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So having looked at performance using game based benchmarks, media based work and apps that are heavy on FPU and memory bandwidth performance, what can we draw in terms of conclusions?
It's obvious from looking at the game based benchmarks that in the general case, both CPU's are massively competent game performers. Neither CPU has any problem with any of the game tests and you'd be hard pushed to find a game that would run poorly on either processor, given a good system behind it. Some games run better on P4, some on Athlon XP. In general, all games run extremely well and debating which is better is probably fruitless and best left to a forum near you!
One of the areas of personal computing that is really taking off, with the rise and rise of MP3 and other audio formats, the advent of affordable video editing out of the box on PC's and Mac's, firewire and USB 2.0 enabling use of such technology and the increase in CPU performance, is media work.
Both in encoding and decoding audio and video, strong CPU performance and system bandwidth are all crucial in a good experience working with media on your computer that comes from brisk performance. The Tech Report will no doubt take a look at voice recognition performance, another aspect where current CPU's shine.
XP2200+ in our sole media test with LAME takes the game to Intel's media champion, the P4. Reliant only on MMX, present on both processors, XP2200+ shows 2.4B hows its done in unoptimised software.
P4 however really shines in media work where the applications have been optimised for SSE2. Despite the strong performance here, P4 at the high end with optimised applications is more suited to media work than Athlon XP.
The argument that the P4 needs optimised applications to out perform Athlon XP is moot. So what? We've known since before P4 was ever available that Intel were relying on software developers optimising their applications for the new technology on the P4. It's trivial to obtain optimised applications for media work so why not use them? The software developers have done so, use the tools.
The Athlon XP's real strengths in its current configuration are applications that really stress the FPU on the core. It has the strongest consumer floating point unit so if the majority of your work on the PC calls for such strong FPU performance, AXP is what you buy and you wont be losing out.
Pifast especially shows that despite a lack of memory bandwidth compared to P4, it can still more than hold its own in FPU heavy work. Bearing this in mind, onto the final conclusion.
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