PCMark04 continues the approach used in PCMark2002, that being a benchmark which uses System and Component benchmarking. By running the system benchmark users can gain an overall impression of how their system will run in the home environment. Component benchmarking allows the user to isolate specific components (such as memory or Hard Drive) for testing.

The Table below shows how the Opteron and its results are changed by different configurations. The first results column shows the System containing the Opteron, 4x512mb ddr266, IDE Hard drive and the FX 5950 U. The second results column changes the memory to 1x512mb ddr266, the third results column is changing up to 1x512mb ddr333 and the final results column is the Opteron with 4x512mb ddr266, IDE hard drive and an ATI Radeon 9800XT.

Looking at the memory score you can see the advantages of using the dual channel ddr on the Opteron, it out performs the single channel by a large margin and also out performs the single channel ddr333. Interestingly, changing over graphics cards hinders the Opteron in some area’s and helps it in others (though only slightly).

Below are the results for the Opteron and Athlon XP. Both are using the same IDE Hard Drive and a 5950Ultra. The Opteron is running ddr266 (dual channel) and the Athlon ddr400 (dual channel).

Results of note from these results are the memory benchmarks, again like PCmark2002 the Opteron provides much higher scores/performance at Dual Channel ddr266 than the Athlon XP at Dual Channel ddr400. The XP startup test is considerably faster on the Opteron than the Athlon XP. Other real world tasks such as Image Processing, Virus Scanning, Grammar check, DivX/WMV compression and Physics Calculation also receive hefty speed increases from the Opteron setup.

 

Next: Conclusion