POV-Ray 3D rendering
POV-Ray is a freeware software ray-tracing program that creates high-quality 3D scenes. It's also a very useful measure of a processor's performance, particularly on floating-point math. Our POV-Ray tests use the original release of POV-Ray 3.1, plus Steve Schmitt's recompiled versions, just to see what difference the various compilers and compiler settings can make.

This time out, we're using an updated version of Steve Schmitt's recompiled POV-Ray. Although there two flavors of recompiled POV-Ray, including one specifically optimized for the Pentium 4, we're only using the generic "PIII" version, which runs fine on both the Athlon and the Pentium 4. Unfortunately, some folks have reported getting buggy output from the P4-specific binary, so we'll have to skip it.

The Athlon XP dominates in POV-Ray, finishing the render a full 80 (and a half) seconds before the 2.2GHz Northwood—and the gap's over two minutes with the unoptimized binary. Athlons have always excelled in floating-point math, so this result is not a big surprise.

LAME MP3 encoding
LAME is the encoder of choice around Damage Labs for high-quality output, so this test holds some interest for me. More speed for MP3 encoding is always good.

It's mighty close yet again, but the Athlon XP 2000+ comes out on top.