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You've got to hand it to the
folks at
MadOnion. They have a full complement of extremely
user friendly and meaningful benchmarks, for all aspects of
systems performance. From the omnipotent, 3DMark
2001SE to their great new
PCMark2002 test that we've decided to incorporate in all
of our future motherboard and CPU reviews, they put out
great benchmark software.
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MadOnion Benchmarks |
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A full suite of
testing - 3DMark 2001SE, Video 2000 and PCMark
2002 |
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We are still testing and
learning about this next new benchmark from MadOnion.
We've only been using it in the lab for a couple of weeks
now but it certainly has a slick interface that produces
repeatable, consistent results. Before we dive in to
the numbers, first some notes on PCMark 2002 and it's CPU
test...
An
important issue in CPU benchmarking is the choice of
compiler. PCMark2002 includes CPU test compilations of both
the MS Visual C++ default compiler, and the Intel C++
Compiler. There is one Intel compilation optimized for CPUs
with SSE support and one optimized for SSE2 support. Some
tests are compiled faster with the default compiler, while
others get better results with the Intel Compiler.
PCMark2002 therefore uses the optimal compilations for Intel
CPUs supporting SSE, Intel CPUs supporting SSE2, and AMD
CPUs supporting SSE. All other CPUs will run all tests
compiled with the default compiler.
This test
performs the following benchmarks:
- JPEG
decompression
- Zlib
compression & decompression
- Text
search
- MP3
Audio Conversion
- 3D
Vector Calculation
The overall CPU score is calculated from the
results of tests described above according to the formula:
CPU Score =
{ JPEG Decompression*60,6 + (FileCompression*153,8 +
FileDecompression*12,4)/2 + TextSearch*4,9 + AudioConversion*11,1
+ 3DVectorCalculation* 16,7 }
This formula has been obtained
by separately fixing the individual results on multiple
manufacturers' high-end systems to a reference point. The
final weighting (multipliers) have then been averaged from
the individual weightings.
We decided to
include some overclocked scores in this test as well.
Remember, the system memory is also heavily overclocked at
the 2.95GHz clock speed. What is more important is
that the 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Northwood, at default clock speed,
has a clear and definitive lead in this test. Also,
note the comment section above, where it states that this
test is optimized for best performance on the Intel C++
compiler in certain areas of the benchmark. Perhaps
this is a hint of things to come, as the Pentium 4 platform
matures and more optimizations of software compilations are
based on the current Intel C++ compiler.
Video 2000 MPEG
2 Encode:
Narrowing our
focus down to something more specific, we have MadOnion's
Video 2000 Mark with it's MPEG 2 Encode Processor test.
All processor
are within a few percentage points of each other in this
test. A 1-2% variance is nothing to get overly excited
about. This test is obviously beginning to show its
age.
3DMark 2001SE:
Let's look at
some more mainstream numbers here with MadOnion's 3DMark
2001SE.
Once again, we
decided to toss in the 2.95GHz scores on this test, since it
is such a widely used and excepted benchmark for many of our
readers. Here you can garner what the future has in
store for the Pentium 4, at close to 3GHz clock speeds.
Also, keep in mind that this test was performed with a
GeForce3 Ti 500 card at 1024X768 resolution and 32 bit
color. The 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Northwood bests the Athlon
2100+ by a comfortable margin here and at 2.95GHz, a gap of
almost 1000 3DMarks is displayed. It is important to
note however that AMD's "performance rating" number for the
Athlon XP 2100+ is fairly accurate and conservative,
especially in light of this test.
Quake
3 Time Demos and the conclusion
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