Milo MindBender - Re: "Don't believe what INTC tells you go find some unbiased tests."
You posted only the few ANAND tests that had the AThWipey faster than the Coppermine.
WHy in HELL didn't you post the 6 or 7 benchmarks where Anand showed the Coppermine to be FASTER than the AthWiper?
As for additional independent tests, here's a good study from Mercury Research - which shows the 1 GHz Coppermine to be faster than the 1 GHz AthWiper with the crippled L2 cache in ALL THEIR BENCHMARKS :
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themeter.com
1-GHz Wars:
Intel's Pentium III v. AMD's Athlon
1-GHz
Pentium III 1-GHz Ahtlon
Supplier Intel Corp. AMD
Internal Clk 1000 MHz
(or, if you prefer, 1GHz) 1000 MHz
Front-side Bus Clk 133 MHz 200 MHz
Available Now Now
*** New: March 8, 2000 ***
Intel announced its 1-GHz Pentium III processor today, two days after AMD snuck its 1GHz Athlon announcement into the public's consciousness.
AMD clearly won the PR battle by announcing first, as its rising stock price indicated. But as we've said, the reality is that both premium PC processor suppliers are providing 1,000-MHz (or 1GHz) to their customers today.
We have tested both 1-GHz processors, and are providing our first set of results here and now.
There are two "buts," however. The first is that our soon-to-be-announced ASUS motherboard for Athlon processors doesn't yet work reliably enough to provide results. Once the BIOS is revised -- and we expect that soon -- AMD's performance undoubtedly will nudge higher, particularly on the graphics tests. The new motherboard is built around Via's KX133 chip set, which supports enhanced memory as well as 4x AGP. (The GigaByte board we're now using only supports 100-MHz SDRAM and 2x AGP.)
As well, we're waiting for a BIOS revision on the ASUS P3C-E motherboard before we can use it with Intel's 1-GHz Pentium III. Intel obliged us in the meantime with a revised BIOS for its VC820 motherboard (code name: Vancouver). Both the Vancouver and the P3C-E are built around Intel's 820 chip set and support 800-MHz Direct Rambus DRAM, or DRDRAM.
The results: Intel's 1-GHz Pentium III is the clear winner on our run of benchmarks. Pentium III has been benefitting from optimizations Microsoft inserted into the latest revision of the DirectX gaming API on 3D tests like 3D WinBench 2000 and 3DMark 2000, as well as Direct3D runs of Half-Life. Until now, however, Athlon test results have been superior on OpenGL-based 3D tests, including Half-Life and Quake 3.
But the GigaByte motherboard, with its AMD Irongate chip set, is clearly running out of gas. Athlon would definitely benefit from 4x AGP and an enhanced memory subsystem.
As well, Athlon has clearly taken its external cache implementation to its logical end. At a gigahertz, the slower cache is emerging as a substantial bottleneck. That should be alleviated this spring, when AMD moves to a built-in, full-speed cache similar to Intel's Coppermine (the code name Pentium III processors built on its newer 0.18-micron manufacturing process).
So while AMD managed the first 1-GHz announcement, Intel is emerging as the performance leader at this level -- at least for now.
No one is expecting either company to rest now. Watch for AMD's Thunderbird, the code name of Athlon with integrated, full-speed cache, next quarter. And of course, watch for faster and faster clock rates out of both companies.
One final note: We had a lot of trouble getting WinStone to run on the Athlon platform, but we finally did it. We were never able to get WinStone to run on the 1-GHz Pentium III platform. The faster the processor vendors get, the more trouble we've been having with that benchmark. Our guess is that these ultra-fast chips are breaking the benchmark's built-in timings. Clearly, it will need an update for us to continue using it.
Please see our Disclosures Page for complete details on the test bed configurations.
And now, the test results!
1GHz Pentium III v. Athlon:
Game test results
I
TEST: Half-Life
TEST CONDITIONS:
API: OpenGL
VSYNC Off
Resolution: 1024 x 768
We run the Half-Life tests (3 Fingers' Blowout, Mine 1 and Mine 2) because Half-Life appears to be especially punishing on hardware, and depends on the PC processor to show a difference in performance.
