SMP and Next-gen CPUs

SMP Gains

Even with a kick-ass 3D card such as the Voodoo3 or TNT2, the system processor still affects performance a great deal. This is because the first leg of the 3D pipeline must be computed by the processor, before being passed onto the video card for setup and rasterizing. Of course, the CPU is usually the slowest part of the video subsystem, and ends up being a bottleneck for the entire process.

By adding another CPU, it's possible to split up the intensive 3D modeling work. John Carmack has mentioned that SMP in Quake 3 should yield a 20 to 30% performance increase in most cases, and up to 80% in intense fights and scenes with high activity and polygon count. The significance of this lies not just in the implementation of technology, but also in the increasingly cost-effectiveness of multiprocessing.

Get a couple of Celerons

Lately, we've been hearing reports that the newest Celerons off the production line have been increasingly overclockable due to high yields and improved manufacturing. To test this, we went out and purchased two Celeron 366 PPGAs, for less than $100 each. Booting each of them up in an Abit BP6, we found that they overclocked to 550MHz (5.5x100Mhz) without problems. Amazing! Using Abit's Dual-Celeron BP6 motherboard, we were able to install NT 4.0 and confirm dual-CPU operation at 550MHz. Could this be the ultimate price/performance Quake III machine? We set out to find out.

Who's going to forget the Athlon (K7?) Just a couple of days ago, FiringSquad brought you the world's first preview of the AMD Athlon (K7) processor at 600MHz, complete with benchmarks. With the updated Q3test and working timedemo utility, we decided it would be a good time to revisit the Athlon and pit this Intel-killing beast against dual-CPU configurations from both price-points, the low-budget Celerons (at 366 and 550MHz), and high end Pentium III at 500MHz.