AMD has earned acclaim with the gaming community for the performance achieved by their processors and the aggressively low prices for which they can be had. Up until the Pentium 4 was released, the Athlon had run neck in neck with the Pentium III in gaming benchmarks. However, the Pentium 4's enhanced floating-point capabilities gave it the upper hand (at a much higher price, of course).

In order to minimize the pain our video cards must endure, we use Normal Quality and MAX quality settings with v-sync off. Additionally, we have included sound on/sound off scores so you can make your own comparisons.

Using brute force, AMD is able to power past the 1.3GHz Pentium 4 in both Windows ME and Windows 2000. While its performance approaches that of the 1.5GHz Pentium 4, it does not quite match it. Then again, it would be mighty difficult to tell the difference between 177 and169 frames per second.