The New Athlon Processor: AMD Is Finally Overtaking Intel

The Results A - Office Application Benchmarks Continued

The result under NT is almost identical, although the AMD-application launcher runs completely different software:

• Adobe Photoshop 5.02
• 
  The AMD performance tester measures the time it takes to apply twenty Photoshop imaging functions and filters on two different typical Photoshop images. The tests include Adobe functions such as adjusting image sizing, making color changes, performing special effects, and high-end specialized filters. Performance demanding plug-ins are also included from the following third parties: Xenofex, Eye Candy plug-ins from Alien Skin and PhotoTools from Extensis. This test uses commercially available versions of both Photoshop and the third party plug-ins.

• Kinetix 3D StudioMax 2.5 - R2.5.0.0
• 
  The AMD performance tester features a benchmark utility created by Kinetix to measure the application performance of 3D Studio Max 2.5. The utility measures the time to load a 1-Mbyte 3D Studio Max file with 2 Mbytes of texture files, perform various operations, and render a picture. In the scene supplied with this utility, three different types of materials are used: raytraced material, a prodedural material, and some bitmap materials. There are four lights in the scene-rendering lights are a good metric of CPU power. The various operations used in this benchmark utility were specifically chosen to tax the system in most ways: loading an application, loading a file, manipulating the file, and rendering the file. The rendering operation is processor and RAM intensive, and therefore this is a good benchmark for any system.

• Dragon Naturally Speaking
• 
  The AMD performance tester features a benchmark utility created by Dragon Systems to test the speech engine from the upcoming family of Naturally Speaking products scheduled for release July 99. This utility measures the time to convert a .WAV file into text.

It is interesting to note that in this benchmark Athlon scores slightly better than Pentium III in Natural Speaking and in Photoshop 5. Athlon is even quite a bit ahead of its competitor from Intel. The same two applications can also be found in Intel's Business Application Launcher, and there Pentium III beats Athlon really badly. I'd suggest you make your own rhyme on that.