bring performance dangerously close to that of the Pentium 4.

3D Rendering Performance Lightwave 3D 7.5 - sunset (Render Time in Seconds - Lower is Better) AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (2.167GHz - Barton) Intel Pentium 4 3.0C AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz - Barton) AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz) AMD Opteron 244 (1.80GHz) 43.7 51.8 52.6 52.6 53.6 | 0 | 11 | 21 | 32 | 43 | 54 | 64

Here we actually have a case where the Opteron is outperformed by the Athlon XP, although the difference is small enough that it's probably due to normal variations in the benchmark and the lack of a performance-tuned motherboard.

3D Rendering Performance Lightwave 3D 7.5 - radiosity_reflective_things (Render Time in Seconds - Lower is Better) Intel Pentium 4 3.0C AMD Opteron 244 (1.80GHz) AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (2.167GHz - Barton) AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz - Barton) AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz) 47.9 61.0 89.8 108.5 110 | 0 | 22 | 44 | 66 | 88 | 110 | 132

Once again we see that in SSE2 environments, the Opteron's SSE2 engine isn't bad at all.