We used a total of 20 different benchmark tests in order to obtain the most complete, well-balanced view of how the Pentium 4/2666 with 533 MHz performs. You can get a clear overall picture for a total of 22 different processors from the benchmark results. In this batch, the Pentium 4/2533 and Pentium 4/2666 won't be launched for another few months. Included in this comparison are all of the AMD Athlon XP processors and the classic Athlon with the Thunderbird core, as well as the slowest model, the Athlon 850.

We ran four different Quake 3 tests to determine OpenGL performance. The different MPEG-encoding benchmarks provide a comprehensive testing environment - the Lame MP3 Encoder was used to encode a 178 MB WAV file into MPEG-1 Layer 3 format. Still an established standard, our MPEG-4 test converts a file from a commercial DVD-ROM into MPEG-4 format using Xmpeg 4.2a and the Divx 4.12 codec. We also created an MPEG-2 film using the video-editing software "Pinnacle Studio 7." A regular in our list of benchmarks is determining rendering performance using Newtek's Lightwave (version 7b). We also ran WinACE 4.1 to test file archiving, a standard and practical application in the computing world. Compiling the latest Linux kernel 2.4.13, has also long been a standard benchmark in our repertoire. In order to determine office performance, we used the new Sysmark 2002 benchmark. SPECviewperf provides a comprehensive suite of 3D benchmarks.

Sysmark 2002: Applications Integrated

The new Sysmark 2002 benchmark includes the following applications:

Internet Content Generation:

• Adobe Photoshop 6.01
• Adobe Premiere 6.0
• Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 7.1
• Macromedia Dreamweaver 4
• Macromedia Flash 5

Office Productivity:

• Microsoft Word 2002
• Microsoft Excel 2002
• Microsoft PowerPoint 2002
• Microsoft Outlook 2002
• Microsoft Access 2002
• Netscape Communicator 6.0
• Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred v.5
• WinZip 8.0
• McAfee VirusScan 5.13.