PIII still wasting T-Birds in 3D-Mark 2000

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Just when I was beginning to believe everyone about the superiority of AMD performance.
http://gamershq.madonion.com/products/orb/?include_page=publish_search.shtml&current_cpuid=3&current_chipsetid=61&current_resolution=3&current_bitdepth=1&current_cpuspeed=1000&cpuid=0&cpuspeed_from=1&cpuspeed_to=1300&chipsetid=61&uscreenwidth=1024&bitdepth=16&score_from=&score_to=&email=
I was there to compare mine and noticed the PIII's scoring generally higher than the Athons at the same clock speed as mine, so I decided to see what all the highest scores were. Well, some Athlons over 1400MHz took the top of coarse do to there clock speed. Since nobody seemed to have their PIII over 1.2GHz, I decided that would be a good cut off point for clock to clock comparisons, but then thought I'd give the AMD guys a little leeway and made it 1300MHz. The results were stagering-PIII's at no more than 1200 consistently beeting Athlons up to 1288Mhz! I would like to blame VIA for lesser AGP support, but until someone releases a better chipset for the T-Bird, I can only take the scores at face value!

Suicide is painless...........
 

amdchuck

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I tend to disregard the vast amount of biased infomation on the internet specifically benchmarks, I go by what I see and what I know.

I do know PIII's are at least equal to the the T-Birds in many respects. Also in some respects they are better, some worse.

Give me a PIII or an Athlon system configured properly and I have plenty of power either way.
 

Grizely1

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That's one long freakin' URL!!!!

Anyway, if you look around on the web, that's about the only benchmark where the P3 beats the Thunderbird. Something sound wrong? It should.

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Satan Clara...... 'Nuff said.
 
G

Guest

Guest
I looked through the site and the results may not be as stagering as they appear. People overclocking video cards, raising bus speeds, and using different speed memory can greatly affect benchmarks. The comparisons Tom does where the only variable is the processor are more accurate.
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Actually it was the same story at 1GHz. At least I gave the AMD a little advantage by setiing the cuttoff point at 1300MHz, even though the fastest PIII's were running only 1.2GHz. The AMD really started to pull ahead over 1400MHz, but any comparison between that and the PIII at 1.2GHz would be giving the AMD far too much advantage. I truely hope that someone markets a version of the new PIII that fits the Socket 370, as it would greatly simplify next year's upgrade for me!
Hey, I know the T-bird is a more powefull chip in many respects, when is someone going to release a top-notch chipset for it? What this test showed me is that any advantages of the T-Bird are likely to be minimal, I built my system for stability so I should be happy-it is already so fast that even a 10% difference in performance (based on my overclocking trials) is unnoticable to me with any current software.

Suicide is painless...........
 

Kodiak

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I'm a bit confused here, but you are taking a test designed to measure essentially video-card and graphic-subsytem speed, and using it to measure CPU speed... not only that, but you're using a statistically unknown sample to support the conclusion...

consider: If all P3s at 900Mhz had GF2 Ultras and Athlon 1200s had TNT2, well, P3s would beat them at 3dmarks by a large, large difference...

now *obviously* nothing like that clean-cut division is going to happen in real life, but there are things to consider...
maybe since P3s are more expensive, people who buy p3 processors also buy more expensive video cards, memory, hard drives whatever? Etc... its just a random sample...

not saying that your conclusion is necessarily wrong, P3 may or may not be better, I'm not going back there:)
Just saying that data supporting your conclusion is absolutelly meaningless in the worst statistical and common-sense way...

whichever processor holds the advantage can't be decided by such a random result...
 

Grizely1

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What that site should have taught you is that when one computer has better stuff than the other it wins (ie the P3 in those benchmarks had overclocked video cards, better ones, etc.).

If you believe in those benchmarks, then you should believe that the P4 1.5GHz performs better than the TBird at the same clock speed.

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Satan Clara...... 'Nuff said.
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Let's see now-I campared computers all with the same type of video chip, and I really don't think that AMD guys use cheaper video cards than Intel guys at this level. These are the best of the hardcore systems, people post their stuff at madonion.com for bragging rights. I seriously doubt that all of the AMD's had lesser cards than the PIII's that posted on top of them. It test not just the card but the entire graphics subsystem (the AGP port, etc.). And it test the CPU.

Suicide is painless...........
 

Crashman

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Former Staff
Oh great, so now I bow at the feet of Intel. Let's see, I know that the P4 sucks. I also know that ANYTHING VIA sucks. Sorry AMD. Putting a T-Bird on VIA is like putting a PIII on the 810. OK maybe not that bad, but if you misjuged me so poorly, maybe you need to take stock of your own abilities.

