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Due to the time
constraints we had to test our Athlon XP 2100+ CPU, we were
limited to testing on a single system but we used two
different CPUs. We kept all of the other supporting
hardware and software the same, and only swapped out the
CPU. We started with a clean installation of Windows
XP Pro, installed all of the necessary drivers and then
defragged the hard drive. Then, we set Windows XP's
display and interface preferences to "High Performance",
disabled auto updating and created a permanent swap file of
768MB. All of the benchmarking software was then
installed, and we completed running our tests.
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HotHardware Test Systems |
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nForce and Athlon
XPs all around! |
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CPUs:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
Other
Hardware:
NVIDIA Reference nForce Motherboard
NVIDIA GeForce 4 Ti 4600
nForce MCP Audio Riser
256MB Enhanced Mushkin 2-2-2
PC2100 DDR RAM (Recommended by AMD)
IBM DTLA307030 30Gig ATA100 7200
RPM Hard Drive
Creative 52X ATAPI CD-ROM
Standard 3.5" Floppy
320W Power Supply
Software:
Windows XP Professional
Direct X 8.1
nVidia Detonator 4 reference drivers, version 27.50
nForce Chipset Drivers v.1.0
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Benchmarks
and Comparisons |
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Sandra and
Winstones |
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The first batch
of tests scores are obtained by running a few of the
sub-systems benchmarks included with SiSoftware's very
popular SANDRA suite. We ran SANDRA's CPU, Memory and
Multimedia tests on both the new Athlon XP 2100+ and an
Athlon XP 2000+ (for the sake of comparison).
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CPU
Test
Athlon XP 2000+
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CPU
Test
Athlon XP 2100+
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Memory Test
Athlon XP 2000+
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Memory Test
Athlon XP 2100+
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Multimedia Test
Athlon XP 2000+
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Multimedia Test
Athlon XP 2100+
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The CPU tests
don't show a huge performance delta between the Athlon 2000+
and 2100+, but there is a much larger difference in ALU
performance versus a Pentium 4 2.0GHz. The Athlon XP
2100+ dominates the P4 clock for clock in Sandra's ALU
performance test. The memory bandwidth tests don't
show a huge difference either, and for good reason.
Both of these CPUs are running at the exact same bus speed,
so with only a 66MHz. CPU clock speed difference, there
should be minimal memory bandwidth performance gains.
Sandra's Multimedia tests are very interesting to see.
The Athlon XP 2100+ crushes all of the reference systems in
Sandra's list.
We also ran ZD
Labs' Business Winstone and Content Creation Winstone 2001
benchmarks on the P4XB. Here's a quick snapshot of
what this test is targeted to measure.
"Business
Winstone is a system-level, application-based benchmark that
measures a PC's overall performance when running today's
top-selling Windows-based 32-bit applications on Windows 98
SE, Windows NT 4.0 (SP6 or later), Windows 2000, Windows Me,
or Windows XP. Business Winstone doesn't mimic what these
packages do; it runs real applications through a series of
scripted activities and uses the time a PC takes to complete
those activities to produce its performance scores."
As expected, the
performance difference between the two CPUs is again very
small. There really aren't any "business type"
application that can really tax the current batch of high
end CPUs. Let's move onto something a little newer and
a bit more intense. Content Creation Winstone 2002.
CC Winstone 2002
uses the following applications in its battery of tests:
- Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1
- Adobe Premiere 6.0
- Macromedia Director 8.5
- Macromedia Dreamweaver
UltraDev 4
- Microsoft Windows Media
Encoder 7.01.00.3055
- Netscape Navigator 6/6.01
- Sonic Foundry Sound Forge
5.0c (build 184)
The applications
used in this test seem to benefit more from the increased
clock speed of the 2100+. This is a fairly new
benchmark, and should scale well as new higher end
processors hit the market. For now, the 2100+ has
posted the highest score we have seen here on HotHardware in
this test.
MadOnion, Quake 3 and the Conclusion... |