AMD Athlon 1GHz, 950MHz, 900MHz

Data Explorer (DX-05) Viewset

Taken from: http://www.spec.org/gpc/opc.static/dx.htm

The IBM Visualization Data Explorer (DX) is a general-purpose software package for scientific data visualization and analysis. It employs a data-flow driven client-server execution model and is currently available on Unix workstations from Silicon Graphics, IBM, Sun, Hewlett-Packard and Digital Equipment. The OpenGL port of Data Explorer was completed with the recent release of DX 2.1.

The tests visualize a set of particle traces through a vector flow field. The width of each tube represents the magnitude of the velocity vector at that location. Data such as this might result from simulations of fluid flow through a constriction. The object represented contains about 1,000 triangle meshes containing approximately 100 vertices each. This is a medium-sized data set for DX.

One again we have a case of the Athlon coming out on top not only at the higher clock speeds but at the lower ones too. The 1GHz CPU obviously comes out on top here, but even the "slow" 600MHz Athlon part comes out ahead of the Pentium III 800/133.

In this case, buying a motherboard that uses the KX133 chipset rather than an AMD 750 based board is the best way to improve your performance in professional level OpenGL applications although having a 1GHz Athlon doesn't hurt ;)