3DMark 2001SE Pro Performance

MadOnion's 3DMark 2001SE is a very popular 3D benchmark tool, and as long as the video component and driver revision is kept absolutely consistent, then it can be a good system/CPU test as well. 3DMark 2001SE also fills the dual role of doing some idea as to which processor may be the best fit for upcoming DirectX 8.X games. Benchmark testing was performed at the default setting of 1024x768, 32-bit color/textures, and Pure Hardware T&L support.

In what must be sounding like a broken record by now, the Pentium 4-2.53 GHz takes the performance crown once again. The posted scores are quite high for 3DMark 2001SE, and also note that the SiS 645DX continues to eke out game performance victories over the i850E.

Quake 3 Arena Performance

Quake 3: Arena is our primary gaming benchmark here at SE and its design really shows off some of the advantages of the Pentium 4 and Athlon XP. Quake 3 is both floating-point intensive and has support for SIMD optimizations (MMX, 3DNow! and SSE), making it a great fit for processor testing. It also happens to be an extremely popular game and Quake 3 performance is often used as the barometer for many CPU and 3D video card purchases.

Quake 3 testing is performed using High Quality detail and 1024x768 resolution and Quake 3 testing has also been updated to release 1.30, along with a natural progression to the standard "demo Four".

If there is one game benchmark that you would expect the Pentium 4-2.53 GHz to win, it is Quake 3. With its impressive victories in previous testing, it's no surprise to find a significant margin of victory with Quake 3. As per other game benchmarking, the SiS 645DX once again steams past the i850E and posted one pretty incredible score for Quake 3 HQ 1024x768.