Introduction
A comparison of all currently available PC CPUs was more than overdue and although it’s a horrible amount of work I felt forced to finally do one after Intel released not only a CPU for the high end but as well for the low end market. This performance comparison should give you some help deciding which kind of system you will buy or put together or in which direction your next upgrade is going to go.
The office application performance was measured with Ziff Davis’ Winstone 98. Winstone 98 is using more recent software than Winstone 97 and possibly the way ZDBOp is weighing the different applications has changed, because non Intel CPUs perform worse in Winstone 98 than they did in Winstone 97 if you compare their scores against Intel CPUs. The 6x86MX suffered the worst impact, whilst a 6x86MX used to reach pretty much the same Business Winstone score as a Pentium II at the same PR-rating it is quite a way behind Pentium II CPUs in Winstone 98 now. Winstone 98 runs about 40 min., performimg two siutes of ‘task switching’, which is mainly responsible for the length of the benchmark run. I was very surprised finding out that the task switching benchmarks don’t influence the Winstone score at all though. Database software and word processors have the highest weighing for the final score.
For testing the performance of the CPU’s floating point unit I used 3D Studio Max, taking the time the system needed to render a scene. 3D Studio Max or 3D Studio Max 2 are still the number one rendering engines used and they obviously don’t require that much of main memory or Level 2 cache performance, which is why the Celeron scored almost as well as the Pentium II.
For gaming I planned using Id’s Quake II, Rage’s Incoming and Acclaim’s Forsaken, but I found out that Forsaken scales exactly the same as Incoming so that I used the special benchmark version of Incoming that Rage was nice enough to make for me. This special gem is a lot easier to run than Forsaken. The benchmarks will show that Incoming depends pretty heavily on L2 cache speed, whilst Quake II still mainly focusses on FPU performance. Hence Incoming benefits quite a bit more from higher bus speeds than Quake II does.
Test Setup
The systems I ran the benchmarks on consisted of the following:
Slot 1 CPUs:
- AOpen AX6B BX motherboard
- Corsair PC100 64 MB SDRAM
- Intel Graphic Express AGP Graphics Card with i740 chip
- 3Dfx Voodoo2 12 MB reference board, driver from April 8, 1998
- Quantum Fireball SE 4.3 HDD using UDMA and Intel bus master driver 3.01
Socket 7 CPUs:
- VIA mVP3 reference board, using VIAGART 1.7
- Corsair PC100 64 MB SDRAM
- Intel Graphic Express AGP Graphics Card with i740 chip
- 3Dfx Voodoo2 12 MB reference board, driver from April 8, 1998
- Quantum Fireball SE 4.3 HDD using UDMA and VIA bus master driver 2.1.9
Benchmark Runs:
- Winstone 98 at 1024×768, 16 bit color, 85 Hz refresh
- Quake II 3.14 at 640×480, 3Dfx GL driver
- Incoming at 640×480, Voodoo2 driver, special benchmarking version ‘Lux et Robur’
- 3D Studio Max at 1024×768, true color, rendering to 640×480
Office Application Performance under Windows 95
Quake II Gaming Performance under Windows 95
Incoming Gaming Performance under Windows 95
3D Studio Max Rendering Performance under Windows NT
Intel Pentium II — The Best, but Expensive
The Pentium II is now available in speeds up to 400 Mhz. This is the warrant for Intel’s lead in the PC business. No competitor is coming even near it and for the next future there won’t anyone that will come close. The next company that is going to surpass the performance of a Pentium II 400 will be Intel itself with the Slot 2 CPUs and its huge L2 cache that will run at CPU clock. Intel has dropped the prices of the Pentium II CPUs running at 66 MHz front side bus so that even though the competitors are closing up to the low range Pentium II CPUs, it will still be attractive buying them.
The Pentium II offers the best overall performance, it’s the fastest CPU in office, rendering as well as multimedia applications, but it is also the most expensive one.
