AMD's Athlon XP: Great performance, poor marketing

3D Gaming Performance Max Payne - 640 x 480 AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz 111.5 109.66 108.74 106.71 105.35 100.25 96.94 94.85 93.8 88.36 85.49 | 0 | 22 | 45 | 67 | 89 | 112 | 134

Even its developers have indicated that Max Payne is unusually dependent on CPU power which makes it the perfect gaming benchmark. Every since AMD processor in this comparison is at the top of the charts, closely followed by the 2GHz Pentium 4. At 1.53GHz the Athlon XP is a good 11% faster than the fastest Pentium 4.

3D Gaming Performance Serious Sam 1.02 - 640 x 480 AMD Athlon XP 1.53GHz (1800+) AMD Athlon XP 1.47GHz (1700+) AMD Athlon XP 1.40GHz (1600+) AMD Athlon XP 1.33GHz (1500+) AMD Athlon-C 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.5GHz 129.9 126.5 122.7 118.2 116.2 96.7 92.4 89.2 86 82.1 77.7 | 0 | 26 | 52 | 78 | 104 | 130 | 156

Finally we have Serious Sam and the performance here is no different than in any of the other 3D gaming tests. Here the Athlon XP has the largest lead over the Pentium 4 that it has had throughout this entire review.