AMD is no longer beating Intel on the OpenGL runs of Half-Life. As we've said, that's due to the aging platform as well as the cache implementation of Athlon. Both issues should be resolved soon.
Half-Life Test (frames per second) 1GHz Pentium III 1GHz Athlon
blowout 86.252 80.074
mine1 54.897 53.121
mine2 32.738 33.516
Performance results on Half-Life (1024 x 768) under OpenGL.
Source: Mercury Research Inc.
TEST: Half-Life
TEST CONDITIONS:
API: Direct3D V7.0a
VSYNC Off
Resolution: 1024 x 768
Half-Life Test (frames per second) 1GHz Pentium III 1GHz Athlon
blowout 65.252 61.890
mine1 38.986 36.073
mine2 21.387 20.473
Performance results on Half-Life (1024 x 768) under DirectX
Source: Mercury Research Inc.
TEST: Quake 3 Arena test v. 1.08
TEST CONDITIONS:
API: OpenGL
VSYNC Off
Resolution: 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864
Color depth: 16, 32 bits per pixel
The Quake 3 tests are one of the more popular benchmarks in the 3D gaming community, and one that is especially taxing on the graphics system. (Test demo 1 is more taxing, in fact, than test demo 2.) Unfortunately, that means we're not getting much of an advantage from faster processors.
Test Demo 1 (frames per second) 1GHz Pentium III 1GHz Athlon
1024x768, 16bpp 59.1 58.5
1152x864, 16bpp 49.7 48.8
1152x864, 32bpp 31.5 31.4
Performance results on Quake 3 Arena test demo 1.
Source: Mercury Research Inc.
Test Demo 2 (frames per second) 1GHz Pentium III 1GHz Athlon
1024x768, 16bpp 77.1 72.9
1152x864, 16bpp 62.8 60.2
1152x864, 32bpp 36.9 36.3
Performance results on Quake 3 Arena test demo 2
Source: Mercury Research Inc.
1GHz Pentium III v. Athlon:
Synthetic Benchmark results
In our synthetics roundup, we compare the 1-GHz Athlon to Pentium III-1000 on ZD WinBench 2000, 3DMark 2000 and Winstone 99. Recall that the faster processors are now breaking the Winstone benchmark, and we were never able to extract results from the Pentium III system.
Here are the results:
TEST: ZD WinBench 2000
TEST CONDITIONS:
API: Direct3D V7.0a
Tripled Buffered
Resolution: 1024 x 768
Color depth: 32 bits per pixel
As we've noted before, the Pentium III appears to be better optimized for Microsoft's new Direct3D 7.0a gaming API, and exhibits markedly higher performance. In past tests, the advantages evaporate on OpenGL as well as 2D.
ZD WinBench 2000 3D
frames/sec) 2D
Pentium III-1000 52.8 432
Athlon-1000 48.4 404
Performance results on ZD WinBench 2000,
using a 3D Blaster Annihilator graphics card
from Creative Labs.
Source: Mercury Research Inc.
TEST: 3DWinMark 2000
TEST CONDITIONS:
API: Direct3D 7.0a
Tripled Buffered
Resolution: 1024 x 768
Color depth: 16 bits per pixel
As with the ZD test, Athlon didn't fare well against the Pentium III on the 3DMark testing. Again, Pentium III's optimizations for Direct3D 7.0a clearly favor Intel at any speed.
3D WinMark 2000 3D
Pentium III-1000 4178
Athlon-1000 3852
Performance results on 3D WinMark 2000,
using a 3D Blaster Annihilator graphics card
from Creative Labs.
Source: Mercury Research Inc.
TEST: Business Winstone 99, V1.1
TEST CONDITIONS:
Resolution: 1024 x 768
Color depth: 16 bits per pixel
As mentioned, Pentium III-1000 broke the bank on this test. After many aborted runs, we were finally able to get results for the 1-GHz Athlon, however. Unfortunately, there's nothing to compare it to!
Business Winstone 99 1.1 Score
Pentium III-1000 DNR
Athlon-1000 30.5
Performance results on Business Winstone 99, V1.1.
Source: Mercury Research Inc.
Copyright Æ 1999, 2000 Mercury Research, Inc |
