Battle 4: AMD vs. Intel
Coming to our fourth and final battle of this Doom 3 comparison we have the comparison we've all been waiting for, AMD vs. Intel. For this comparison we benchmarked quite a few different CPUs, all K7 based processors (e.g. Athlon XP, Sempron 2800+) are colored green, all K8 based processors (e.g. Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Sempron 3100+) are colored orange and all Intel processors are blue in the graphs:
The first thing you'll notice is that the top of the chart is dominated almost exclusively by AMD Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX processors. Even the Athlon 64 3400+ manages to outperform the almighty Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4, not to mention that the FX-53 distances itself from Intel's fastest by no less than 18%.
Making our way further down the chart we see that the Athlon 64 3000+ is quite possibly the best buy for excellent Doom 3 performance, weighing in right between the two Extreme Edition processors at less than 20% of the cost of those chips.
Next we have all of the Pentium 4s that manage to offer middle of the road performance under Doom 3, although we do see the K8 based Sempron 3100+ wedged in between the Prescott 3.2 and Prescott 3.0GHz CPUs.
Finally at the bottom we have the Athlon XPs as well as the lonely Celeron D, which is barely saved from a disappointing last place showing.
The standings remain the same at 1280x1024 as you can see below:
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michael2k - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
Heh, what about frames/$ graphs?Da3dalus - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
Lovely graphs, *pats my Athlon 64 3200+ while waiting for Doom 3*Another week for Doom 3 to hit our european shelves, damnit I hate waiting for something you americans already have :-/
elfy6x - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
I have a dual Opteron 246 setup, with 1Gb of ram, and a Radeon 9700 Pro. I'm not really a gamer, but I gave Doom 3 a shot, and it utilizes both of my CPU's when I play. I have nothing else running when I play the game. It doesn't tax both CPU's to 100% but one CPU fluctuates between 40-50% while the other one bounces around 10-20%. So something is processing two threads. Just my observation. :)PotatoMAN - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
I second the idea of benching memory and video memory at AT for doom week. I have a 3200+ A64 and I am wondering if I am starving it more with a 9800 pro (128) or with my 512mb of RAM. Thanks AT for being awesome!Gooberslot - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
I bet a 1-1.2ghz P3 or Athlon would cut it for a minimum. Just go back and look at the old benchmarks of the P4 1.5ghz on here. Only in Quake3 was the P4 on top. In UT the P4 actually tied with the P3 1ghz. Pathetic. Stating minimum requirements based on those old Williamete P4's is very misleading. Perhaps the real minimum cpu requirements should have been 1.2ghz P3 or Athlon, 1.5ghz P4, or 2.4ghz Celeron. :)matman326 - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
Man I always knew that an athlon 64 system was powerfull but a 180 dollar proc. beating Intels Extremly Expensive 1000 dollar proc is just mind blowing. So much for the Netburst design kicking butt.AtaStrumf - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
If you could find some time, I'd like to see a comparison between 128 and 256 MB R9800Pro, and 512 RAM and 1024 MB RAM. Basicly how much of a difference do video and system RAM make.at80eighty - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
dammit! looks like im gonna celebrate Christmas with a loan..grrrr... : )WooDaddy - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
Two words:AMD ROX!!!
I've been an AMD user since the 386 days and even had a NexGen processor (pre-pentium, K5). Never went Intel, never will (maybe)...
Thatsright,
Naw.. The charts don't lie. But to be fair, let's wait for the Intel-funded people (aka Tom's (blow)hardware) to put up their benchmarks. 10 bucks says they'll make all kinds of excuses to why Intel procs aren't fast enough.
Regs - Wednesday, August 4, 2004 - link
Wow. Good info. Dual channel offers nothing. And the socket 939 2.2 Ghz CPU offers nothing over my 3000 A64 which costs 200 dollars less. Given that if you play on higher resolutions.