CPU Price Shootout: Intel P4 640 vs AMD A64 3500+

Testing

3DMark03

The 3DMark03 CPU test is a convenient way to measure the performance of the CPU for typical 3D usage. The feature tests isolate the performance of key 3D features primarily relating to shader technologies

3DMark05

3DMark05 is a premium benchmark for evaluating the latest generation of gaming hardware. It is the first benchmark to require a DirectX9.0 compliant hardware with support for Pixel Shaders 2.0 or higher. Resolution was set to 1024×768.

PCMark04

PCMark04 supports the complete benchmark cycle ? allowing you to benchmark your PC, view the resulting benchmark details, compare your results to those of others, and finally analyze how to improve your PC performance. PCMark04?s system score is a single, globally recognized number that represents the overall PC performance for home usage.

AquaMark3

AquaMark3 executes a complete state-of-the-art game engine and generates 3D scenes designed to make the same demands on hardware as a modern game. The utilized game engine, the krass Engine, has been used in Aquanox and AquaNox 2: Revelation as well as in the upcoming RTS Spellforce by Phenomic Game Development. AquaMark3 utilizes recent hardware features of the new DirectX 9 API, such as PixelShader 2.0, while staying fully backward compatible to DirectX 8 and 7 graphics hardware.

Super Pi

SuperPi calculates the number Pi in this raw number crunching benchmark. The benchmark is fairly diverse and allows the user to change the number of digits of Pi that can be calculated. In this benchmark we ran SuperPi to 4 million places.

Sisoft Sandra 2005

SiSoft Sandra 2005 is a synthetic benchmark for testing primary components.
The tests can stress a system’s CPU, Memory, or Multimedia capabilities.
Sandra 2005 supports X86 (32-bit) and X86-64 (64-bit) hardware and OS’s.

Though the 3500+ Winchester comes out on top in almost every benchmark, the P4 640 proves to be no slouch. When considering this strictly from a price comparison point of view, Intel should be very happy with the results. At stock speeds, the AMD system displays a healthy advantage in almost every test. but with far better overclocking performance, the Intel 640 closes the gap at higher clock speeds. I’m sure with some more exotic cooling the P4 640 would even be a better performer.