Athlon vs Pentium III

[Cameron Harr]

I agree with David in general. Asus positioned their A7V as the "best"
Athlon motherboard, but it is not
completely stable yet in my opinion. As far as the Thunderbird or not
issue goes, I'm pretty sure all they make
now are Thunderbirds -- from 850 MHz and up. As to the performance of
the two processors, I did some benchmarking
a while back with an Athlon 850 vs a PIII 850. The Athlon outperformed
the pentium in every test except for 3-D
graphics and that is due to the fact the the PIII has a set of special
instructions devoted to 3-D graphics which
speed them up as long the developer writes for them. I know lots of
others have posted benchmarks, but here are some I ran. In memory
transfers, the Athlon beat the PIII by about 30%.

MPEG 4 Tests

Pentium III
Video Resolution: 720x480
Framerate: 29.97 fps
Aspect Ratio: 4x3 (same as 16x9)
Audio: 2 channel stereo at 48000Hz
Time to run: 60.59
FPS: 7.89

Athlon
Video Resolution: 720x480
Framerate: 29.97 fps
Aspect Ratio: 4x3 (same as 16x9)
Audio: 2 channel stereo at 48000Hz
Time to run: 54.28
FPS: 8.83
_______________________________________

ATHLON

BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)

TEST                : Iterations/sec.  : Old Index   : New Index
                    :                  : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT        :             404  :      10.36  :       3.40
STRING SORT         :          60.967  :      27.24  :       4.22
BITFIELD            :       1.558e+08  :      26.72  :       5.58
FP EMULATION        :          39.226  :      18.82  :       4.34
FOURIER             :          9627.8  :      10.95  :       6.15
ASSIGNMENT          :          5.5031  :      20.94  :       5.43
IDEA                :          857.95  :      13.12  :       3.90
HUFFMAN             :          398.72  :      11.06  :       3.53
NEURAL NET          :          15.158  :      24.35  :      10.24
LU DECOMPOSITION    :          425.28  :      22.03  :      15.91
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK
RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX       : 17.122
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 18.043
Baseline (MSDOS*)   : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler
10.0
==============================LINUX DATA
BELOW===============================
C compiler          : gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux
(egcs-1.1.2 release)
libc                : unknown version
MEMORY INDEX        : 5.038
INTEGER INDEX       : 3.776
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 10.007
Baseline (LINUX)    : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3,
libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.


PENTIUM

TEST                : Iterations/sec.  : Old Index   : New Index
                    :                  : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT        :          381.52  :       9.78  :       3.21
STRING SORT         :          35.688  :      15.95  :       2.47
BITFIELD            :      1.2775e+08  :      21.91  :       4.58
FP EMULATION        :          31.113  :      14.93  :       3.44
FOURIER             :            9096  :      10.34  :       5.81
ASSIGNMENT          :          5.0682  :      19.29  :       5.00
IDEA                :          884.43  :      13.53  :       4.02
HUFFMAN             :          360.83  :      10.01  :       3.20
NEURAL NET          :          10.939  :      17.57  :       7.39
LU DECOMPOSITION    :           391.2  :      20.27  :      14.63
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK
RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX       : 14.476
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 15.444
Baseline (MSDOS*)   : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler
10.0
==============================LINUX DATA
BELOW===============================
C compiler          : gcc version egcs-2.91.66 19990314/Linux
(egcs-1.1.2 release)
libc                : unknown version
MEMORY INDEX        : 3.837
INTEGER INDEX       : 3.452
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 8.566
Baseline (LINUX)    : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3,
libc-5.4.38

David Grant wrote:
> 
> Eric,
> 
> A couple of items worth noting.  The is no option as of yet to go with a
> dual Athlon configuration.  There are still issues with the 760MP chipset.
> Tyan has a beta board ( code name: "Lions" ) but until the chipset issues
> are ironed out, it's a moot point.
> 
> More points to ponder: Generally speaking,  floating point performance is
> superior with Athlons.
> 
> Also, from a price/performance standpoint, a 1.2 GHz Athlon CPU wholesales
> for bout $200.00.  Compared this to PIII 1GHz CPU for approx. $480.00 per
> CPU...
> 
> Hope this is helpful...
> 
>       ~David

-- 
Cameron Harr
Applications Engineer
Linux NetworX Inc.
http://www.linuxnetworx.com