Final Words

With the introduction of the 800MHz, Intel has put the nail in the Athlon XP's coffin - whatever chances AMD had at regaining the performance crown with the Athlon XP were lost when Intel introduced the 865PE and 875P platforms. Luckily for AMD, the Athlon 64 is just around the corner but it's clear who the winner of the Northwood vs. Barton battle is.

At high clock speeds, there's no denying that the Pentium 4 is the processor to have - especially the new 'C' models with the 800MHz FSB. We included results from a slower Pentium 4 1.6A and an AMD Athlon XP 1600+ to prove another point, at lower clock speeds the Athlon XP is still a better option although as higher clocked P4s drop in price AMD's advantage in this area will begin to fade as well.

So if you're looking to buy the best on the block today, look no further than a Pentium 4 but we'd caution against purchasing the 3.2GHz Pentium 4. The price premium you're going to be paying doesn't justify the performance advantage you get over a 3.0C, not to mention that the 3.2GHz Pentium 4 is the hottest running CPU on the block. We'd recommend going with one of the slightly lower clocked 800MHz FSB models (the 2.6C or 2.8C come to mind) and holding off on upgrading again until the Socket-775 Prescott CPUs hit next year.

For more information on Intel's future CPU plans be sure to read through our analysis of their roadmap here.

3D Rendering Performance - Lightwave 3D 7.5
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  • Anonymous User - Wednesday, October 8, 2003 - link

    Atari 2600 Rules!
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, September 7, 2003 - link

    i love how you see amd chips compared directly to intel ones which cost 8 times as much - and then they say that the intel 'kicked arse' - also optimised code compared to unoptimised (ala sandra)

    i think ill write a review 'dual AMD 3200+ = intel killer - kicks the p3-1000 arse' just wait till you see how extended 3dnow+ is going whomp intels mmx1 hehehe
  • Jeff7181 - Saturday, August 30, 2003 - link

    #11... the review on the 3.0C used PC800 RDRAM's and this one uses DDR400. That's one difference... they may have also used slightly different options for testing since they seem to customize the benchmark.
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, August 23, 2003 - link

    Read Tomsharware review and xbitlabs and youll see how the p4 flies above those athlons
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, August 23, 2003 - link

    I think INTEL and their last line of Pentium 4 really kick AMD athlon ass ... and very hard ...
  • Anonymous User - Friday, August 8, 2003 - link

    Hello,
    I was wondering if any of you guys knows how to overclock the P4 2.8GHz on a I875PBZ MOBO
    Why the bios under the same board are so limited?
    Can the Intel MOBO 875PBZ upgrade my CPU?
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, August 5, 2003 - link

    Why is there such a large difference in the UT2003 benchmark results between this review and that of the P4 3.0C? Hmm...
  • Anonymous User - Saturday, August 2, 2003 - link

    Pictures does not work on XP using IE either.
  • Anonymous User - Tuesday, July 22, 2003 - link

    Another web site did testing on the same two chips and the p4 came out on top.If you want to see it go to tomshardware and read for yourselves.
  • Anonymous User - Sunday, July 20, 2003 - link

    What really buggers me off is that I can't see any of the attached images in this article as I am using Opera 7.11 on a linux box. Please make your site all OS- and browser-compatible. (At least to some extent anyway). Not everyone uses IE and Windows.

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