Suicide is painless...........
 

paulj

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I tend to agree with f1ip about this not being a very scientific study. It indicates what users are doing, but it is not a direct comparison of processors under exactly the same scenario other than the processor. Also, Kodiak mentioned that this is a test designed to measure essentially video-card and graphic-subsystem speed, not processor performance. We are also not sure that the sampling of users is appropriate to analyze statistically. Half the job of doing a comparison is to be sure that you are not comparing apples to oranges. None the less, I ran some numbers and came up with the following:

Filter parameters:
CPU: All
CPU Clock Range: 1000 to 1300 MHz
Chipset: All
Resolution: 1024*768 * All
Score Range: None

I looked only at the first 20 and calculated the following:

AMD machines: 12
P3 machines: 8

AMD average score: 10126.75
P3 average score: 10271.75
Difference: 84

AMD average CPU clock speed: 1260
P3 average CPU clock speed: 1181.25

I am not sure what conclusions should be drawn from this analysis. It can easily be seen that the P3 average is higher. The next question would naturally be what was the cost of each system. I would speculate that the AMD systems would be cheaper. Then you could upgrade your processor. The net result would be a faster system for the dollar. That is my guess. Any body have any other ideas about the cost variable? That is important to most of us I assume.

I still come back to the fact that we don’t know if the systems are being compared fairly.

I have two questions that I, and I believe most people, have.

1) What CPU gives you the most bang for the buck?

2) If you have an unlimited budget what CPU can score the best? By this I mean which CPU can be built/configured in such a way as to score the highest in various benchmarks, not just one.

In conclusion, I don’t see that either CPU is wasting the other. It seems that in this one comparison, which may not be a good way to judge overall computer performance or necessarily a fair comparison, that the P3 scores slightly better.
 

Ncogneto

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There are several reasons why. Unlike some of the other die hard AMD fans that totally missed the point here you are in part correct. However this only applies to this synthetic benchmark that was designed more to measure performance for your system as you make tweaks/upgrades and not so much to measure across platforms. One reason lies in the code itself of the program as it is better optimized to use sse then it is to use 3dnow. These still come into play even though you are using T&L setting in the test. The second main reason ( this exspecially true for the above 1gig intel processors) is the fact for an intel p3 to run at 1.2 gig it has to be done by overclocking the fsb thus running the agp out of spec as well. An athlon can run at 1.2 gig completely in spec. And yes the intel chipsets are a little more freindly to overclocking than the via chipsets are. This is changing however with the new 133a chipsets. We are now seeing athlons running at 150 fsb. It would be interesting to see the two processors head to head clock for clock, in spec using the mmx settings in the test to keep as much equal as neccesary. As for the advantages of SSE vs 3dnow I really don't want to go down that road we can argue till we are blue in the face that sse is better or that this program is just better optimized for it.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Actually I was only trying to prove the anti-superiority theory holds true for AMD. Many of us already know that both processors have about eqaul performance, this is just a slap in the face for those who kept claiming that the AMD was FAR BETTER. In reality I think a more balanced test would show that AMD is about a 2% on overall performance, but it's give and take-one test shows it better and the other worse. This is the closest thing I know of to a "Real World" comparison, as people who post big numbers on this site are experts on their particular flavor of system. It takes away the flaw seen in most comparisons where the tester optomises one system better than the other because he knows one system better than the other-these systems are fully optomised. Now a perfect comparison would be a group of examples such as this one, whish would show the highest possible scores for each test. A single component test-such as CPU mark-fails the analysis because it does not show system performance. The only tests that matter are those that test overall performance for a single application-those such as 3D-Mark, Winstone, Business Mark, etc. I've simply tried to dispell the myth that AMD's are better at everything.
The fact remains that when I built my new system I used the PIII simply because of better available chipsets. I hate Intel's business practices and flaw them for never producing a more advanced version of the PIII. But they do know how to make chipsets and are only interested thus far in sharing that technology with ATI. Of coarse Micron was working at one time on a PIII chipset and then got their licence yanked leaving AMD as their alternative, so maybe they will produce a good AMD chipset. Then again, maybe it will never be released.

Suicide is painless...........
 

tfbww

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I gotta say. That extendo-hyperlink has made this thread unreadable (blown out left/right scroll).

Maybe next time....
 

phsstpok

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This is speculation on my part but I think the results may be attributed to more P3's than Athlons running on 133 mhz bus. Now that KT133A and DDR mobo's are out I think the scores will swing the way of the Athlon.
 

Ncogneto

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I will agree with in you point on a clock for clock basis but the dollar for dollar basis is an altogether different story. I still contend that via is getting better, though not quite up to snuff with Intel.I still think intel could have did a better job with the I815 chipset (although it is good, but choose not to, to put there Rambus chipsets in a better light. I am really curious to see if they do the same thing to there DDR solution that they just accelerated. And amd users still have Nvidia, micron and Amd themselves onboard, lets hope we get another A class chipset maker out there to do the same thing to Motherboard prices as we have seen with processors.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!
 

Grizely1

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when whoever is claiming the T-Bird is FAR BETTER it's because they're probably talking about price/performance, not just performance.

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Satan Clara...... 'Nuff said.
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
Every other time someone ask about a PIII, a couple people in here say "I don't know why you would want one, the Thunderbird is much faster" and "much cheaper". I agree that it is a better value for many people, and T-Birds make great machines for specializing in one task (fewer task=fewer cards+less software=fewer cinfiguration problems). But there is a certain reality here that the price difference is not that huge (around 10% of total system cost) and there are reasons for building a PIII on an Intel chipset for certain types of users that can outweigh the price difference. And the overall difference in performance is about 2% (but might be as much as 10% with the new chipsets).

