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Doom 3: CPU Battlegrounds
Doom 3: CPU Battlegrounds
Date: August 4th, 2004
Topic: CPU & Chipset
Manufacturer: Various
Author: Anand Lal Shimpi
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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:

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59 Comments - Last by kabob983, 1898 days ago
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No Subject by mkruer, 1934 days ago
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

Reply
No Subject by Adul, 1934 days ago
drool :D cant wait to upgrade

Reply
No Subject by Sonic587, 1934 days ago
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.

Reply
No Subject by msva123, 1934 days ago
If only you could download hardware...

Reply
No Subject by ceefka, 1934 days ago
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.

Reply
No Subject by magratton, 1934 days ago
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!

Reply
No Subject by jrphoenix, 1934 days ago
Intel and gaming don't mix. Where is Peteroy when you need him? LOL. My 3800+ is looking better and better each day :)

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No Subject by Thorne, 1934 days ago
No Subject by Thorne, 1934 days ago
SMP Anyone? Doom III should support smp... has anyone found it?

Reply
No Subject by Wesley Fink, 1934 days ago
Please keep in mind that the small Athlon 64 increases in Dual-Channel and Cache-size are cumulative. While it's true that Dual-Channel only adds about 3% to A64 performance and 1MB cache only adds about 5%, the combination adds 8 to 10% improved performance. The FX53 is the ONLY chip that combines BOTH 1MB cache and Dual-Channel memory and is 8 to 10% faster than a comparable chip using Single-Channel (Socket 754) and 512MB cache.

The Dual-Channel 1MB FX53 should be about 8% to 10% faster than the latest Newcastle SC 512K 3400+ even though both run run at 2.4Ghz. Another interesting point is that since Cache mattered more in Doom3 than Dual-Channel, a 3700+ (SC, 1MB cache) might actually be faster in Doom3 than a 3800+ (DC, 512MB). This was certainly true in Anand's tests of the 3400+ (SC, 1MB0, which was faster than the 3500+ (DC, 512MB).

Whether the top-performing FX53 is worth the $811 price is up to you, but it is still a bargain in Doom3 compared to the 3.4EE that is 18% slower and still sells for $1000.

Reply
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