Serious Sam: The Second Encounter is a great sequel in the popular franchise and the benchmark portion is even better than the original. This new game not only puts the pressure on processors and 3D cards (especially at higher resolutions) but provides some excellent in-game demos in wide open spaces with tons of enemies. For our specific tests, we have used the in-game Elephant Atrium demo to determine potential framerates, at 1024x768x32-bit.
Serious Sam 2 is a benchmark that is far more concerned with raw power than most other tests, and AMD processors have always performed well in it. This time is no exception, as the Athlon XP 3200+ finishes well in front and takes back the crown lost to the Pentium 4-3.0C.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein is another Quake-based game, but with some notable differences. The basic game engine may be the same, but the graphics, gameplay and stress it puts on a processor are very different. Until the next Quake game appears, RtCW is the next best way to determine high-end Quake engine performance. We have used the Checkpoint MP demo using the default High Quality detail settings and have upped the resolution to 1024x768.
The Return to Castle Wolfenstein benchmark scores keep to the standard trend, and show the Athlon XP 3200+ finishing ahead of the Pentium 4-3.06 GHz, but still falling back from the Pentium 4-3.0C. This test also shows a nice framerate jump from the Athlon XP 3000+ to the 3200+.
The Comanche 4 benchmark from Novalogic gives us an opportunity to use an actual flight sim for performance testing. Flight sims are notorious for their CPU-dependence, and this makes the Comanche 4 benchmark potentially a better CPU test than it is for 3D video cards. The reliance on the CPU shows itself off in the benchmark, and even the slightest difference in framerates could pay off in significantly enhanced game framerates. For our processor comparison, all testing has been performed at 1024x768, 32-bit with audio disabled.
The Athlon XP 3200+ doesn't fare quite as well in Comanche 4 benchmarking, and it seems that this test doesn't really benefit too much from a faster FSB or higher-clocked memory. This is in evidence not only through the lower-than Pentium 4 scores, but also because the Athlon XP 3200+ shows only a nominal framerate gain over the Athlon XP 3000+.
