AMD's Athlon XP 2000+ vs Intel's 0.13-micron Northwood

3D Rendering Performance

The next set of applications we have that truly require more powerful CPUs are the 3D rendering apps you hear so much about. For this review we've chosen Maya 4.0.1 using the Maya-Testcenter's rendertest and 3D Studio MAX using the discreet supplied waterfall.max scene.

3D Rendering Performance Maya 4.0.1 Rendertest (Rendered Images per Hour - Higher is better) AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz (Northwood) AMD Athlon XP 1900+ (1.60GHz) AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2AGHz (Northwood) AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.47GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz 39.6 39.6 38.3 36.7 36.7 35.6 33.6 32.4 30.8 29.5 | 0 | 8 | 16 | 24 | 32 | 40 | 48

Once again we have the Athlon XP 2000+ and Pentium 4 2.2GHz CPUs in a tie for first place. While the performance improvement offered by the additional L2 cache will vary depending on the scene being rendered, the 9% boost that Northwood gives the Pentium 4 definitely comes in handy. Again we see the Pentium 4 as much more of a competitive processor courtesy of the Northwood core.

3D Rendering Performance 3D Studio MAX 4.2.6 Waterfall.max (Time in Seconds to Render Frame 1 @ 1024 x 768 - Lower is better) AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz (Northwood) AMD Athlon XP 1900+ (1.60GHz) AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2AGHz (Northwood) AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.47GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.9GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.7GHz 68 70 71 75 77 78 82 87 93 95 | 0 | 19 | 38 | 57 | 76 | 95 | 114

Rendering the first frame of the waterfall scene under 3D Studio MAX 4.2.6 (with Pentium 4 optimizations) produces the exact same standings as the Maya benchmark. The less than 3% difference in performance between the 2000+ and the 2.2GHz Pentium 4 is negligible.