Benchmarks

The benchmarks were run on an Intel D865PERL motherboard, which uses the Springdale chipset. The nForce 2 system was run at 1.75ghz with a 166FSB. This does not equate to any retail processor, and it is not even close to the best AMD offering - but if they had sent us one we wouldn't have this problem... These figures are added mostly to give a little perspective to the other scores. All tests were run with a gigabyte of Dual DDR 400 (thanks to Overclock.co.uk). The Radeon 8500 was run at stock speeds, and the Geforce 4mx 420 was run with 442/315 ram/clock. The standard settings were 333/250.

Bearing in mind that 3dmark has a margin of error of about 100 points, these scores still show a small benefit from the extra 200mhz, but hardly measureable. It is more likely that the rather out of date graphics card is causing a bottle neck.

The Sandra CPU benchmark scores are exactly as expected, with the numbers exactly in proportion to the clock speed.

Conclusion

The clock rate of the 3.2ghz p4 is 6.6% faster than the previous top of the range chip, the 3ghz model. And surprise surprise, it performs 6.6% faster. Now according to this article in the register, It will sell at 637 US dollars. The 3ghz chip sells at 437 US dollars. You are getting 6.6% more speed, and a 47% larger dent in your wallet. You don't need a Pentium 4 to work that one out.

Peter Barnard

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