Return to Castle Wolfenstein	Source: ID Software

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a relatively new game benchmark. However, RTCW takes up where Quake III left off and continues to form the basis of the first person shooter system stressing that QIII has become a hallmark for. Based upon the Quake III engine, RTCS is obviously going to be quite taxing on even a top end system. Higher numbers denote faster frames per second (FPS), and hence, better performance.

RTCW (640x480 atdemo6) Benchmark Results
	Processor	(FPS)	Ranking
1.	Athlon XP2000+	52.8
2.	Pentium4 2.0GHz	49.6

RTCW (640x480 atdemo8) Benchmark Results
	Processor	(FPS)	Ranking
1.	Athlon XP2000+	135.6
2.	Pentium4 2.0GHz	137.8

RTCW (1024x768 atdemo6) Benchmark Results
	Processor	(FPS)	Ranking
1.	Athlon XP2000+	51.9
2.	Pentium4 2.0GHz	47.2

RTCW (1024x768 atdemo8) Benchmark Results
	Processor	(FPS)	Ranking
1.	Athlon XP2000+	132.6
2.	Pentium4 2.0GHz	134.0

Only on the atdemo8 does the Athlon XP2000+ loose some ground to the P4. Otherwise, the XP 2000+ maintains a healthy lead in the demo for Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Even though the XP 2000+ looses to the P4 in RTCW atdemo8, that demo is more of an overall system demo. Atdemo6 however, is basically a CPU benchmark, and in that area the XP2000+ wins. To run the benchmark on your own version of RTCW make sure that both atdemo6 and atdemo8 are in the /demomain/demos/ folder first. Bring up the console by hitting the "~" key and type in "timedemo 1" "demo atdemo6" . Obviously, leave out the quotes, and replace atdemo6 with atdemo8 when you want to run it. When the demo is finished running, hit the "~" key to see the results in the console.

Serious Sam	Source: CroTeam

Serious Sam is a game that uses OpenGL and is a little more advanced than the now retired Quake III Arena. Croteam have also recently announced that Serious Sam, the Encounter is ready for production, so there is still life to this game as a benchmark, whereas QIII is surplanted by RTCW . Higher numbers denote faster frames per second (FPS), and hence, better performance.

Serious Sam (640x480 suburbs) Benchmark Results
	Processor	(FPS)	Ranking
1.	Athlon XP2000+	121.4
2.	Pentium4 2.0GHz	105.1

Serious Sam (640x480 dunes) Benchmark Results
	Processor	(FPS)	Ranking
1.	Athlon XP2000+	152.7
2.	Pentium4 2.0GHz	126.3

Serious Sam (1024x768 Suburbs) Benchmark Results
	Processor	(FPS)	Ranking
1.	Athlon XP2000+	96.6
2.	Pentium4 2.0GHz	94.7

Serious Sam (1024x768 dunes) Benchmark Results
	Processor	(FPS)	Ranking
1.	Athlon XP2000+	128.3
2.	Pentium4 2.0GHz	115.9

The Athlon XP shows us what it can do by outperforming the P4 in each and every test. When it comes to raw number crunching the Athlon has the upper hand and these results are a testament to that, and the reason why gamers have been flocking to AMD's side for some time now.

Final Conclusions:

 AMD has always had a special place with the gamer for a couple of reasons. Number one would have to be price. For the amount of performance - often better than comparable Intel solutions - AMD charges a lot less for its processors, making them highly affordable. Value consumers have embraced AMD simply because when you compare prices against current Intel chips the difference is substantial.

The AMD Athlon XP 2000+ carries on the tradition of the previous XP processors and offers a mere performance boost, but no real introductions of technology. Like us, many of the performance consumers are eagerly awaiting AMD to release the Thoroughbred core which will see a die shrink thanks to the 0.13 micron process it uses.

Today has also seen the release of Intel's 2.2 GHz Northwood core Pentium 4 and if the preliminary results are accurate, the differences in performance between that chip and the 1.67 GHz Athlon XP 2000+ are less than what you might initially expect. MHz has long since lost its absoluteness in determining which processor is best, but unfortunately many consumers are still shopping exclusively by this marker. This is really not that surprising at many of today's consumers are finally upgrading their 233MHz or 366MHz computers to something new, and something DDR. Based on pervious knowledge, the lure of 2.0GHz to that of 1.67GHz seems obvious, no matter how misleading it may actually be.