AMD's Athlon XP: Great performance, poor marketing

3D Gaming Performance

3D Gaming Performance Quake III Arena 1.29g 640 x 480 - High Quality Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz 242.1 237.8 233.9 232.6 227.5 226.6 221.6 221.4 217.5 213.5 203.4 | 0 | 48 | 97 | 145 | 194 | 242 | 291

Historically a Pentium 4 dominated benchmark, the Athlon XP is finally able to compete with the Pentium 4 in this benchmark. Although comparing differences between a processor scoring 240+ fps and one scoring 230+ fps seems nitpicky, it does give us an overall idea of gaming performance. You can see that the Palomino enhancements buy the Athlon another 5% performance increase but nothing major at all.

3D Gaming Performance Wolfenstein MP Test atdemo6 - 640 x 480 - Max Settings AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz 56.1 54.2 52.3 50.6 50.4 50.4 48.4 46 44 41.9 39.6 | 0 | 11 | 22 | 34 | 45 | 56 | 67

When we introduced our Wolfenstein MP Test benchmarks in the GeForce3 Titanium Review, we mentioned that the first benchmark (atdemo6) was clearly CPU bound as it would not vary with video card performance much at all. Judging by the above performance chart, our hypothesis held true as the performance of these CPUs varies from 40fps all the way up to 56 fps. It is important to note that atdemo6 is more of an open air benchmark with many explosions thus putting a great deal of stress on the CPU. You can consider this an average of the worst case scenario performance of your system. The fact that the Athlon XP 1800+ is able to pull close to 60 fps in this benchmark is very impressive.

What is quite odd is the fact that the Pentium 4 cannot compete with the Athlon XP here. The Athlon XP 1800+ is 11% faster than the Pentium 4 2.0GHz which can't even outperform the Athlon XP running at 1.40GHz (1600+). The reason this is so odd is because Wolfenstein is based off of the Quake III Arena engine; an engine known for performing very well on Pentium 4 platforms. This is only a MP Test though, so the performance standings could change in the final version of the game although highly unlikely.

3D Gaming Performance Wolfenstein MP Test atdemo8 - 640 x 480 - Max Settings AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz 154.5 150 145.6 143.6 141 139.2 138.7 132.6 128.2 123 117 | 0 | 31 | 62 | 93 | 124 | 155 | 185

When using a much less CPU/platform bound benchmark measuring the performance when running swiftly through closed quarters the frame rates are much higher, but the standings do not change. The difference between the various CPUs decreases a bit as performance in this benchmark is governed more by video card performance than CPU power.