The Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz. Processor
The "Hyper Pipelined" CPU takes it up a notch

By Dave Altavilla - April 24 2001
  

The benchmarks get tougher with the SPECviewperf OpenGL System Rendering Performance suite.  These are truly "Pro" applications that are being utilized in this battery of tests.  Many of the applications used here are in fact the tools of Mechanical Engineers and CAD Designers around the world.  Here are a some details on the individual tests we ran in this suite.


ProCDRS:
"
This Viewperf viewset is a complete update of the CDRS-03 viewset. It is intended to model the graphics performance of Parametric Technology Corporation's Pro/DESIGNER industrial design software.   The viewset consists of ten tests, each of which represents a different mode of operation within Pro/DESIGNER. Two of the tests use a wireframe model, and the rest use a shaded model. Each test returns a result in frames per second, and a composite score is calculated as a weighted geometric mean of the individual test results. The tests are weighted to represent the typical proportion of time a user would spend in each mode."

AWadvs:
"
Advanced Visualizer from Alias/Wavefront is an integrated workstation-based 3D animation system that offers a comprehensive set of tools for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, image composition, and video output.  Each test returns a result in frames per second, and a composite score is calculated as a weighted geometric mean of the individual test results."

More Head To Head Testing Of The Pentium 4
Rendering speed versus the AMD Athlon

Here again, the Pentium 4 posts respectable numbers versus the AMD Athlon at 1.33GHz. but clearly it struggles to keep up.  In AWadvs the race is much closer.  Again, the memory and bus bandwidth demands of this test allow the P4 to flex its muscle a bit more but the Athlon and DDR SDRAM system puts out a commendable performance.

 

Enough work, let's relax a little more with some gaming tests.  But first, we have the Gamer's Work Horse Benchmark, 3DMark 2001.

 

MadOnion 3DMark 2001:

 

 

Well now, things are pretty much neck and neck here.  The P4 at 1.9GHz. shows a slight lead over the Athlon and in return, the Athlon shows a slight lead over the P4 at 1.7GHz.  In any event, the variance in scores here is most likely imperceptible to the end user, from a performance standpoint, within the gaming engines used in the individual tests.

 

MDK2:

 

 

Here we dropped the resolution and color depth down so that the graphics card could run flat out without being the bottleneck and thus isolating host processor performance better.  The numbers speak for themselves.  The 1.7GHz. P4 is bested here as well by the 1.33GHz. Athlon.

 

 

Quake 3, Dronez, and our final thoughts...