Testing
For a comparison I am going to compare my P3 1GHz against the P4
1.4GHz.
Specs:
P3 1GHz
D815EEA Motherboard
128MB PC133 SDRAM
IBM Deskstar 30GB 7200RPM ATA/100
Intel(R) PRO/100 S Management Adapter
Hitachi GD-7000 DVD-ROM
Visiontek Geforce3 Video Card
P4 1.4GHz Whitebox
D850GB Motherboard
256 PC800 RDRAM
IBM Deskstar 30GB 7200RPM ATA/100
Intel(R) PRO/100 S Management Adapter
SoundBlaster Live Value
Hitachi GD-7000 DVD-ROM
Visiontek Geforce3 Video Card
The tests I will be conducting on these systems include Sysmark
2001, 3Dmark 2001, Sisoft Sandra CPUBench, DriveBench, MultiBench,
MemBench, TCD Labs HDTach, and Winbench99. Now on with the results.
SysMark 2001 - Provides a more real-world test by using application
playback for benchmarking and measuring response time.
P3 1GHz
SYSmark® 2001 Rating 111
Internet Content Creation 112
Office Productivity 110
Workload Run Times and Ratings
|
Scenario
|
Average Response Time
|
Rating
|
| Internet Content Creation |
2.43 |
112 |
| Office Productivity |
2.82 |
110 |
P4 1.4GHz
SYSmark® 2001 Rating 145
Internet Content Creation 161
Office Productivity 130
Workload Run Times and Ratings
|
Scenario
|
Average Response Time
|
Rating
|
| Internet Content Creation |
1.70 |
161 |
| Office Productivity |
2.37 |
130 |
3Dmark 2001 - Provides a 3D Graphics Subsystem test.
From the results you can see a definite increase in 3D Marks, although
not very much as I would have expected.
Suprisingly there isn't very much of a increase in FPS between the
P3 and P4. From the results you can see about a 1 - 7 fps increase.
Sisoft Sandra 2001 - Provides a synthetic benchmark for various
components of a system.
CPU Bench
P4
P3
DriveBench
P4
P3
No real difference here, in fact the P3 actually scored higher.
Granted this is a synthetic benchmark that fluctuates, there is
still no real performance boost seen here.
MemBench
P4
P3
There can definitely be seen a difference here between PC133 SDRAM
and PC800 RDRAM.
MultiMedia Bench
P4
P3
Slight increase in multimedia instruction handling performance.
HDTach
P4
P3
Results show a reduction in CPU utilization and faster burst speed-readings
with the P4 however random access time seems to be higher.
Winbench 99
Hard Drive Sustained Transfer Rate Test
P4
P3
Overall a performance boost can be seen here when testing both
disk application playbacks, transfer rates, and direct draw graphics
testing.
Conclusion
After comparing the two systems I have to say I am rather surprised
at the small performance difference between the P3 and P4. Application
load time was reduced only minimally and 3DMark 2001 showed only
a small increase of about 1-6.5fps increase in games.Overall nothing
really spectacular stood out in the tests I conducted when it came
to basic everday use.
Overall, with these results, if you currently own a P3 1Ghz system,
I would see no real need to rush out and purchase a P4 just yet.
However on the other hand if you are looking have a fairly old system
or are looking to purchase a new computer, a P4 system is definitely
something to consider.
Ill be anxious to test the new P4's when the DDRAM based motherboard
from Intel becomes available.
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