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I expected a little more from it...
No real surprises here, the 3000+ has a L2 cache latency of 15 to 21 cycles, whereas the 3.06GHz P4 has a latency of 8 to 17 cycles, and runs at a significantly higher MHz too.
Bandwidth for L2 cache is a similar story. The Athlon XP 3000+ has 5.5GB/s bandwidth to its L2 cache in the real world, Pentium 4 3.06GHz has 19GB/s to the L2 cache. To be fair, the Athlon XP's L1 cache is higher performance (19GB/s on the Athlon to 15GB/s on the P4)
RAM is similar: Pentium 4 has 2.9GB/s to the RAM, Athlon has 2.2GB/s.
I was slightly surprised by how much the Athlon got hammered in the SpecViewPerf benchmarks, though.
Their conclusion:
We have tested almost 20 different applications, but still I am not sure whether the 2.17 GHz Barton should carry the 3000+ rating. AMD marketing tells us that "The AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ is the world's highest performing desktop PC processor". They prove this by showing that the Athlon is between 8 and 17% faster than the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 in benchmark suites such as SYSmark 2001 Office Productivity, Business Winstone 2001 and SYSmark 2001 Internet Content Creation. But Sysmark 2001 contains old software such as Adobe Photoshop 5.5, Macromedia Dreamweaver 3.0, Netscape Navigator 4.73, and Macromedia Flash 5. I highly doubt that many Photoshop users are still using Photoshop 5.5 or that people are browsing the web with Netscape Navigator 4.73.
What this shows is that the Athlon outperforms the Pentium 4 with ease in unoptimized, slight older applications. Even our own quick testrun with a more recent benchmark suite such as Content Creation 2002 shows that the Athlon XP 3000+ outperforms the 3.06 Pentium 4 by 10% or more. So if you are using the applications in Content Creation 2002, and you won't upgrade your older software very soon, the Athlon XP 3000+ surely is the best CPU out there. Advertisement:
However, the number of applications that are optimized for the Pentium 4 is already numerous, and growing every day. You could focus on benchmarks with relatively small datasets (see our Lightwave tests) or benchmarks that rely on gigantic matrices (for example the Plasma benchmark) and say that the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 is by far superior.
Neither two benchmark scenarios described are very realistic to most people out there. In other words, we need to test even more game engines and applications before we can pass our judgement on Barton. With the data we have today, I am inclined to tell you that the Athlon XP 3000+ should have been a 2.25 GHz Athlon XP with 512 KB cache. 3DSMax 4.26, Lightwave 7.5, Photoshop 7.0 all point out the Pentium 4 as winner, and only AutoCAD 2002 clearly favors the Athlon XP 3000+. These are all extremely popular applications which matter to many people.
Let us look at the games. Comanche 4, Battlefield 1942, and Ghost Recon heavily favor the Pentium 4. Unreal Tournament 2003 and Grand Prix run a (very) little bit faster on the Pentium 4, while Medieval: Total War runs a bit faster on the Athlon and Age of Mythology runs much better on the Athlon. All in all, it seems like the Pentium 4 has a small advantage. That is why I feel a that giving the 3000+ rating to a 2250 MHz Athlon "Barton" would have been more accurate. We could not test with the "Barton" Athlon XP 2800+, but it is likely the Barton 2800+ will live up to its claim, and probably even deserve the "+" behind its name by outperforming the 2.8 GHz Pentium 4. It is only logical that the extra 83 MHz that the Barton 3000+ has, is not enough to compete with a Pentium 4 which is clocked higher AND has Hyperthreading enabled.
What this shows is that the Athlon outperforms the Pentium 4 with ease in unoptimized, slight older applications. Even our own quick testrun with a more recent benchmark suite such as Content Creation 2002 shows that the Athlon XP 3000+ outperforms the 3.06 Pentium 4 by 10% or more. So if you are using the applications in Content Creation 2002, and you won't upgrade your older software very soon, the Athlon XP 3000+ surely is the best CPU out there. Advertisement:
However, the number of applications that are optimized for the Pentium 4 is already numerous, and growing every day. You could focus on benchmarks with relatively small datasets (see our Lightwave tests) or benchmarks that rely on gigantic matrices (for example the Plasma benchmark) and say that the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 is by far superior.
Neither two benchmark scenarios described are very realistic to most people out there. In other words, we need to test even more game engines and applications before we can pass our judgement on Barton. With the data we have today, I am inclined to tell you that the Athlon XP 3000+ should have been a 2.25 GHz Athlon XP with 512 KB cache. 3DSMax 4.26, Lightwave 7.5, Photoshop 7.0 all point out the Pentium 4 as winner, and only AutoCAD 2002 clearly favors the Athlon XP 3000+. These are all extremely popular applications which matter to many people.
Let us look at the games. Comanche 4, Battlefield 1942, and Ghost Recon heavily favor the Pentium 4. Unreal Tournament 2003 and Grand Prix run a (very) little bit faster on the Pentium 4, while Medieval: Total War runs a bit faster on the Athlon and Age of Mythology runs much better on the Athlon. All in all, it seems like the Pentium 4 has a small advantage. That is why I feel a that giving the 3000+ rating to a 2250 MHz Athlon "Barton" would have been more accurate. We could not test with the "Barton" Athlon XP 2800+, but it is likely the Barton 2800+ will live up to its claim, and probably even deserve the "+" behind its name by outperforming the 2.8 GHz Pentium 4. It is only logical that the extra 83 MHz that the Barton 3000+ has, is not enough to compete with a Pentium 4 which is clocked higher AND has Hyperthreading enabled.
PriceWatch lists the cheapest Athlon XP 3000+ at $623, the cheapest Pentium 4 3.06GHz is $627...
Seeing as how the desktop Hammer chips have been delayed now (again) towards the end of 2003, things don't look too cheery for AMD again this year...
Athlon 64 will launch around the same time as Prescott for Intel now. Prescott is to include SSE3 (Athlon 64 will adopt SSE2), HyperThreading 2, 1MB of L2 cache. Of particular importance is the strong rumours that Prescott's SSE3 will include FMA commands, which would be incredibly cool.
A 3.2GHz Pentium 4 with an 800MHz system bus is slated for launch in April of this year.
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