Benchmark Marathon: 65 CPUs from 100 MHz to 3066 MHz

Test Setup And Details

Benchmarks Under Windows XP

We used several different benchmarks to obtain a complete and balanced picture of the performance of all x86 processors. Our benchmark results provide a clear performance overview of a total of 65 different CPUs.

We test OpenGL performance with two different Quake 3 tests. We test Direct3D performance in the DirectX package with 3D Mark 2001 Pro (based on DirectX 8.1). The various MPEG encoding benchmarks provide us with a wealth of test scenarios. We encode a 178 MB WAV file to "MPEG-1 Layer 3 format" using the Lame MP3 encoder and mp3 Maker Platinum. We also convert a DV video (1.2 GB) to MPEG-2 format with Main Concept 1.3. Zipping of files is highly relevant to day-to-day computing, and we have started to do this in our testing with Winrar 3.1. To measure Office performance, we use the well-known Sysmark 2002 benchmarking program. Last but not least, we include the ubiquitous SiSoft Sandra 2003. We must not forget Tournament 2003, the popular 3D game for DirectX8. Overclockers looking for guidelines for successful overclocking will find PC Mark 2002 of interest.