ZDBop's 3D Winbench 2000 CPU Integer test really stresses the L2 cache of the CPU and best serves to demonstrate the speed of its internal processing measuring the CPU-intensive portion of the 3D graphics pipeline.

Over the past year, the Pentium III Coppermine has shown just how scaleable its architecture is in this test (please refer back to our earlier Pentium III reviews). The Athlon 1GHz (with the “Thunderbird” core) was already not too far behind at 1.8. But with AMD's newest family member, the 1.2GHz scaling so well, it blows the competition away. If Intel had not recalled their 1.13GHz Pentium III, the competition would be neck and neck, but it will be quite a while before Intel ships their chip at that speed again. In the meantime, AMD has a solid lead in 3D Winbench 2000.. Since AMD added the on-die L2 cache, they can now enjoy a greater level of scalability. Under Windows 2000, the test results were lower in general but the story was much the same. The 1.2 GHz Athlon pipped the competition.