X-bit labs

Choosing a Budget CPU: 24 Value Processors from Intel and AMD in Our Lab (page 4)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 05/15/2004 | 12:44 PM ]

PCMark04 is another test for estimating the processor performance in typical office applications. This benchmark also uses real algorithms, performing compression and decompression with the ZIP algorithms, checking grammar with Link Grammar Parsing Library, rendering Web pages in Internet Explorer 6.0, converting images into the JPEG format, encoding audio into the MP3 format with the Ogg Vorbis library, encoding video with the Windows Media Encoder 9 and DivX 5.0.5 codecs, working with graphics primitives through the Windows API, working in 3D through the Microsoft DirectX 9 API using the Havok Physics engine 2.1 (a system of physical modeling), scanning for viruses with F-Secure Anti-Virus, and encrypting and decrypting information with the Blowfish algorithm.

The Celerons are not altogether hopeless in this test. Anyway, comparison of like-priced models of the two series (Celeron and Athlon XP) is not in favor of the Celerons. The Pentium 4 1.8A is rather slow. The 512KB L2 cache doesn’t give any tangible advantages to this processor as its slow 400MHz FSB becomes the bottleneck. Thus, the leader here is the Pentium 4 2.4C with the 800MHz FSB and Hyper-Threading (PCMark04 actively uses this technology).

The benchmarking of the memory subsystem brings interesting results, too.

The Athlon XPs with the 266MHz bus lose in the memory speed to Celerons, but the transition to the 333MHz bus allows the Athlon XP working with the memory more efficiently, outperforming junior Celeron models with the 400MHz bus. Anyway, the Pentium 4 2.4GHz models with the 533 and 800MHz FSB are unrivalled leaders here.