Pro/ENGINEER Performance of High End x86 CPUs (Athlon vs P3)

The Total Score from the OCUS tests illustrates how the test system faired overall, and to no surprise, the 1GHz Athlon came in at the top of the list. The surprising element here is that it is only about 6% quicker than the Pentium III 800 which is a much cheaper solution. Keep in mind that this isn't a Pentium III 800 on an i820 motherboard with thousands of dollars of RDRAM, it's a regular 800 running at a 100MHz FSB on a BX board with SDRAM.

Clock for clock, the Pentium III manages to beat out the Athlon by about 3%. According to most Pro/E users, a performance difference of 3% isn't huge but we've come to expect the Athlon to come out on top in professional level tests such as the OCUS. The old Pentium III 500 (512KB L2) and the Celeron 500 come in as the slowest two out of the group, and fall noticeably behind the Athlon 500. It is the newer Pentium III E CPUs that the Athlon is falling short of.

What factor is causing the Pentium III to come out ahead on a clock for clock basis? Let's take a look at the breakdown of the scores to see where that 3% performance advantage is coming from.