Athlon 1.4 to Pentium4 3.0E

[Brett Brown]

I have an Athlon 1.4, 512 Ram,Win 2000,Geforce4 TI 4600 128mb graphics card all 3 years old and I timed a projects elevations and 3D Render.I upgraded to a Pentium 4 3.0E 800mhz FSB Hyperthreading 512 Ram 1mb L2 Cache Win XP Pro and same graphics card and then timed the same project with all the same settings and the result in elevations was + or - a few seconds not what I was expecting. The 3D render was slightly better but not what I expected. All reading has said that CPU was going to do all the work. Both systems run at 100% CPU while generating. I expected the new system to be at least 10 times better than the old one with the advance in CPU's. Am I missing something and how do I know the P4 is working to its max in Win XP. Any help would be appreciated to prove I haven't wasted my money for no speed increase. Am using 8.1.Thanks.

[Anonymous]

How complex is the model? The RAM may be a limiting factor. I notice you have 512MB on both machines.

I hate to say it, but it is also possible that the Athlon is better than you think. Intel has been pumping up the Pentium line's clockspeeds more for marketing than actual performance. Competitors' chips have typically outperformed Intel products at the same MHz/GHz rating. It is interesting to note, now that the Pentium line is reaching its limits and the Itanium's present top of the line is 1.4GHz (with 1.6 and 1.7 announced), Intel has decided to stop marketing on clockspeed. Instead they will be marketing their processors as 3, 5, and 7 series (sounds familiar to BMW owners eh? ).

If IBM can keep to their roadmap with POWER series chips hitting 6GHz to 10GHz over the next few years we may see a curious reversal with Intel picking up Apple's old Megahertz myth ad campaign.