X-bit labs

Massive Attack: Performance Tests of 14 Processors Priced at $200+ (page 4)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 02/01/2004 | 12:02 PM ]

Aquamark3 benchmark built on a real gaming engine is remarkable for its support of Hyper-Threading technology. So far there are not so many games that can boast this unique feature, although this situation is very likely to change in the nearest future, because many software developers have already announced their intention to implement Hyper-Threading support in their upcoming gaming engines. The results obtained in this benchmark show that Intel processors supporting Hyper-Threading technology are definitely faster in Aquamark3 than their rivals from AMD, such as Athlon 64 and Athlon XP, which have no Hyper-Threading support.

I would also like to point out that it is the first time we come across a situation when the new processors on the freshly launched Prescott core yield in performance to those based on Northwood. This is probably the direct consequence of the fact that all improvements made to the core cannot make up for the negative influence imposed by longer execution pipeline of the new 90nm core.

It looked as if Athlon 64 could change the situation in Quake3 in its favor and outperform the eternal leaders from Intel there. However, the launching of Pentium 4 Extreme Edition didn’t give AMD CPUs any chance to do so. Moreover, the performance of the new Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz looks simply unattainable for the competitors.

By the way, we have to state once again that the old Pentium 4 processors on Northwood core outperform Pentium 4 on the new Prescott, working at the same core clock frequency. Moreover, in this case Prescott lags 2% behind.

In the well-known Comanche 4 game Prescott gets into an even worse situation. The performance difference between the new Pentium 4 core and Northwood working at the same clock frequency is simply catastrophic: Prescott is 14% slower! But luckily Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is also based on Northwood core. Therefore, Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz again managed to assert Intel’s honor in this test.