ScienceMark 2.0, Pifast, WAV
We'll start off our performance look, as always, with memory bandwidth and latency analysis.
Intel Springdale chipset, dual-channel in nature, provides Rock's Xtreme XTR-3.2 with a reasonable amount of bandwidth. What looks impressive on the above graph is actually below par for a tuned i865PE, whose desktop variants have often hit over 4GB/s in ScienceMark's memory bandwidth analysis. Voodoo PC's decision to use PC2700 SODIMMs, albeit 1GB in total, reflects badly to the desktop Athlon 64 3200's DDR400 (2-2-2-6) memory score.
Bandwidth is comparatively good, latency isn't. 3-3-3-8 timings don't endear themselves to excellent performance, and both Athlon 64 machines' on-die memory controller makes Intel's setup look poor. We'd expect a latency of around 80ns for a well-tuned Springdale motherboard.
Remember that both laptops are running from AC power. Voodoo's Athlon 64-powered power notebook has the edge in computing the constant Pi to 10m places. Try the test for yourself. Point your cursor here, unzip, and double-click the .bat file. You'd be surprised at how many desktop PCs will fall short of these power laptops' performance.
Rock's Xtreme XTR-3.2 is ably helped by the Pentium 4's architecture when it comes to converting WAV files into 192kb/s MP3 format. It may be big, brash, and loud, but it's damn quick in selected applications.
