Setup and notes
Here's a quick rundown of the test system should you wish to compare benchmark results with your own.AMD Athlon 64 Model 3400+ Clawhammer CPU. RAM running with an 10 divisor (2.2GHz, DDR400, single channel)
AMD Athlon 64 Model 3200+ Clawhammer CPU. RAM running with an 10 divisor (2.0GHz, DDR400, single channel)
Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz ES 800FSB CPU (3.2GHz, DDR400, dual channel)
AMD Athlon Barton XP3200+ (2.2Ghz, DDR 400, dual channel)
Other components
EPoX 8HDA3+ VIA K8T880 S754 motherboard (02/12/03 BIOS)
ABIT IC7 i875P Canterwood (A18 BIOS)
EPoX 8RDA3G nForce2 Ultra 400 (17/10/03 BIOS)
Hercules Radeon 9800XT 256MB (412/730)
IBM 40GB P-ATA hard drive
Toshiba 8x DVD
Samcheer 420w PSU
Dell P991 19" monitor
Thermaltake AX478 cooler with a 25CFM fan
Zalman 7000Cu S478 / 754 cooler
Software
Windows XP Professional SP1
DirectX9.0b
VIA Hyperion 4.51 drivers
Intel 5.02.1002 chipset drivers
NVIDIA 3.13 chipset drivers
ATI CATALYST 3.9 drivers and control panel
Pifast v41 to 10m places
Lame v3.92 MP3 encoding with Razor-Lame 1.15 front-end using U2's Pop album (607MB)
Kribi Bench 1.19
ScienceMark 2.0
Realstorm Raytracing benchmark 320x180x32
3DMark 2001SE v330
UT2003 Retail (Build 2225)
X2: The Threat - Rolling Demo
Comanche 4 benchmark
Serious Sam 2: Sierra De Chiapas Demo.
Quake 3 v1.30 HQ
Notes
Here's where the apologies start. Due to time constraints we couldn't manage to procure an AMD Athlon 64 FX-51 CPU in time. Our previous numbers were obtained with older drivers, relaxed memory timings and a Radeon 9800 Pro. We'll seek to update this round-up as soon as possible. That still leaves us with a regular 3.2GHz Pentium 4 Northwood, AMD's Athlon 64 Model 3200, and the now venerable Barton XP3200+ as comparison CPUs.
Further, we benchmarked both the Model 3200+ and 3400+ CPUs on an EPoX K8T800 S754 motherboard with the 2 December BIOS. It purported to offer Cool'n'Quiet support, which automates voltage and speed to suit the current conditions and load. However, testing showed that it was patchy at best. It also seemed not to want to run at our regular 2-2-2-6 benchmarking latencies. CAS latency would refuse to drop from 2.5 to 2 clock on pre-tested RAM. Therefore, in a roundabout way, the benchmarks derived from the 3400+ may not be the absolute best possible. RAM was run at 2.5-2-2-6.
Benchmarks were carried out three times and the lowest and highest results were discarded. The running speed of each of the protagonists was as follows:
3208.2MHz - Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz /
2210.9MHz - AMD Athlon 64 Model 3400+
2205.4MHz - AMD Barton XP3200+
2009.9MHz - AMD Athlon 64 Model 3200+
Let's cut to the chase.
