Ok....
what is benchamrking
(in case you are new to
this).
It is almost like writing
exams at school or University, to try and gage how well you have done throughout
the year.
Computers are similar, they
are able to perform to a certain level depending on the type of hardware
you have installed, and the relative "newness" of the drivers for your
hardware.
People new to the net and
its advantages, are not quite aware of the frequency that drivers are upadated
and renewned. The most common example that hopefully all of you know about
would be Direct X. The set of standard drivers that now, thankfully come
with the operating system. In the days of Windows 95, you would ahave to
find it all on your own, and this caused some games not to run on ppl's
machines. Now write this under correction, but I think this whole Direct
X phenomenon started in 1996. One year after windows 95 was released. Currently
Direct X 8.0a is available for download from Microsoft's homepage
Now to get back to my point,
you have various programs that stress various components inside your box.
So simply doing 1 benchmark will be like having 1 piece of a puzzle, pretty
damn useless. But there is one program out there that seems to cover a
wide variety of productivity software, Bechmark Studio. Unfortunately it
only works with Windows 2000, but it is a free download. So if you have
Widows 2000 I suggest you download it now, in case they change their minds.
It was done to show the superioruty of Pentium 4, but turned out sour for
Intel.
In my little collections
of benchmarks, I mainly stress the 3d capabilities of my machine so most
of the benchamrks involve games, but I am adding other non gaming related
benchmarks as well, to show the benefits of certain hardware configs. |
| CPU [MHz] |
RAM[MHz] |
Hard Drive
size manufacturer and speed |
Video card |
CPU temps (idle) |
| PIII
866 |
128 (133) |
20 GB Western
Digital 7200rpm |
TNT2 M64 32MB |
41 |
| PIII 600EB |
64 (100) |
20 GB Quantum
Fireball 5400rpm |
GeForce 2 MX 32MB
(aka NV11) |
35
|
| PII 266@400 |
96 (100)* |
3 GB (Gigabyte)
5400
rpm |
TNT2 M64 32 MB |
38
|
| AMD K7 800 |
128 (133) |
20 GB Seagate
Barracuda 7200 rpm |
Voodoo2 SLI 24 MB &
ATI Rage II (mach64)
2 MB |
45
|
| AMD K6-2 500 |
64 (100) |
17 GB (?) 5400
rpm |
SIS 530 8 MB (onboard) |
38
|
* The PII system has mixed RAM, one
32 MB pc100 stick and one 64 MB pc133 stick, and the CPU is
overclocked to
400 MHz via the FSB (100 MHz)
To try and fill the gaps between 600
and 800, I declocked my system to 720 MHz just as a reference, and overclocked
it to 872, to "compete" with the 866 PIII.
Just to give you a rundown of the
machines in this test :
-
The "fastest" processor clock wise, is
the Pentium III Coppermine 866. The Coppermine name tells you that the
system bus runs at 133 MHz, (the Pentium III 600 is also a Coppermine
by the way.)
-
The "best" video card in this round up
is the NV11.
-
The fastest machine according to the
benchmarks though, is the AMD K7 800, this is the new version of the K7,
the Thuderbird which is a socket CPU.
-
The PIII 866 is also a socket CPU, along
with the AMD K6-2, but the PII and PIII 600 are both SLOT CPU's
-
The fastest video card, is the one connected
to the fastest CPU ; ) , the Voodoo2 SLI combo rules supreme at the
moment. We will see if this changes as we add more up to date benchmarks.
(e.g. 3d mark 2000, quake 3, etc.)
-
The Pentium II 266, which is overclocked
for all the benchmarks in this test, unfortunately only has a 66 MHz FSB
(front side bus), this puts him at a severe disadvantage, but even this
does not stop him from beating some of the more powerful cpus in the test.
-
There are 2 similar video cards in this
round up. The TNT 2 M64 chipset with 32 MB of RAM. The only difference
between the two, is the maker, the on e is made by Gigabyte (a respected
name in the hardware market) and the other , Chronos (dubious in
user circles)
-
The AMD K6-2 does not feature in
this round of benchmarking, but I hope to include it when I publish the
Sandra SiSoft 2001 benchmark figures. He is severely debilitated due to
the onboard video card. If you consider yourself a "gamer" and strive for
those frame rates, stay WELL clear of the onboard video death trap ! The
K6-2 also has a FSB of 66 MHz
-
The idle temperatures, is just to give
a gage of what the average temperature your CPU should be running at. This
of coarse differs according to the temp of your surroundings, it could
drop by 5 degrees on a rainy day ! or raise by 5 on a hot day (sometimes
even more!)
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