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Processors Toolkit

Pentium 4 v Athlon XP: Internet performance

Kai Schmerer ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 16 May 2002

Web pages

When representing HTML pages, AMD’s Athlon XP has its nose in front. An Athlon XP/2000+ is already as fast as the Pentium 4/2533. With a performance difference of 43.5 percent between the fastest (Athlon/XP2100+) and slowest (Pentium 4/2000) processors, a CPU upgrade is particularly noticeable.

Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.05

The benefit of optimisation for the Pentium 4 is shown by the Acrobat Reader 5.05 test, in which the fastest AMD processor (Athlon XP/2100+) fails to beat even a Pentium 4/2200. This test also shows a large performance difference between fastest and slowest processors, at 80.1 percent. A CPU upgrade is worthwhile with this application.

XML pages

The fastest Intel processors just about grab the top spot when rendering XML pages. Here the Pentium 4 profits above all from the faster 533MHz FSB frequency. With the 400MHz FSB, the Pentium 4/2400 is slightly slower than an Athlon XP/1800+.

JavaScript

Even the biggest AMD fans may be surprised that the Athlon XP/1800+ is faster than a Pentium 4/2533. But when compiling Internet pages with JavaScript, it’s true. The Athlon XP/2100+ renders JavaScript pages more than twice as fast as the Pentium 4/2000 with 256KB of Level 2 cache.

Flash

The Pentium 4/2533 with Rambus memory is the fastest at rendering Flash animations, but the Athlon XP/2100+ is faster than a Pentium 4/2200. This example shows the impact of main memory type: although the P4/2200 with Rambus is still in the top group, the same chip with DDR memory drops back behind the Athlon processors.

Shockwave

The difference in performance between the fastest and slowest processors is very small when rendering Shockwave animations. The difference between an Athlon XP/1800+ at 99.2fps and a Pentium 4/2533 and 102.9 fps will hardly be noticeable to most users.