AMD's Athlon XP: Great performance, poor marketing

3D Rendering & Animation Performance

While we normally publish the entire results of the SPECviewperf 6.1.2 run, for this review we picked the three most CPU dependent viewset tests and presented you with those. The tests absent from this review are AWadvs, MedMCAD and ProCDRS which were largely video card bound to the point where there was no more than a 1% span of performance figures between all of the CPUs in this review.

3D Rendering & Animation Performance SPECviewperf 6.1.2 - DRV-07 AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz 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 23.63 23.38 23.02 22.6 22.4 21.26 20.93 20.72 20.38 20.03 19.74 | 0 | 5 | 9 | 14 | 19 | 24 | 28

These standings should be very familiar to you by now; the Pentium 4 has a difficult time keeping up with the Athlon XP. The Palominco enhancements only offer approximately a 3% performance boost for the Athlon XP here.

3D Rendering & Animation Performance SPECviewperf 6.1.2 - DX-06 Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) 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 AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz 38.8 38.33 38.3 38.23 38.05 37.94 37.18 36.24 35.19 34 28.51 | 0 | 8 | 16 | 23 | 31 | 39 | 47

The Pentium 4 is much more competitive in this viewset but more importantly is the huge performance increase that is courtesy of the Palomino core enhancements. You can see that the Athlon 1.4GHz is clearly the worst performer in this benchmark, but the Palomino core enhancements give the Athlon XP 1.4GHz processor a 34% advantage over its older brother.

3D Rendering & Animation Performance SPECviewperf 6.1.2 - Light-04 Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) 10.32 10.16 10.02 9.8 9.755 9.525 9.489 9.331 9.219 9.158 9.145 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 12

For the first time we see dominance exhibited by the Pentium 4 line in the Light-04 viewset. It is important to note that there is little difference (percentage wise) between the top five or six contenders in this test.