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Turning up the heat a bit on the
Multimedia side of things, we have 3DMark 2001 and Video
2000 MPEG2 Encoding tests, from
our friends at MadOnion.com.
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| Benchmarks
and Comparisons |
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MadOnion's Finest and DroneZ |
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First up, the
ever popular 3DMark 2001. We ran this test at the
default 1024X768X32 test setup and took scores from our
various test-beds. The results may surprise you.
The performance deltas were larger than expected.
Well now, here's a fairly
significant gain that can be noted for the Northwood core
versus the Willamette. Although 500 points in total is
really only a 6% gain, we have to remember that the baseline
score in 3DMark 2001, for the average test system, is a few
thousand points above the absolute zero mark. As a
matter of fact, there is probably no way to produce a "zero"
score in this test, as long as you have a compliant system.
Therefore, the nearly 500 point delta we see between the
2GHz. Northwood and 2GHz. Willamette score, is much more
significant. Also, the new 2.2GHz. Northwood scores
comfortably ahead of the Athlon XP1900+ in this test.
MadOnion's Video 2000 MPEG2 Encode test,
isolates the host CPU in an MPEG2 compression processing
test.
We are in the process of
evaluating new additions to our Multimedia benchmark tests,
here in the HotHardware Labs. Clearly this test
doesn't tax high end CPUs as it did almost 2 years ago.
All the entries here are within 2% of each other.
DroneZ Benchmark is an OpenGL
based test that relies heavily on system bandwidth to
process its large textures and dynamic lighting effects.
We did however, tone down the settings to "GeForce2 Normal"
which will tax the graphics subsystem less and isolate the
processor. In order to run this test, the test
system must be configured with at least 256MB of RAM.
Here we see Northwood's additional cache garner an
impressive 15% gain clock for clock. Additionally,
with the 2.2GHz. Northwood pulling away from the Athlon
XP1900+ by a whopping 27%, you get a clear indication that
the Pentium 4 will continue to dominate as one of the
fastest gaming processors money can buy.
Quake 3 Arena and our
final thoughts
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