3DMark, Comanche 4, SS2
The architecture of the Athlon 64 lends itself to gaming. Large on-chip cache and low latency memory access are key determinants of games' performance. We'll start with 3DMark 2001SE build 330.
It's not often that you see the fastest Canterwood board and a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 relegated to one place from the bottom of the heap, but that is precisely what's transpired here. The Athlon 64 3200+ and VIA K8T800 and nForce3 pairings make for a formidable combination. The overclocked A64 3200+ even manages to outdo the dual-channel FX-51. Perhaps its registered memory is holding it back. To see a breakdown of the top score, head here. 20,000 marks without breaking into a sweat. Incidentally, the same combination, at 2300MHz / 230MHz memory scored a whopping 20,593 marks.
Serious Sam: The Second Encounter, turns the stock chipset battle back in favour of the nForce3 Pro. 2.2FPS isn't the world's greatest margin, though. Let's not forget that they both add almost 20FPS to the Barton XP3200's score, a CPU that's running 200MHz faster. AMD's Athlon 64 3200+ rating seems conservative in view of this. The overclocked combination closes in on the FX-51 again.
The cache-hungry Comanche 4 absolutely laps up the large, fast L2 cache of the A64 3200+, and both chipsets come within touching distance of the Pentium 4. Impressive.
