We used a total of 19 different benchmark tests in order to obtain a well-rounded and balanced picture of the two competitors. A quick glance at the benchmark results gives you an overview of the latest processors from Intel and AMD, 16 in total. At the forefront are top models from AMD and Intel, namely the Athlon XP 2000+ and the Pentium 4/2000.

The OpenGL performances are measured through various Quake 3 tests - the Direct3D performance from the DirectX package is measured with 3D Mark 2000 (based on DirectX7) and 3D Mark 2001 (based on DirectX 8).

A comprehensive test scenario is created 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. One of the established standards is our MPEG-4 test, in which data from a commercial DVD-ROM is converted into MPEG-4 via Xmpeg and the Divx codec. In addition, an MPEG-2 file is created with the video editing software Pinnacle Studio 7.

For a while, we have been using the professional Lightwave package version 7b from Newtek to evaluate rendering performance. Archiving is also important for practical applications. We use WinACE. Compiling the newest Linux Kernel 2.4.13 has long been part of our standard repertoire. In order to test office performance, the Sysmark 2001 benchmark is used.