CPU Reviews & Articles

Performance

Our performance section gathers the fastest processors from Intel and AMD, along with what we feel are the absolute high-end of the platform range. The Intel Pentium 4-2.53, 2.4B, 2.4 and 2.2 GHz processors have been fully tested using the new i850E platform, and the Athlon XP 2100+ and 2000+ get the use of a powerful KT333/DDR333 combo for the evaluation. We haven't stopped there, and also provide SiS 645DX benchmark scores using the two 533 MHz Pentium 4 chips, to give a better idea on how the 533 MHz FSB rates out when using 333 MHz DDR.

The memory portion is comprised of standard PC800 RDRAM for the i850E platform. This chipset does support PC1066 RDRAM, but in the case of this particular board, only basic SPD timings were available for our PC800. The KT333 and SiS 645DX platforms use high-speed Crucial PC2700 DDR, which has been set to CAS 2 along with increasing the other memory timings and settings to maximum. Keep this in mind while reading through the performance evaluation, as forthcoming i850E motherboards will certainly have greater control over RDRAM memory timings and may contribute to much higher performance levels.

To make absolutely sure these powerful systems are given as much headroom as possible, we chose the GeForce4 Ti 4600 running on the standard 28.32 NVIDIA driver set. This allows a much faster reference base than a lower-end video card would, and also lets us increase our default game benchmark resolution to 1024x768x32. This is the standard resolution used by the vast majority of gamers, and is far more indicative of cutting-edge performance in 2002.

Our operating system choice is Windows XP Pro, and our benchmark list includes Business and Content Creation Winstone, SiSoft SANDRA 2002 and PCMark 2002, along with popular game tests like 3DMark 2001SE, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Quake 3, Serious Sam 2, Comanche 4 and Jedi Knight II.

Test Systems

General Settings:
Desktop Resolution: 1024x768
Color Depth: 16-bit
V-Sync: Disabled

Intel i850E - Intel D850EMV2 Motherboard
Processors: 2.53, 2.4B, 2.4 and 2.2 GHz Intel Pentium 4
Memory: 512 MB Kingston PC800 RDRAM
Motherboard: Intel D850EMV2
Motherboard chip set: Intel 850E
NVIDIA reference drivers: 28.32
Video Card: VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4600
Hard-Drive: Western Digital 40GB 7200RPM ATA100
IDE Interface: Ultra ATA100
Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live
CD/DVD: Panasonic DVD-ROM
Power Supply: Sparkle 400 Watt
Operating System: Windows XP Pro

SiS 645DX - MSI 645E Max 2 Motherboard
Processors: 2.53 and 2.4B GHz Intel Pentium 4
Memory: 512 MB Crucial PC2700 DIMM
Motherboard: MSI 645E Max 2
Motherboard chip set: SiS 645DX
NVIDIA reference drivers: 28.32
Video Card: VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4600
Hard-Drive: Western Digital 40GB 7200RPM ATA100
IDE Interface: Ultra ATA100
Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live
CD/DVD: Panasonic DVD-ROM
Power Supply: Sparkle 400 Watt
Operating System: Windows XP Pro

VIA KT333 - MSI KT3 ULTRA
Processors: Athlon XP 2100+ and 2000+
Memory: 512 MB Crucial PC2700 DIMM
Motherboard: MSI KT3 ULTRA
Motherboard chip set: VIA KT333
NVIDIA reference drivers: 28.32
Video Card: VisionTek Xtasy GeForce4 Ti 4600
Hard-Drive: Western Digital 40GB 7200RPM ATA100
IDE Interface: Ultra ATA/100
Sound: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live
CD/DVD: Panasonic DVD-ROM
Power Supply: Sparkle 400 Watt
Operating System: Windows XP Pro

Quake III Arena Test Specifics
Version: 1.30 (retail)
V-Sync: Disabled
Sound Disabled
Video Modes Tested:
High Quality: Defaults

Return to Castle Wolfenstein Specifics:
Version 1.0
Normal and HQ Defaults
Checkpoint MP demo

Serious Sam: The Second Encounter Specifics:
Version 1.05
Elephant Atrium demo

Jedi Knight II Specifications:
Version 1.02
jk2ffa demo, High Quality defaults

3DMark 2001 Pro SE Specifics
: Version 1.0

Content Creation: Winstone 2001 Test Specifics:
Version: 1.0.3