We use 3D WinBench 2000's Processor Test as a measure of floating point performance. For those who have never run this benchmark, 3D WinBench essentially runs the same game scenes normally run to test the latest and greatest 3D accelerators, only on a NULL renderer. This means the CPU does all of the 3D processing, keeping the graphics card from affecting the score at all. It should be noted that 3D WinBench 2000 has not been optimized for SSE2, so the multimedia benefits offered by Intel's new SIMD instructions won't be realized quite yet.

3D WinBench is much more dependant on a processor's floating point unit and the benchmark reflects this. The Pentium 4 1.5GHz delivers 27% more performance than the Pentium III, just as we would expect from a processor with bolstered FP capabilities. Since the inception of the Athlon, AMD has enjoyed quite a bit of success with their floating point as well, and the 1.2GHz Athlon stands up to the Pentium 4 quite well.