VIA's P4X333 - If they only had a License

3D Gaming Performance

When it comes to most 3D games there's generally very little performance to be found by heavily optimizing for SSE2 or 3DNow! on either of these processors and thus the performance is mostly dependent on the overall platform (e.g. FPU capabilities, chipset, memory latency/bandwidth, cache latency/bandwidth, etc...). This makes gaming benchmarks the most important when doing a chipset comparison since it's much easier to see performance differences between chipsets.

We'll start off with our favorite 3D gaming benchmark - the Unreal Performance Test 2002. For an explanation of what this test is and why it is so significant, be sure to read our 15-way GPU Shootout that we used to introduce the test. In short, the benchmark uses the current build of the Unreal Engine (that will power games such as UnrealTournament 2003 and Unreal II) and serves as a great indication for future performance in games that use the engine.

Next-Generation 3D Gaming Performance Unreal Performance Test 2002 Build 918 - 1024 x 768 x 32 Intel 850/E (533/PC1066) VIA P4X333 (533/DDR333) Intel 850/E (533/PC800) VIA P4X333 (533/DDR266) SiS 645 (533/DDR333) Intel 845 (533/DDR266) SiS 645 (533/DDR266) 50.5 49.6 48.4 48.1 47.8 46.6 45.5 | 0 | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 51 | 61

The 850E takes the lead once again but by a very small margin (< 2%), illustrating the P4X333's very competitive demeanor. Once again the P4X333 outpaces everything slower than Intel's 850E.

3D Gaming Performance Quake III Arena - High Quality - 1024x768x32 Intel 850/E (533/PC1066) VIA P4X333 (533/DDR333) Intel 850/E (533/PC800) SiS 645 (533/DDR333) VIA P4X333 (533/DDR266) SiS 645 (533/DDR266) Intel 845 (533/DDR266) 299.6 292.5 283.3 280.6 279.1 259.1 246 | 0 | 60 | 120 | 180 | 240 | 300 | 36

With frame rates approaching 300fps at 1024x768 it's clear that Quake III Arena isn't video card limited any longer, making it the perfect platform test. The only platform here that really falls behind is the 845.

3D Gaming Performance Jedi Knight 2 - High Quality - 1024x768x32 Intel 850/E (533/PC1066) VIA P4X333 (533/DDR333) Intel 850/E (533/PC800) SiS 645 (533/DDR333) VIA P4X333 (533/DDR266) Intel 845 (533/DDR266) SiS 645 (533/DDR266) 122.5 117.5 113.4 112.1 111.8 104.3 103.9 | 0 | 25 | 49 | 74 | 98 | 123 | 147

While the scores are much more reasonable under Jedi Knight 2 it's clear that the story told doesn't change at all. It's worth noting that just upgrading your chipset can help frame rates in JK2 more than upgrading from a GeForce3 Ti 200 to a GeForce4 Ti 4600.