AMD Athlon XP 2600/2400+ - Introducing Thoroughbred Revision B

Gaming Performance - Unreal Tournament 2003

We introduced the latest Unreal Tournament 2003 benchmark in our GPU Shootout article a few weeks back and we're continuing to use it as an example of a next-generation game test.

We benchmarked under two levels - DM-Antalus (a very GPU bound benchmark) and DM-Asbestos (a very CPU bound benchmark) to give you an idea of the two extremes you'll encounter under Unreal Tournament 2003.

Gaming Performance - Unreal Tournament 2003 DM-Antalus - Frames per Second (higher is better) AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (2.13GHz) AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.00GHz) AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz) AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.4BGHz Intel Pentium 4 2.40GHz (400MHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.20GHz (400MHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0AGHz (400MHz) 105.0 104.9 104.8 104.8 104.7 104.7 102.2 102.1 102.1 101.8 101.1 | 0 | 21 | 42 | 63 | 84 | 105 | 126

When the GPU is the limiting factor, as long as you have a fast enough CPU you'll be just fine; as you can see from the chart above, the performance differences are negligible.

Gaming Performance - Unreal Tournament 2003 DM-Asbestos - Frames per Second (higher is better) Intel Pentium 4 2.53GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.4BGHz AMD Athlon XP 2600+ (2.13GHz) AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2.00GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz Intel Pentium 4 2.40GHz (400MHz) AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.80GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.20GHz (400MHz) AMD Athlon XP 2100+ (1.73GHz) AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (1.67GHz) Intel Pentium 4 2.0AGHz (400MHz) 174.4 174.1 173.0 170.5 170.1 168.8 163.6 163.5 163.1 162.4 155.3 | 0 | 35 | 70 | 105 | 140 | 174 | 209

In a more CPU bound test, the performance spread is much more interesting. The XP 2600+ and XP 2400+ are effectively as fast as the top two Intel performers, definitely meeting AMD's goals.