AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 & Athlon 64 4000+
Next, we did some benchmarking with Epic's Unreal Tournament 2004. When testing with UT 2004, we use a specific set of game engine initialization settings that ensure all of the systems are being benchmarked with the exact same in-game settings and graphical options. Like the other in-game tests, we used a "Low-Quality" setting with UT2004 that isolated CPU performance.
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In our second in-game test, again using a custom timedemo, all of the Athlon 64s once again outran the Intel processors. The "slowest" of the AMD processors, the Athlon 64 3800+, was over 10 frames per second faster than the "fastest" Intel processor in this test, the 3.4GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. And the Athlon 64 4000+ and Athlon 64 FX-55 were respectively 13 and 22 frames per second faster than the 3800+.
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For our last game test, we benchmarked all six of the test systems using our custom multiplayer Doom 3 timdemo. We cranked the resolution down to 640 x 480, and configured the game to run at its "Low-Quality" graphics setting. Although Doom 3 typically taxes today's high-end GPUs, when it's configured at these minimal settings it's more CPU / Memory-bound than anything else...
The Intel-based systems performed within a couple of frames per second of each other at 133.6 and 135.8FPS, but they couldn't compete with any of the AMD-based systems in this test. The Athlon 64 4000+ was about 20 frames per second, or roughly 14%, faster than either of the Intel systems, and the FX-55 came in almost 30FPS ahead of Intel's best. Looking at the results in all three of our custom in-game tests, it seems clear that gamers who can afford these processors certainly won't be disappointed.