Intel Celeron — The New Gaming CPU of Choice, Overclocker’s Dream
Most of the press doesn’t like the Celeron, but this seems to me mainly due to the old fashionedness of the journalists who write about CPUs. As a matter of fact I really do like this CPU and I am absolutely sure that it has a good position in the market place. Celeron’s lack of a L2 cache is the reason why it doesn’t score high in office applications. However it pretty much performs as well as a Pentium MMX 233. The powerful FPU of the Deschutes core is responsible for a gaming performance which is far ahead of any Socket 7 CPU, including even overclocked Pentium MMX CPUs. This makes it a very cheap CPU for excellent game playing. Now since this CPU is targeted for the home market we shouldn’t emphasize on the office application performance. How fast do you want to run your spread sheet or Winword? Does it make a difference how fast the CPU is waiting for the next user input? I dare doubting that. Everthing in the PC business is revolving around 3D nowadays, e.g. the next Intel CPU core ‘Katmai’ will mainly enhance 3D gaming. So what is wrong with a CPU that doesn’t score astronomical Winstones, but scores excellent Quake II scores?
The biggest beauty of Celeron however is how wonderful you can overclock it. My Celeron runs up to 400/100 MHz flawlessly!!! Is that surprising? No! The most touchy thing of a Pentium II is not the core but the L2 cache. Celeron doesn’t have any, which makes it overclockable up to 50% of its official clock rate. Even if Intel should disable higher multipliers, Celeron will still run 400/100, because it’s the same multiplier as used for 266. My Celeron runs with multipliers of up to x5. So if you want the most fps per buck, go and get a Celeron. Buy a cheap BX board that offers you 100 MHz front side bus if you’re really crazy, or get a really cheap EX board with sound and vga onboard, add a Voodoo2 card and you’ve got a cheap and powerful Quake II station.
The Celeron offers by far the best gaming performance for the money whilst also offering a satisfying office application performance. If you’re into overclocking you will love this CPU.
Intel Pentium MMX — Oldie but not Goldie at all Anymore
The days of the Pentium MMX are counted. Intel wants to abandon Socket 7 now since Celeron is out. The Pentium MMX offers the best gaming performance in Socket 7 whilst performing worst in office applications. You may really want to consider buying a Celeron instead of a Pentium MMX if gaming is important to you. Buy a K6 or a 6x86MX if office application performance is your main concern. These two CPUs offer a considerably higher business apps performance at a lower price.
AMD K6 — 300/66 MHz Will Get It Back into Business
AMD’s K6 is offers the best price/overall application performance ratio in Socket 7 and its new models at 266/66 and 300/66 Mhz reach the office application performance of the lower Pentium II whilst still offering decent 3D gaming performance. It’s a good CPU for the money, but certainly not the best thing to get if 3D gaming is important to you.
AMD K6 3D (not released yet) — The New Star of 3D Gaming … ?
The K6 3D is supposed to close the gap to Intel’s Pentium II in the business application as well as 3D gaming performance area. Its 100 MHz front side bus enables business application performance that’s almost as high as of a Pentium II at the same clock speed. The special 3D unit with AMD’s own new SIMD instructions enables very high 3D gaming performance as long as the game takes advantage of the K6 3D features and the DirectX6 or AMD OpenGL driver is aiding the game. In this case the 3D gaming performance of the K6 3D can even surpass a Pentium II at the same and higher clock speed.
The K6 3D will be a very interesting CPU and will be responsible for extending the life of Socket 7. It is supposed to satisfy with high office as well as high 3D gaming performance.
IBM/Cyrix 6x86MX — The Cheapest Soltion for Office Applications ,Don’t Play 3D Games wit It Though!
The 6x86MX is still an excellent office application performer but offering a pretty sad 3D gaming experience. Even with a Voodoo2 card wouldn’t any 6x86MX CPU come even close to 25 fps in Quake II’s massive1 benchmark, which means it’s a complete no-no for death matchers like me.
The 6×86 offers the best office application performance for the buck, but avoid it if you want to play 3D games.
Cyrix M II — Is a New Name for an Old Product Going to Improve Sales ?
Cyrix only recently announced the ‘M II 300’ CPU. This CPU is nothing else than the 6x86MX at 233/66 with a new name. Hence the same things are true as said above about the 6x86MX. Good Winstone, bad 3D gaming performance, mediocre FPU performance.
