Our testing methods
I told you last time around that we would be moving right away to Windows XP for most of our benchmarking, but, uhm, not quite yet. Because of time constraints and a few new wrinkles thrown at us by Windows XP's self-tuning services, we stuck with Windows 2000 once more.
As ever, we did our best to deliver clean benchmark numbers. Tests were run at least twice, and the results were averaged.
Our test systems were configured like so:
| Processor | AMD Athlon XP 1900+ 1.6GHz | AMD Athlon 1.2GHz AMD Athlon MP 1.2GHz AMD Athlon 1.4GHz AMD Athlon XP 1800+ 1.53GHz | AMD Athlon 1GHz AMD Duron 1GHz AMD Duron 1.1GHz | Intel Pentium 4 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz | Intel Pentium 4 2GHz | Intel Celeron 900MHz Intel Celeron 1.1GHz Intel Pentium III 1.2GHz |
| Front-side bus | 133MHz (266MHz DDR) | 133MHz (266MHz DDR) | 100MHz (200MHz DDR) | 100MHz (400MHz quad-pumped) | 100MHz (400MHz quad-pumped) | 100MHz (Celeron) 133MHz (PIII) |
| Motherboard | Epox EP-8KHA+ | Gigabyte GA-7DX rev. 4.0 | Asus A7VI-VM | Intel D850GB | Intel D850MD | Intel D815EEA2 |
| Chipset | VIA KT266A | AMD 760/VIA hybrid | VIA KM133 | Intel 850 | Intel 850 | Intel 815EP |
| North bridge | VT8366A | AMD 761 | VT8365 | 82850 MCH | 82850 MCH | 82815 MCH |
| South bridge | VT8233 | VIA VT82C686B | VT8231 | 82801BA ICH2 | 82801BA ICH2 | 82801BA ICH2 |
| Memory size | 256MB (1 DIMM) | 256MB (1 DIMM) | 256MB (1 DIMM) | 256MB (2 RIMMs) | 256MB (2 RIMMs) | 256MB (1 DIMM) |
| Memory type | Micron PC2100 DDR SDRAM CAS 2 | Micron PC2100 DDR SDRAM CAS 2 | Infineon PC133 SDRAM CAS 2 | Samsung PC800 Rambus DRAM | Samsung PC800 Rambus DRAM | Infineon PC133 SDRAM CAS 2 |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce3 64MB (12.41 video drivers) | |||||
| Sound | Creative SoundBlaster Live! | |||||
| Storage | IBM 75GXP 30.5GB 7200RPM ATA/100 hard drive | |||||
| OS | Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional | |||||
| OS updates | Windows 2000 Service Pack 2, Direct X 8.0a | |||||
You've probably noticed that we've only tested the Athlon XP 1900+ on the KT266A motherboard; the other Athlons were tested on older platforms, so the 1900+ should have a bit of an advantage over the other Athlons. Keep that fact in mind as you take in the test results.
The test systems' Windows desktops were set at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at a 75Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.
We used the following versions of our test applications:
- SiSoft Sandra Standard 2001.3.7.50
- Compiled binary of C Linpack port from Ace's Hardware
- ZD Media Business Winstone 2001 1.0.1
- ZD Media Content Creation Winstone 2001 1.0.1
- POV-Ray for Windows version 3.1g (multiple compiles)
- Sphinx 3.3
- ScienceMark 1.0
- SPECviewperf 6.1.2
- MadOnion 3DMark 2001 Build 200
- Quake III Arena 1.17
- Serious Sam v1.02
All the tests and methods we employed are publicly available and reproducible. If you have questions about our methods, hit our forums to talk with us about them.
