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 3200+Athlon XP 2500-3000+Pentium 4 2.53-3.06GHzPentium 4 3.0GHz
Processor Athlon XP 'Barton' 3200+ 2.2GHzAthlon XP 'Thoroughbred' 2600+ 2.083GHz
Athlon XP 'Barton' 2500+ 1.83GHz
Athlon XP 'Barton' 2800+ 2.083GHz
Athlon XP 'Barton' 3000+ 2.166GHz		Pentium 4 2.53GHz
Pentium 4 2.8GHz
Pentium 4 3.06GHz		 Pentium 4 3.0GHz
Front-side bus400MHz (200MHz DDR)333MHz (166MHz DDR)533MHz (133MHz quad-pumped)800MHz (200MHz quad-pumped)
MotherboardAsus A7N8X Deluxe v2.0Asus A7N8X Deluxe v2.0Aopen AX4R PlusIntel D875PBZ
North bridgenForce2 SPPnForce2 SPP82845G MCH82875P MCH
South bridgenForce2 MCP-TnForce2 MCP-T82801DB ICH482801DB ICH4
Chipset drivers2.032.03Intel Application Accelerator 2.3Intel Application Accelerator for RAID 3.0
Memory size512MB (2 DIMMs)512MB (2 DIMMs)512MB (2 DIMMs)512MB (2 DIMMs)
Memory typeCorsair TwinX XMS3200LL DDR SDRAM at 400MHzCorsair TwinX XMS3200LL DDR SDRAM at 333MHzCorsair TwinX XMS3200LL DDR SDRAM at 266MHzKingmax DDR-400 SDRAM at 400MHz
Hard driveSeagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100Seagate Barracuda V 120GB ATA/100Seagate Barracuda V 120GB SATA 150
GraphicsATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB (7.84 drivers)
SoundCreative SoundBlaster Live!
OSMicrosoft Windows XP Professional
OS updatesService Pack 1, DirectX 9

All tests on the Pentium 4 3.0GHz and 3.06GHz systems were run with Hyper-Threading enabled. The lower speed grades of Pentium 4 chips tested here don't support Hyper-Threading.

Thanks to Corsair for providing us with memory for our testing. 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.

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:

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.