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Posted: May 6th, 2002
Written by: Tuan Huynh
The Test Continued....
PC Mark 2002 looks to be a great gauge to show performance differences between CPU’s, as it tests by benchmarking how fast the processor is able to compress various things such as image files. In terms of performance, the P4 2.4 (533) is able to outperform the Athlon XP (133) by approximately 10%, when bumping up the frequency to 2.53 GHz (533), the Athlon XP (133) falls behind by nearly 15%. When the Athlon XP’s FSB is moved up to 166 MHz, the gap narrows a bit, but the P4 2.4 (533) and 2.53 (533) still beats out the Athlon by 9% and 13% respectively.
3D Mark 2001SE has been an extremely popular benchmark for comparing your system performance. Here we see that the difference between processors is less then 5%, as 3D Mark 2001SE is more graphics dependant and doesn’t usually show much performance difference when going from processors that have a minimal frequency increase.
Wolfenstein MP has become the next Q3 in terms of benchmarking, for testing we used Anandtech’s ATDEMO6 as it is more CPU dependant then graphics. Compared to the Athlon XP 2100+ (133), the 2.53 GHz is able to gain a 13% head while the 2.4 (533) is also able to gain lead over the Athlon by 9%. When the Athlon XP2100+ is bumped up to a 166 MHz FSB, the P4 is 2.53 GHz and XP2100+ go neck and neck both scoring within 0.1fps of each other. But since AMD won’t be moving to a 166 MHz FSB anytime soon, it doesn’t look like Intel has anything to worry about.
Conclusion
With the launch of Intel’s Netburst 533 architecture, the performance gap between the Pentium 4 and Athlon XP is further increasing. As we saw even with the Athlon XP2100+ at 166 MHz FSB, the Athlon XP can no longer hide behind its Model number system because Intel is back in the game. It began with the Northwood (400), which slowly narrowed the performance gap between AMD, now with the Netburst 533 processors; AMD should be very worried as more users will flock to Intel.
While most will probably not go out and buy the 2.53 GHz or 2.4 (400) processors, with the launch of the 2.4 and 2.53, the 1.6A’s and 1.8A’s will further go down in price (though they’re already under $200), thus making them look very attractive as most of them can hit 2.2 GHz or 2.4 GHz with ease and with luck they can even occasionally hit up to 150 MHz FSB!
The Netburst 533 is nothing without a chipset that supports the high front side bus. While Intel has chosen to launch the Netburst 533 processors with an updated i850, this leaves users who don’t want to go with Rambus left in the dust, till the i845E is released later this month according to the Intel roadmaps. Nonetheless the i850E is positioned to be the very high end chipset for the P4 Netburst 533 as it offers maximal performance to the P4 platform. When coupled with PC1066, the i850E shines greatly with its mad 3.3 GB of memory bandwidth, which is unsurpassed by any other Intel or AMD desktop chipset.
In the end the Netburst 533 and i850E are nothing more then typical evolution of the current products. While this is definitely not a bad thing, the Netburst 533 processors and i850E are great additions to Intel’s already great product line. Offering excellent performance, especially in Internet Content Creation, the P4’s are once again becoming extremely attractive and are definitely worth a look if you’re in the market for a new system.
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