While pure CPU speed is an integral facet of overall performance, it is also important to look at the value of a CPU from an system and application point of view. The Business Winstone 2001 suite from ZD Labs is an application-based PC benchmark that uses common business programs like MS Office 2000, FrontPage 2000, Lotus Notes, and Netscape. New in the 2001 version are tests for file compression, anti-virus scanning and email. These programs are run from a batch script that attempts to accurately emulate a business system load, then supplies a performance rating.

In Business Winstone 2001 testing, the Athlon 1.4 GHz simply smoked the Pentium 4 competition in both Win ME and Win 2K. This was to be expected, due to the P4's average performance in current applications, as opposed to specially coded SSE2 programs. What is rather surprising is how even the Athlon 1.2 GHz gives the high-end Pentium 4-1.7 GHz a real run for its money.

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Content Creation Winstone 2001 is another benchmark from ZD Labs, and is very similar to Business Winstone. But while Business Winstone tests business performance, Content Creation Winstone uses more robust multimedia applications such as Adobe Photoshop & Premiere, Macromedia Director & Dreamweaver, and Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge. These applications are also run pseudo-concurrently; applications stay active and resident while not actively tested. This makes Content Creation Winstone 2001 one of the best application stress tests available, and a very fine judge of overall system performance.

The AMD Athlon 1.4 GHz continues the performance lead of its previous brethren and easily surpasses the Pentium 4-1.7 GHz under both Win ME and Win 2K. While none of the reference applications have been specifically coded for SSE2, this type of multimedia and Internet applications is one of the areas Intel has promoted heavily with their Pentium 4.

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