What to watch for in the test results
Now that we've introduced you to T-bred, it's time to get down to business and see how this beast performs. Thing is, we already know this chip isn't wildy different from its predecessor, so the only real difference we'd expect to see here come from the 66MHz clock speed increase between the Athlon XP 2100+ and 2200+—from 1.73GHz to 1.8GHz.
Don't expect a light show or anything.
Meanwhile, we'll be comparing it to Pentium 4 chips with both 400 and 533MHz front-side bus speeds, which is a little more intriguing. We know the Athlon XP seriously outperforms the Pentium 4 on a clock-for-clock basis, but the higher bus speeds improve the Pentium 4's ability to execute instructions on a per-clock basis. The Pentium 4 is faster at 2.4GHz on a 533MHz bus than at 2.4GHz on a 400MHz bus, especially when paired with fast memory. We'll be interested to see how the Athlon XP matches up against the Pentium 4 now that the P4 is faster at a given speed.
Beyond that, the real question most folks are probably asking about T-bred is: How does it overclock? Does the die shrink bring immedate benefits to those of us willing to run things out of spec a little? We'll delve into that question, as well.
T-bred (left) and its bitter rival, the Pentium 4 (right)
Our testing methods
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:
| Athlon XP | Pentium 4 845 | Pentium 4 850 | Pentium 4 850E | |
| Processor | AMD Athlon XP 2100+ 1.73GHz AMD Athlon XP 2200+ 1.8GHz | Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz | Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz | Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz |
| Front-side bus | 266MHz (133MHz double-pumped) | 400MHz (100MHz quad-pumped) | 400MHz (100MHz quad-pumped) | 533MHz (133MHz quad-pumped) |
| Motherboard | Shuttle AK35GT2/R | Abit BD7-RAID | Intel D850MD | Intel D850EMV2 |
| Chipset | VIA KT333 | Intel 845 | Intel 850 | Intel 850E |
| North bridge | VT8367 | 82845 MCH | 82850 MCH | 82850E MCH |
| South bridge | VT8233A | 82801BA ICH2 | 82801BA ICH2 | 82801BA ICH2 |
| Chipset drivers | VIA 4-in-1 4.38(2)v(a) | Intel Application Accelerator 6.22 | Intel Application Accelerator 6.22 | Intel Application Accelerator 6.22 |
| Memory size | 512MB (2 DIMMs) | 512MB (2 DIMMs) | 512MB (4 RIMMs) | 512MB (4 RIMMs) |
| Memory type | Corsair XMS3000 PC2700 DDR SDRAM | Corsair XMS2400 PC2100 DDR SDRAM | Samsung PC800 Rambus DRAM | Samsung PC800 Rambus DRAM |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600 128MB (Detonator XP 28.32 video drivers) | |||
| Sound | Creative SoundBlaster Live! | |||
| Storage | Maxtor DiamondMax Plus D740X 7200RPM ATA/100 hard drive | |||
| OS | Microsoft Windows XP Professional | |||
| OS updates | None | |||
I want to give a big thanks to Corsair for providing us with DDR333 memory for our testing. Their XMS3000 DIMMs allowed us to run the memory on our Shuttle AK35GT2/R test motherboard at CAS2 timings at 166MHz (that's 333MHz DDR, kids). Good RAM didn't hurt in our overclocking attempts, either. If you're looking to tweak out your system to the max and maybe overclock it a little, Corsair's RAM is definitely worth considering. Using it makes life easier for us as we're dealing with brand-new chipsets and pre-production motherboards, because we don't have to worry so much about stability and compatibility. The stuff flat works.
The test systems' Windows desktops were set at 1024x768 in 32-bit color at an 85Hz screen refresh rate. Vertical refresh sync (vsync) was disabled for all tests.
We used the following versions of our test applications:
- SiSoft Sandra Standard 2002
- Compiled binary of C Linpack port from Ace's Hardware
- ZD Media Business Winstone 2001 1.0.2
- ZD Media Content Creation Winstone 2002 1.0
- POV-Ray for Windows version 3.5 beta RC3
- NewTek Lightwave 7.0b
- Sphinx 3.3
- ScienceMark 1.0
- LAME 3.91
- Xmpeg 4.5 with DivX Video 5.01
- MadOnion 3DMark 2001 SE
- Codecreatures Benchmark Pro
- Comanche 4 demo benchmark
- Serious Sam SE v1.05
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.
