Old Hand Meets Young Firebrand: ATi FireGL X1 and Nvidia Quadro4 980XGL

AGP8X: One Up On The AGP4X?

The results speak for themselves: AGP8X does not represent any advances over the AGP4X. The same was found with other applications, by the way. THG already established this in previous game tests.

Hyperthreading: On Or Off?

Legend: w/ = with; w/o = without; HT = hyperthreading

Hyperthreading (HT) is the rallying slogan Intel is using to promote its new Pentium 4s starting with 3 GHz. Behind this term is a new system. One physical CPU can trick the operating system into believing it is dealing with two virtual CPUs. The computer then behaves similarly to a dual processor system. Under certain circumstances, HT can improve overall performance. It is clear from Intel reports that HT generally works with any operating system that supports several processors. While Windows 98 and Windows Me are out of the question, Hyperthreading is generally possible with Windows 2000 or Windows XP. But here, too, we smelled a rat. Intel published examples in its reports that were produced solely under Windows XP. The charts above reveal the dilemma: if the multiprocessor core is activated under Windows 2000, performance using HT drops dramatically. With Windows XP, the opposite usually happens. Nevertheless, it's important not to lose sight of the whole picture. Windows 2000 is simply quicker with today's OpenGL workstation applications than Windows XP. Hyperthreading changes nothing here.