AMD Falls Further Behind
With today's release of systems using a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor, Intel has increased its lead over rival AMD and the Athlon XP+ CPU. High-end desktops such as the Dell Dimension 8200 and the Gateway 700XL are already taking advantage of Intel's progress, and the results are startling.
More telling, however, is the ease with which these two systems outperform even the fastest Athlon XP+ systems we've tested, including an ABS Awesome 3300 [with a 1.8GHz Athlon XP 2200+ processor and 512MB of DDR memory that was overclocked for optimal performance].
zdnet.com
Dynamo desktops: 2.8GHz P4 pulls away
August 27, 2002
With today's release of systems using a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 processor, Intel has increased its lead over rival AMD and the Athlon XP+ CPU. High-end desktops such as the Dell Dimension 8200 and the Gateway 700XL are already taking advantage of Intel's progress, and the results are startling.
After exhaustive testing in our labs, we can conclude that both these systems are fast--very fast. We noticed some minor differences in our results for the two machines--the Dimension 8200 excelled in typical productivity and content-creation applications, while the Gateway 700XL showed a slight advantage in 3D graphics and gaming--but the margin isn't especially significant. More telling, however, is the ease with which these two systems outperform even the fastest Athlon XP+ systems we've tested,including an ABS Awesome 3300 [with a 1.8GHz Athlon XP 2200+ processor and 512MB of DDR memory that was overclocked for optimal performance]. including the ABS Awesome 3300. The arrival next month of systems using AMD's Athlon XP 2400+ and 2600+ should close the gap a bit, but we don't expect those models to rival the fastest P4-based PCs.
The Dimension 8200 and Gateway 700XL configurations we tested are virtually identical in features and price. Both include the Intel 850E chipset with a 533MHz bus, 1GB of PC800 RDRAM, an 128MB Nvidia GeForce4 Ti 4600, a 120GB 7,200rpm hard drive, and 48X CD-RW and DVD-recordable drives. Dell includes a 17-inch flat-panel monitor for a total of $2,899, while Gateway gives you an extra inch for $100 more. Obviously, you can modify either configuration to suit your taste and budget, but any way you cut it, you'll get one heck of a system with performance to match. |
