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Processors Toolkit

Pentium 4 v Athlon XP: How we tested

Kai Schmerer ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 16 May 2002

Intel’s new Pentium 4 processors work with chipsets that support the 533MHz frontside bus. The first available chipset from Intel is the Rambus-only 850E. However, the memory clock in this chipset remains unchanged at 400MHz, which means that it only supports PC800 memory. Note also that you must use 40ns PC800-40 Rambus memory in the new 533MHz-bus systems, not 45ns PC800-45 memory.

Some third-party motherboard manufacturers support the new PC1066 Rambus, which does have a 533MHz memory clock, and Intel’s D850EMD2 and D850EMV2 boards will also function with the new memory. However, be warned that this is outside the official specification and you can’t expect support if problems arise with PC1066 memory.

Intel’s new 850E chipset, which supports a 533MHz frontside bus, accompanies the new 2.53, 2.4 and 2.26GHz Pentium 4 processors.

Benchmark tests used
Benchmark type	Benchmark name
Application-based tests	ZD Business Winstone 2001, ZD Content Creation Winstone 2002
Encoding tests	LSX MPEG Encoder 3.5, XMpeg 4.5 (MPEG); Musicmatch Jukebox 7.0 (MP3)
Rendering tests	Bryce 5.01, 3D Studio Max 4.26, Cinebench, Lightwave 7b
Internet tests	ZD i-Bench 3.0
Gaming tests	3DMark 2001 SE, Aquanox, Comanche 4 (DirectX 8); DroneZ-Mark, Quake, Vulpine GLmark 1.1p (OpenGL)

Test platforms
Component	Athlon XP	P4 with Rambus	P4 with DDR
Motherboard	Abit KR7A Raid	ASUS P4TE	Intel D845BC
Chipset	VIA	Intel 850	Intel 845D
Memory (MB)	256	256	256

Other components used in the test systems were identical: a Promise Fastrak 100 driving two IBM DTLA307070 hard drives installed as Raid-0; and a GeForce3 Ti 500-based Asus V8200 T5 graphics card with version 22.80 of the Detonator drivers. All tests were carried out under Windows XP Professional at a resolution of 1,024 by 768 pixels and 32-bit colour depth.