We used different benchmark tests in order to give you a complete and balanced picture of what the new Athlon XP 2800+ can do. The benchmark results from a total of 20 different CPUs provide a general overview. As a point of comparison, all of the newer AMD Athlon XP processors are included.

There are quite a few new aspects to the benchmark tests. The OpenGL performances are evaluated using various Quake 3 tests; the Direct3D performance from the DirectX package is measured with 3D Mark 2000 Pro (version 1.1, based on DirectX7) and 3D Mark 2001 SE (based on DirectX 8).

A comprehensive test scenario is provided by a variety of benchmarks for MPEG encoding - with the help of the Lame MP3 Encoder, a 178 MB WAV file is converted to the MPEG-1 Layer 3 format. New to the tests is Virtual Dub, which we use to convert a 1.2 GB DV video file to MPEG-4 format through the codec DivX 5.02 Pro. In addition, an MPEG-2 file is created with new video editing software, Pinnacle Studio 8.

Part of the standard repertoire for evaluating rendering performance is Lightwave version 7.5 from Newtek, 3D Studio Max version 5.0 and Cinema 4D XL 7.303. Here, 3D Studio Max 5.0 is the highlight - it is used for the very first time ever by THG . Also important for practical applications is data-packing, for which we use WinACE-Packer 2.11.

In order to test office performance, the Sysmark 2002 benchmark is used. A comprehensive 3D benchmark suite is provided by the new SPEC Viewperf 7. And, of course, SiSoft Sandra 2002 SP1 shouldn't be left out. New to the 3D gaming benchmarks are Unreal Tournament 2003 and Comanche 4.