Multitasking Scenario 3: Web Browsing

For this benchmark, we decided to switch things up a bit and keep Firefox as our foreground application while background tasks ran.

The Firefox, iTunes and Newsleecher tasks from the first test scenario were also present in this one, plus we did the following:

Open Outlook, immediately import 130MB PST file and immediately switch app focus to Firefox.

We then recorded the total time required to import the new PST while Firefox was our foreground application. The results were very interesting:

Web Browsing + Multitasking Environment

The original version of this test wasn't even competitive on single-core AMD CPUs, but by toning down the Flash usage in Firefox (the major modification was that we removed the IGN page with a huge, and very animated Flash ad), we can now do a good single-to-dual core AMD comparison.

Once again, we see some very good results from the dual core platforms; the Athlon 64 X2 4400+ manages to offer significantly better performance than the higher clocked FX-55, as do the two Intel platforms.

Multitasking Scenario 2: File Compression Multitasking Scenario 4: 3D Rendering
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  • Zebo - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link

    It's all good Jep. I was mainly hoping you'd link me to a real live X2 over at xtreme which is why I persisted;)
  • Minotar - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link

    All I can say is WOW!!! AMD keeps kicking more and more ass!!!!!!
  • Jep4444 - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link

    why would i make this up? im just saying what i was told, for all i know that person made it up

    PS if anyone tries to comment and i dont respond within the next 3 days, its cause i wont be on, not cause im backing out of what i said
  • Zebo - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link

    Frankey Jep I'm not buying it. It would cost AMD signifigantly more to make these dual 1MB L2 cores different at the core level. 8XX, 2XX, 1XX, and X2 are identical except for tracing in the pakageing and pins to make them function differently. Check out Tomshardware's recent CPU article about AMD manufacturing and you'll see what I'm talking.
  • Jep4444 - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link

    im not trying to start a rumour, im very much pro AMD(and if you knew me, i generally dislike attention)

    all im saying is dont decided it'll be so fast until we see the real thing
  • Son of a N00b - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link

    #107......rumor.....looking for attentin....engineering sample...of course rushed....BIOS........shhhh jep...........period

    :-P
  • Filibuster - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link

    If you've actually read through this entire thing, congratulations!
  • Jep4444 - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link

    #98 what i heard is from word of mouth, not from the site itself

    while it is true they don't OC very well, apparently the Athlon X2 was rushed and so its functionality wasn't as good as the Opteron 875

    from what i hear they don't multi-task nearly aswell as the Opteron does but single threaded performance should still be up to par

    the Athlon 64 has had changes made to the ALU amongst other places which would differentiate it from the Opteron aswell

    keep in mind i have no actual proof of this and i would love to be wrong but the guys at XS generally know what they're talking about
  • UzairH - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link

    AT should run the doom 3 tests again, this time not using the timedemo but actual gameplay run-throughs. If Doom3 uses a seperate thread for physics then dual-core should definitely benefit.
  • fitten - Friday, April 22, 2005 - link

    #102 ++

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