Intel Introduces 533MHz FSB CPUs - Pentium 4 2.53GHz

3D Rendering Performance

Next we have our usual two 3D rendering tests. We'll start off with rendering the first frame of the Waterfall.max scene (provided on the 3DSMAX CD) at 1024x768:

3D Rendering Performance 3D Studio MAX 4.2.6 Waterfall.max (Rendered Images per Hour - Higher is better) Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz Intel Pentium 4B 2.4GHz AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0A GHz AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (1.40GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz 57.1 55.4 54.5 54.5 51.4 51.4 48.0 46.8 44.4 43.9 38.7 35.3 | 0 | 11 | 23 | 34 | 46 | 57 | 69

When it comes down to raw x87 FP performance, the Pentium 4 is finally able to capture the lead but only by a small amount and with their two fastest processors. The Athlon XP has historically dominated this benchmark because of its extremely strong x87 FP performance courtesy of its three, fully-capable, FP units.

3D Rendering Performance Maya 4.0.1 Rendertest (Rendered Images per Hour - Higher is better) Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz Intel Pentium 4B 2.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0A GHz AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (1.40GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz 43.9 42.4 41.4 40.9 39.6 39.1 36.7 36.4 34.6 33.6 30.8 27.1 | 0 | 9 | 18 | 26 | 35 | 44 | 53

The picture doesn't change much under Maya, there is a bit of shuffling in the standings but overall we see the same thing we saw under 3D Studio MAX. We mentioned before that Intel has put a lot of faith in SSE2 optimizations in favor of raw x87 FP power, let's find out how things stack up when we switch to a heavily SSE2 optimized 3D rendering application - Lightwave.