wbmw,
It's about time. I can't wait until the 'Droids have a reason not to whine about the BAPCo benchmarks.
Take a look at this: aceshardware.com
I have posted this information before. But I am posting it again due to the fact that I have had a longstanding argument with Dean Kent regarding the merits of Sysmark and BAPCo. Dean said in a thread below:
"> I have seen that SYSmark 2001 and 2002 favor P4, and I have
> provided some possible reasons why this is the case. I have
> not seen any evidence that SYSmark 99 and 2000 favors PIII
> over its rival processors to some unusual extent, nor have
> I seen anything to suggest that SYSmark 95/96 and 97/98 had
> any similar issues. Your scientific trendline seems to include
> only two data points. "
It now becomes apparent that Dean never read my previous post before passing judgement, as I did provide more than two data points.
So here it is again. As someone pointed out before, although I have attempted to minimize it, the motherboards in these examples often do change. This might affect the results, but I will assume that Anand used the best motherboards available, and the trend is clear to see regardless.
All scores taken from www.anandtech.com.
anandtech.com
Sysmark 98 (October 14, 1999):
Athlon 600 (FIC SD11, ???): 267
P3 600 (ABit BX6, BX??): 239
AMD clearly the leader in Sysmark 98.
anandtech.com
Sysmark 2000 (May 24, 2000):
Athlon 600 (KX133): 127
P3 600/100 (BX): 133
Here is the first I could find of Sysmark 2000. Coppermine has appeared about 6 months before these scores are taken. Coppermine has on-die cache, which Athlon still does not have.
Anand says:
"Instead, it is correct to say that SYSMark 2000 is highly dependent on a fast L2 cache"
OK, Sysmark 2000 stresses the speed of the cache more than 98. P3 has faster cache than Athlon. This favours Intel, but it should as fast cache should increase performance.
anandtech.com
Sysmark 2000 (June 4, 2000) Thunderbird
P3 800/100 (BX): 161
P3 i820: 166
TBird (KT133) 800: 165
AMD Introduced Tbird with fast cache and catches up. Again, fair result.
anandtech.com
Sysmark 2000 (March 22, 2001):
TBird 1.33 (760 DDR): 261
TBird 1.33 (KT133A): 252
P3 1Ghz (ASUS CUSL2): 233
P4 1.5(ABIT TH7-RAID): 220
P4 1.3(ABIT TH7-RAID): 202
P4 Intorduced in Nov. 2000. AMD has 133 FSB TBird, DDR.
AMD is running away with the race due to high MHz advantage over P3.
P4 is introduced and fairs poorly.
Anand says:
"Although a few programs that compose the suite are particularly memory
bandwidth intensive, the same cannot be said about the whole.
For this reason, combined with the fact that there is no multitasking,
the AMD760’s DDR SDRAM does not offer any incredible performance advantages here"
i.e. Bandwidth is not stressed in Sysmark 2000.
Up until the P4 introduction AMD has had the bandwidth advantage due to a much faster bus than the P3. Just a coincidence that Sysmark has concentrated on cache instead of FSB. I'm sure they will continue to.
BAPCo introduces Webmark2001 (same review as above):
P4 1.5: 244.95
TBird 1.33 220.64
P4 also does very well in Webmark 2001B and Anand comments:
"The “B” portion of the benchmark is actually quite easy to explain since 65%
of this score comes from a Microsoft Media Encoder test which easily shows off
the Pentium 4’s impressive memory bandwidth figures."
BAPCo has introduced Webmark2001 just as the P4 is released. "Luckily" for Intel, Webmark shows the P4's strengths very well. This just happens to be bandwidth. Fine, we all know that the "Web" is at least 65% about videos.
anandtech.com
Sysmark 2001 (April 23, 2001):
Sysmark 2001 Internet Content Creation:
P4 1.7: 191
P4 1.5: 169
P4 1.3: 148
TBird 1.33 (760): 147
Anand says:
"First we see that the Internet Content Creation portion of the SYSMark 2001
benchmark is heavily dominated by the Pentium 4 processor.
The reasoning behind this is simple; a large portion of this test is
based on a Windows Media Encoder benchmark that happens to be quite bandwidth intensive."
Hold on...I'm witnessing a pattern here... Sysmark2000 not bandwidth intensive... AMD has bandwidth lead over P3 here because of DDR. Sysmark 2001... bandwidth intensive... P4 has higher bandwidth than Athlon. Strange coincidence. I'm sure it is just that.
Sysmark 2001 Office Productivity:
TBird 1.33 (760): 152
P4 1.7: 146
P4 1.5: 140
P4 1.3: 126
AMD still holds the lead here. But compare the 2001 to the 2000 scores.
TBird 1.33 drops 41.76% while P4 1.5 drops 36.36%. Results are more favourable
to Intel than AMD. Have office apps changed? Have the processors changed? No. No. The drop should have been identical.
October 2001, Athlon XP released.
anandtech.com
Internet Content Creation (Nov 5, 2001):
Athlon XP 1.6GHz: 215
P4 2.0 GHz: 213
P4 1.7: 187
TBird 1.4: 163
Athlon XP takes the lead even in internet content creation. In office it is
even worse for Intel:
Athlon XP 1.6GHz: 190
P4 2.0 GHz: 171
P4 1.7: 152
TBird 1.4: 173
The 2.0 Ghz P4 is being beaten by the 1.4 TBird!
Northwood is released January 2002 and the 2.2 P4A takes the lead. AMD fairs not too badly as the 2.0 P4A is still beaten by the 1800+ in Sysmark 2001 Office Productivity.
(http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1574&p=6)
P4A 2.2Ghz: 199
Athlon XP 1.67GHz: 194
Athlon XP 1.60GHz: 193
Athlon XP 1.53GHz: 187
P4A 2.0Ghz: 186
By March 13, 2002 Sysmark 2002 (again, 6 months after the XP came out).
anandtech.com
For Sysmark 2002, Office productivity:
P4A 2.2Ghz: 165
P4A 2.0Ghz: 158
Athlon XP 1.73GHz: 153
Athlon XP 1.67GHz: 150
Athlon XP 1.53GHz: 141
Compare the percentage speed drops:
P4A 2.2GHz: 17.09%
Athlon XP 1.67GHz: 22.68%
Again, another release of Sysmark, another benchmark favouring Intel.
The coincidences are starting to add up.
This is more than two data points. And perhaps it isn't "conclusive" proof. But I am willing to bet that the majority of the people reading this can see a pattern. Combine this with the fact that Intel and BAPco originally shared the same address (and that this fact has subsequently been covered up), that the BAPCo website was originally created by Intel (again, subsequently covered up), and you get one hell of a smoking gun!
Joe |
