Value Gaming: Athlon XP versus Pentium 4

Intel Pentium 4 versus AMD Athlon XP

Notes

We’re seeing plenty of spread at 800x600 as the Athlon 64 3000+ puts more than 25 frames between itself and the older Athlon XP 2100+. At the same time though clearly it’s still possible to get respectable frame rates in Half-Life 2, even if you don’t own the latest processor technology.

Moving up to 1280x1024, the scores don’t change much and the order of placement remains the same, indicating that we’re indeed bound by processor performance in this test. Right down to the Athlon XP 2800+, it’s still possible to get more than 50 frames per second with minimal anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering enabled.

Another small hit at 1600x1200 with all of the details maxed out confirms the processor limitation of our lower-end chips. You’re probably pushing it if you try to use an Athlon XP at that resolution, but the other processors all turn in surprisingly impressive results considering the game’s sheer detail at those settings and the age of that hardware (the Athlon XP 2800+ is more than two years old!).