
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. With a high-end video card
installed, this test scales upwards when faster CPUs and
memory are used. The final score is generated by
taking the results of these tests and adding them together
using this formula:
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Benchmarks With 3DMark2001 |
Synthetic DirectX Tests |
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Within the past
few days, an overclocked Athlon 64 took the top spot in
Futuremark's ORB (On-Line Result Browser),
posting the fastest 3DMark2001 score in the world currently.
Our results seem to confirm that the Athlon 64 burns right
through the 3DMark2001 benchmark. The FX-51 outpaced
all of the other systems we tested, some by a significant
margin. It beat the 3.2GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition
by 2.3%, the standard 3.2GHz P4 by 12.6% and the Athlon XP
3200+ by 17.4%.
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Benchmarks With XMPEG v5.02 Using DivX v5.1 |
Video Encoding Performance |
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After burning
through all of the gaming benchmarks, we did some video
encoding with all four of our test systems. To get
these scores listed below, we took a 24MB, standard MPEG 2
format video clip and converted it to DivX format using v5.1
of the CODEC with XMPEG v5.02. The results are
reported in Minutes:Seconds, lower numbers equal better
performance.

The Pentium 4's
did well in this video encoding test. However, the
extra cache and lower latency didn't help the Extreme
Edition or the Athlon 64 FX-51 very much. With a 3
minute 34 second encoding time, the 3.2GHz P4 Extreme
Edition was the quickest of the bunch, followed by the
standard P4 and then the FX-51. The Athlon XP 3200+
finished last in this test, but it was only 3 seconds behind
the FX-51.
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Benchmarks With Magix MP3 Maker 2004 |
Converting WAVs to MP3s |
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We also did some
audio encoding with Magix MP3 Maker 2004. This program
can be used to convert, edit and manage digital music.
We took a 65 minute .WAV file and converted it to a 128kbps
MP3 audio file. The scores listed below (reported in
Minutes:Seconds), represent the total amount of time it took
to encode the .WAV file and create the MP3. Lower
scores equal better performance.

The results in
the Magix MP3 encoding test look much like XMPEG's, but here
the Athlon 64 FX-51 was much faster than the 3200+.
The FX-51's increased memory bandwidth and lower latency
give it a solid boost in this test. It couldn't catch
either of the Pentium 4s though. The P4 Extreme
Edition was 5 seconds faster than the standard P4 and a full
27 seconds, or 37.%, faster than the Athlon 64 FX-51.
"Real World" Application Performance
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