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By,
Marco Chiappetta
and Chris Angelini
February 10, 2003
SPECviewperf is
a program used to benchmark OpenGL performance.
SPECBench.Org explains what SPECviewperf does to test
performance,
"Viewperf
parses command lines and data files, sets the rendering
state, and converts data sets to a format that can be
traversed using OpenGL rendering calls. It renders the data
set for a pre-specified amount of time or number of frames
with animation between frames. Finally, it outputs the
results."
"Currently, there are five
standard SPECopc application viewsets and one 'generic'
viewset:
ProCDRS viewset is intended to model the graphics
performance of Parametric Technology Corporation's CDRS
industrial design software. IBM's
Data Explorer (DX), which has 10 different tests, is a
visualization application. Intergraph's
DesignReview (DRV), which now has 5 different tests, is
a 3D computer model review package. Alias/Wavefront's
Advanced Visualizer, now with 11 tests, is an animation
application. And Discreet Logic's
Lightscape Visualization System, with four tests, is a
radiosity visualization application. These type of
applications typically render large data sets. They almost
always include lighting, smooth shading, blending, line
antialiasing, z-buffering, and some texture mapping.
Finally, the newest viewset is
medMCAD. This is a 'generic' viewset that models the
graphics performance of a range of immediate mode, MCAD
applications suitable for medium sized models. It contains
twelve tests. All six viewsets represent relatively high-end
applications. "
If that
explanation confuses you, just look at the numbers this way:
Higher Numbers = Better Performance!
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SPECviewperf Performance Tests |
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3D Modeling Tests |
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There is a lot
of information to digest in this graph. The Athlons
and Pentium 4s basically swap the performance lead in most
of the SPECviewperf tests. We had some strange results
in some of these tests. For example, in the DRV-07
test, the P4 3.06GHz Pentium 4 performs at roughly half the
speed of the other CPUs. This seems to be one area
where having Hyper-Threading enabled actually hinders
performance significantly. The MedMCAD-01 test shows
the Athlon XP 3000+ slightly ahead of the competition, but
it's impossible to declare a clear "winner" in these tests.
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FutureMark 3DMark 2001 (Build 33) - DirectX 8
Tests |
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Synthetic DX Gaming Scores |
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Next, we ran
3DMark2001 SE (Build 330) at the benchmark's default
resolution of 1024x768. 3DMark2001 uses the "MaxFX"
gaming engine, from Remedy's very popular Max Payne, to
simulate an actual in-game environment. 3DMark2001
also makes use of DirectX 8 Pixel and Vertex shaders to
stress the overall performance of a gaming system. If
you've ever looked at 3DMark2001's detailed results, you've
seen that this benchmark is broken up into groups of "High"
and "Low" quality tests. The final score is generated
by taking the results of these tests and adding them
together using this formula:
The extra 256K
of L2 cache helps the Athlon XP 3000+ outperform the 2700+
by 456 points and the 2.8GHz Pentium 4 by 249 points, but it
wasn't able to catch the 3.06GHz Pentium 4. These
3DMark2001 scores are all very good, but at almost 2
years old, this benchmark is definitely starting to show a
little age. Luckily, FutureMark is planning to release
3DMark03 sometime this week. Hopefully, it will show
larger performance deltas between the different processors
and speed grades.
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Novalogic Comanche 4 - DirectX 8 Gaming |
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Combat Helicopter Simulation |
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Our next batch
of tests were ran with Novalogic's Combat Helicopter
simulator, Comanche 4. Comanche 4, like 3DMark2002,
makes use of DirectX8 Pixel and Vertex shaders, and is a
useful tool for testing performance under DirectX 8.
This benchmark is very CPU dependant and generally scales
with increased CPU speed.
In this test,
the increased cache on the 3000+ gives it a 3.09 FPS speed
advantage over the 2700+, but again we see the Pentium 4s
are able to outperform it. The 3.06GHz P4 was a little
over 7% faster than its nearest competitor, the 2.8GHz P4,
and was about 10% faster than the Athlon XP 3000+.
Quake 3 & The Conclusion
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