AMD's Athlon XP 2100+ The Last of the Palominos

3D Rendering Performance

Our 3D rendering tests are also brought over from previous CPU reviews. The only difference here is that we're reporting both scores in terms of images rendered per hour.

3D Rendering Performance 3D Studio MAX 4.2.6 Waterfall.max (Rendered Images per Hour - Higher is better)

AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0A GHz AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (1.40GHz) AMD Athlon 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz 54.5 51.4 51.4 48.0 46.8 44.4 44.4 43.9 38.7 35.3 | 0 | 11 | 22 | 33 | 44 | 55 | 65

The Athlon XP has always done very well when it comes to 3D rendering performance, mostly because its performance depends primarily on raw x87 FPU power. The 2100+ manages to pull ahead of the 2.2GHz Northwood by 6%.

Here the Athlon XP's performance curve is placed higher than the Pentium 4, it will take a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 to intersect the Athlon XP's curve but after that the 533MHz FSB and higher clock speed Pentium 4s should make things interesting.

3D Rendering Performance Maya 4.0.1 Rendertest (Rendered Images per Hour - Higher is better)

AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.2GHz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0A GHz AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (1.40GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0GHz AMD Athlon 1.4GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz 40.9 39.6 39.1 36.7 36.4 34.6 33.6 33.3 30.8 27.1 | 0 | 8 | 16 | 25 | 33 | 41 | 49

The performance standings don't change much as we move to Maya as our test application of choice...

...and thus the performance scaling doesn't change either.