DFI 855GME-MGF and Pentium-M Dothan Desktop Performance
Cinebench 3D Rendering and Lame MP3 MP3 Encoding
The Cinebench 2003 benchmark is an OpenGL 3D rendering performance test, based on the commercially available Cinema 4D application. This is a multithreaded, multiprocessor aware benchmark that renders a single 3D scene and tracks the length of the entire process.
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The time it took each test system to render the entire scene is represented in the graph below (listed in seconds). We ran two sets of numbers, one in single-thread mode and another in the benchmark's multithread mode for our Hyper-Threading enabled P4 test systems. The Athlon 64 and Pentium M are only capable of running the single thread test, hence their lack of those data points in the graph below.
Once again memory bandwidth is king with Cinema 4D and our Cinebench benchmark. The stock 2GHz Pentium M just can't keep pace with its single channel 333MHz DDR memory and 400MHz system bus. But again turn up the FSB and the Pentium M DFI 855GME-MGF combination really begins to take off, with our 2.53GHz setup claiming third place ahead of even the Athlon 64 4000+. One final note however, is that Cinema 4D and Cinebench are multi-threaded applications, so obviously the "Multi CPU Mode" scores a significantly faster with the Hyperthreading capable P4s.
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In our Lame MP3 tests we convert audio files to MP3 format, which is a very popular scenario that many end users work with on a regular basis, to provide portability and storage of their digital audio content. In this test, we chose a large 223MB WAV file (a never-ending, almost annoying Grateful Dead jam) and converted it to MP3 format. Processing times are recorded below, and shorter times equate to better performance.
Here the short pipelines and fast L2 cache of the Pentium M really give it a major edge with MP3 conversion workloads. The overclocked DFI 855GME-MGF and a 2.4GHz - 2.5GHz Pentium M overtake even the mighty Pentium 4 Extreme Edition system by as much as 12-18%. Even a stock 2GHz Pentium M hangs tough and beats out the Athlon 64 4000+ in our Lame MP3 conversion benchmark.
