Quake III Arena
Now comes the moment of truth. The Pentium 4 has reigned in Quake III Arena performance since its introduction. Say what you will about the Pentium 4's performance, but in Q3A, it's been king of the hill since day one. Can the Athlon XP 1900+ together with the KT266A's additional memory bandwidth finally catch the Pentium 4 in Quake III?

Indeed it can; the Athlon XP wins in style, breaching the 200fps mark for the first time. (For the record, we test with visual quality and geometry detail settings turned to the max in Q3, and we leave the sound on. These are real-world gameplay performance numbers.) Even on the Pentium 4's home turf, the Athlon XP 1900+ runs fastest.

Serious Sam
Now we'll try another OpenGL-based first-person shooter, Serious Sam. This game engine—which produces the best looking visuals of anything on the market, as far as I'm concerned—offers us a little bit different perspective than Quake III.

Ow. That's just brutal. Serious Sam likes the Athlon XP almost as much as Quake III has favored the Pentium 4.

3DMark 2001
There's been a see-saw battle in the past six months over the performance lead in 3DMark 2001, but recently, the Pentium 4 has been leading. Can the Athlon XP 1900+ push the Pentium 4 2GHz off the top of the heap?

Not quite. The P4 still holds the lead in this BapCo/MadOnion benchmark.