Suicide is painless...........
 
G

Guest

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Sounds like an insecure intel user trying to justify keeping his intel vs upgrading to a very affordable AMD 1.0+. Why start such a thread....? If you are content with how your systems runs at the moment why throw stones???
 
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Guest

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I have said this tome and time again , the PIII does have some advatanges(I use a [-peep-] load of cards and software in my tbird with no probs), and with the recent price drops in the UK there is less and less to choose between them, the advice to anybody looking at upgrading is read up on the articles ask advice and then make an informed choice between the long list of S**t hot CPU's out there.....

M

UK Prices are <font color=red>toooooooooo</font color=red> high , keep competition going to bring em down :smile:
 

HolyGrenade

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I dont see why everyone is mad about speed right now.
c'mon, the current cpu's are more than enough to handle
the current applications, even games.

I have a AMD 650 (not even a T-Bird) running on an Asus
K7v, with a Creative GeForce 256 DDR. The games run perfectly
ok on this system, even the brand spanking new - GIANTS.
Really Cool game. Although Deus Ex Did get shaky every now
and then. I'm told thats because of their sound stuff or
something.

Its really stable aswell with all the PCI slots taken with:
Win-TV PVR, Creative DXR3, SB Live! Player, TekRam SCSI and
finally a NIC. I have to admit it did crash every now and
then when I had a 250W PSU, but now with a 300W one it runs
very smoothly. Joint Strike Fighter still crashes left, right
and center. Stupid Eidos still havent got back to me.

Anyway if I were to upgrade the system, I would go for another
AMD, 'cos

- Intel are far too expensive, even after the pricecuts
- I've never come across the so called AMD stability issues
- Pentium III is at the end of the road as Intel are unleashing
their Blue Suit Advert Guys out to promote Pentium 4
- The current generation of Pentium 4 is also a non-upgradable path

So there you go.

(--Visual C++'s Intellisense feature is really really buggy--)
 
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Guest

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I agree for some usage the speed of the CPU is a luxury and in alot plainly useless, however I can get Q3 to run Ok at 1600x1200 which is nice and for compiling 6mb exe's it helps like hell(cuts a compile down to 4 mins form 17 on my laptop), my primary sys is a t'bird 1ghz, 512mb cass2 ram , 50 gig of ATA100 disk ,32mb geforce DDR
but like I say I can do everything I NEED to do on my PII300 laptop with 128mb ram....

M

UK Prices are <font color=red>toooooooooo</font color=red> high , keep competition going to bring em down :smile:
 

jclw

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At my local store:

TBird-900 & Abit KT7a = CDN$450
PIII-866EB & Asus CUSL2-C = CDN$500

As Crashman pointed out earlier this is a price difference of 10%, but on a $1000 system this would be a price difference of less then 5%. And yet in terms of performance running SETI 3.0.3 CLI:

PIII-500@600 (Katmai/120FSB) 128MB@120MHz (2/2/2): 570mins (=3420mins @ 100MHz)
Athlon-900@950 (Tbird/105FSB) 128MB@140MHz (2/2/2): 435mins (=4133mins @ 100MHz)
PIII-800@900 (Coppermine/112FSB) 256MB@112MHz (2/2/2): 405mins (=3645mins @ 100MHz)

So the Katmai is running 21% faster (clock for clock) and the Coppermine is running 13% faster (clock for clock). I suspect the higher speed chips are held up by memory bandwidth which would explain why the Katmai is running the most efficiently.

Anyway, my point is that the TBird chips may be fast at some things, but they are not the fastest in everything. Nor in this case are they the best $/performance deal.

- JW
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
You open up your mouth and prove your stupidity, because, as I stated, I am trying to make the point that, in spite of bad advice I've seen on this forum, the PIII is still a viable option. Keeping my Intel vs upgrading? You idiot, I built this system less tahn 4 months ago to REPLACE my problematic AMD. At the time I built the AMD I was telling people how foolish it would be to give their money to such an abusive company as Intel when they could build an equally performing AMD for less money. But after owning it for a while I realized that, although it performed well when it worked, it was just too much hassle to make it work and keep it working. Any step I can make to increase productivity makes me money, so building this ultra stable system has already MADE me more than the price difference. I hear idiots in here telling people when they ask how to upgrad their system to throw away the CPU and motherboard and get a new AMD settup. They say stupid things like "it's cheaper" (truley moronic, an AMD CPU AND motherboard cheaper than just an Intel CPU?), and that it will perform much better (I think I've just shown that this is not always the case). So I throw stones not at AMD owners, I actually admire the company, but at idiots like you that would go as far as to tell people that they should UPGRADE(!) their 1GHz PIII to a 1GHz Athlon! And, for about the hundredth time it this forum, I suggest that anyone serious about building an Athlon based system consider the ALi MAGiK as it is the only good alternative to the problematic VIA chipsets (If you think Intel abuses their customers, take a look at VIA)!

Suicide is painless...........