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Athlon XP/2600+: rendering and decoding performance

Kai Schmerer ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 03 Sep 2002

Despite the fact that 3D Studio Max 4.26 includes Pentium 4 optimisation, rendering of simple 3D objects (Kinetix Logo) with the 2.53GHz Pentium is no faster than it is with an Athlon XP/2200+.

Rendering the architecture scene, which is recommended by the SPEC for measuring processor performance, pulls the new Athlon XP/2600+ further ahead of the fastest Pentium 4.

With the brand-new version 5 of 3D Studio Max, the picture changes in favour of the Pentium 4. Thanks to the improved SSE support in 3D Studio Max 5, the Pentium 4 finally gets its nose in front of the Athlon XP/2600+.

Pentium 4 optimisation can deliver the Intel processor’s full performance potential. When rendering with Lightwave 7b the 2.53GHz Pentium 4 is a good 67 percent faster than the new Athlon XP/2600+.

Although a program like Lightwave 7b can bring out the performance potential of the Pentium 4, Corel Bryce 5.01 is an example of how slow the platform can be with non-optimised applications. With this program, even a 2.53GHz Pentium 4 with PC1066 Rambus memory is well behind the AMD processors. The Athlon XP/2600+ is some 70 percent faster than the 2.53GHz Pentium 4.

When rendering with Maya 4, the 2.53GHz Pentium 4 is slightly faster than the 2.13GHz Athlon XP/2600+.

Older rendering software such as Cinema 4D includes no optimisation for the Pentium 4. Therefore the new Athlon XP/2600+ gets the best results on this test, despite its clock speed being 400MHz slower than that of the Pentium 4.

The Pentium 4 has no chance when it comes to decoding 64-bit RSA encryption with RC5. Here the Athlon processors are clearly faster. The Athlon XP/2600+ decodes 64 percent more keys than the 2.53GHz Pentium 4. The software’s developers have built Pentium 4 optimisation into their decryption tools, but the fact remains that the Pentium 4 has no hardware rotate function support, and is therefore slower than other X86 processors that support this feature.