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By,
Marco Chiappetta
May 13, 2003
For our next test, we took a
20MB MPEG video file and converted it to DivX format using a
program called XMpeg. Performance in this test is
influenced heavily by overall system bandwidth, which is
generally the Pentium 4's strong suit...
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XMPEG Encoding Benchmarks
&
Comparisons |
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Video Encoding |
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Both of the Pentium 4 test
systems simply crushed the Athlons in the video encoding test, regardless
of bus speed. Hyper-Threading and increased memory
bandwidth give the Pentium 4s a huge lead here, with the P4
3.0C outperforming the Athlon XP 3200+ by 43%. The
3200+'s faster bus and higher clock speed give it a 9% edge
over the 3000+, but it's going to take more than that to hang with Intel's top
dogs in this test.
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ZD Business & Content Creation
Winstones |
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Simulated
Application Performance |
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Next up, we used
ZD Labs' Business Winstone 2002 v1.0.1 benchmark to test "Real
World" application performance. We'll directly
quote ZD's eTestingLabs website for an
explanation as to exactly what this test does:
"Business Winstone is a system-level, application-based
benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when
running today's top-selling Windows-based 32-bit
applications on Windows 98, Windows 2000 (SP2 or later),
Windows Me, or Windows XP. Business Winstone doesn't mimic
what these packages do; it runs real applications through a
series of scripted activities and uses the time a PC takes
to complete those activities to produce its performance
scores."
The Business Winstone tests include:
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Five Microsoft
Office 2002 applications (Access, Excel, FrontPage,
PowerPoint, and Word)
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Microsoft
Project 2000
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Lotus Notes
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WinZip 8.0
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Norton
Antivirus
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Netscape
Communicator
The Athlon XP excels when
running x86 code that is not specifically optimized for
the Pentium 4, which is one of the reasons it does so well
in this test. The Athlon XP 3200+ posted the best
Business Winstone 2002 score we have ever seen from a
non-overclocked system, besting Intel's flagship part by
about 8% and the 3000+ by 6.3%.
We also ran some
tests with ZD's Content Creation Winstone 2002 v1.0.1.
This benchmark runs a series of scripted activities similar to the
Business Winstone tests, but the applications
are far more intensive and "bandwidth hungry". The
applications used in the Content Creation Winstone 2002
tests include:
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Adobe
Photoshop 6.0.1
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Adobe Premiere
6.0
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Macromedia
Director 8.5
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Macromedia
Dreamweaver UltraDev 4
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Microsoft
Windows Media Encoder 7.01.00.3055
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Netscape
Navigator 6/6.01
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Sonic Foundry
Sound Forge 5.0c (build 184)
If you thought the Athlon XP
3200+ performed well in the Business Winstone tests,
you'll be doubly impressed by what you see here. The
3200+ smoked all of the other systems by 8% - 30% margins, once
again posting the highest score we have seen to date.
Athlon XP processors in general have always performed well in this test.
The 3200+ is no different, with its faster system bus and higher clock speed
it certainly didn't disappoint.
SPECviewperf & Some Gaming Scores
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