Testbed and Methods

We tested the new Athlon XP 3200+ processor with only one widely spread platform for processors with 400MHz bus, actually. It was based on NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset. We used ABIT NF7 Rev. 2.0 mainboard and a pair of high-speed DDR400 Corsair CMX256A-3200LL memory modules, which allow setting the memory timings to 2-2-2-5 even when working at 400MHz.

As a rival for this test system we selected Pentium 4 3.0GHz with 800MHz system bus. This system was based on the recently announce i875. We used ASUS P4C800 Deluxe mainboard and dual-channel DDR400 SDRAM.

 Besides, we have also included into our comparison the performance results shown by Pentium 4 3.06GHz with 533MHz system bus and Athlon XP 3000+.

And in addition we will also include the result shown the Athlon XP (Barton) overclocked to 2.4GHz (12x200MHz).

So, here are our tesbeds:

Notes:

• DDR333 SDRAM timings (in systems with Athlon XP 3000+ with 333MHz bus and Pentium 4 3.06GHz): 2-2-2-5;
• DDR400 SDRAM timings in Athlon XP system: 2-2-2-5, in Pentium 4 system: 2-2-2-6. The peculiarities of the memory controller in i875 chipset require less aggressive timings.
• The tests were run in MS Windows XP SP1.

Performance

We tested the processors performance in typical office applications (MS Word, Excel, etc.) with the help of Business Winstone 2002 test set. Here the leadership traditionally belongs to Athlon XP processors. The use of faster 400MHz bus in the top Athlon XP model did increase its performance even more, which made it impossible for Pentium 4 with 800MHz bus to catch up with the fastest Athlon XP models.

In the complex Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 measuring the testbeds performance in applications processing digital content, the situation is a little different. Not only the new Athlon XP 3200+ with 400MHz bus proves unable to reach Pentium 4 processor, but even the CPU overclocked to 2.4GHz fails to do it. Intel’s NetBurst architecture shows its best here.

During mp3 encoding faster bus of the Athlon XP processor doesn’t matter at all. This is a purely computational task, which doesn’t require higher bandwidth of the bus between the CPU and the memory. Pentium 4 CPU manages to get ahead here due to three factors: SSE2 instructions support, twice higher ALU frequency relative to the CPU frequency and Hyper-Threading technology, which is so successfully used by LAME codec.

To speed up the processing of algorithms used in a popular WinRAR archiving utility, the higher processor bus bandwidth appears very much needed. As a result, the performance difference between Athlon XP 3000+ and the new Athlon XP 3200+ grows to 12%! As for the performance of the overclocked to 2.4GHz Athlon XP processor, it outpaces Athlon XP 2.2GHz not that greatly. But even after overclocking Barton still falls behind Pentium 4 with fast 800MHz bus.

During video encoding into MPEG-4 format, Pentium 4 processors are usually the best. The introduction of faster 400MHz doesn’t change the situation for Athlon XP. Overclocking Athlon XP to 2.4GHz also doesn’t improve the situation. SSE2 instructions, Hyper-Threading technology and NetBurst architecture designed to work fast with streaming data help Pentium 4 to show its best here.

The situation is similar during data encoding with the help of Windows Media Encoder9, although in this case the faster 400MHz bus of the new Athlon XP has some positive effect on the performance. However, Intel processors do not feel like leaving the upper part of the diagram.