Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Dan3]

Re: Looks like this PC Woldbench...

Most magazines use benchmarks like SysMark that were designed by Intel. PC World actually uses its own engineers and benchmarks. Look what they learned about the various Intel proposed benchmarks as part of the process and see why I trust PC World more than any other general distribution magazine. Most of the magazines out there just publish what Intel suggests:

To better examine hyperthreading technology, the PC World Test Center devised several tests. Our analysts created two using Photoshop, engineered two multitasking tests, and added snippets from the still-in-progress PC WorldBench 5 (due later in 2003).

Our first Photoshop test employed 20 commonly used filters--most of them specified by Adobe and by PC World's art department, with a few chosen from Intel's recommendations. Since Photoshop is a multithreaded application, we expected some improvement with Intel's new technology, but the Athlon XP PC beat the P4 and Xeon systems regardless of hyperthreading status. The Dell PC received a 2-point boost from hyperthreading--the largest among the P4s here, but scarcely noticeable by most users.

In a second round of Photoshop tests, we used 20 filters selected by Intel to showcase its technology. Using these filters, which often incorporate intermediate calculations that hyperthreading can run in parallel, the P4 machines did show marked improvement. For example, the Dimension 8250 completed the test in 118 seconds with hyperthreading turned off (slower than the Athlon XP system's 104 seconds), but reduced its time to 96 seconds with the feature turned on--certainly a significant improvement.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,107492,00.asp