Instead of comparing the Athlon 700 CPU to the Athlon 650, which is fairly boring (just subtract roughly 7% off the 700's scores to see where the 650's performance lies) instead we chose to compare the Athlon 700 to two different top of the line Intel-based PCs.
The first Intel machine includes a P3-600/100 CPU running on a 440BX mainboard with 100MHz SDRAM.
The second Intel machine uses the new P3-600B/133 CPU running on a new i820 Camino mainboard with 400MHz PC800 RDRAM.
These two PCs provide a good look at whether or not the Athlon CPU is powerful enough to overcome the limitations of its early platform versus Intel's next-generation platform.
P3-600/100 440BX Test System:
MSI MS-6163Pro 440BX Mainboard
Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra (Set to operate at 175/200MHz)
128MB EMS HSDRAM (Set to operate at 100MHz FSB)
Western Digital Expert 18.1GB UDMA HD
Sound Blaster Live PCI Audio Card
Toshiba 6X DVD-ROM
P3-600/133 i820 Test System:
Intel Vancouver VC20 i820 Mainboard
Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra (Set to operate at 175/200MHz)
128MB PC800 RDRAM
Western Digital Expert 18.1GB UDMA HD
Sound Blaster Live PCI Audio Card
Toshiba 6X DVD-ROM
AMD Athlon 700 Test System:
AMD Viper 750 Mainboard
Hercules Dynamite TNT2 Ultra (Set to operate at 175/200MHz)
128MB EMS HSDRAM (Set to operate at 100MHz FSB)
Western Digital Expert 18.1GB UDMA 66 HD
Sound Blaster Live PCI Audio Card
Toshiba 6X DVD-ROM
Test Conditions and Specifications:
All tests were run a total of four times. The highest and lowest scores recorded
were then eliminated with the remaining two results then averaged to determine the final score.
VSync was disabled for all tests, allowing maximum frame rate performance.
Sound Quality of all benchmarks was set to "low" and 3D Audio support was disabled.
If supported, 3DNow! was enabled within applicable tests.