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System Benchmark Results
I use Futuremark's 3DMark2001SE benchmark to determine an overall system performance measurement. Futuremark is the widely accepted and referenced standard. In addition to benchmarking performance, this demanding benchmark is excellent for revealing graphics anomalies, such as artifacts, and testing stability. While running the benchmarks, observe the monitor display and check for anything unusual, such as cut images or pixel artifacts. If the computer locks up, that will be easy to see.
The download of Futuremark's 3DMark2001 Second Edition is free. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's a huge download, about 40MB. Futuremark also has more recent versions of its benchmark available as free downloads, but they are even bigger. 3DMark03 is about a 178MB download and 3DMark05 is about a 283MB download. Even though I have the other benchmarks and I've used them, I'm using showing the 3DMark2001SE results on this page since they still make the point. Plus it allows me to include the 3DMark2001SE benchmark results I've saved from configurations of My Super PC that no longer exist, which is interesting as a comparison.
After downloading 3DMark2001SE, install it by double-clicking on it.
Bring up 3DMark2001SE. Select "Benchmark". Click on the picture below to see an enlarged image.
My Super PC With AMD Athlon 2600+ Processor and ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
Here's the overall score achieved by my current configuration. This is an outstanding score.And here are the detailed score results. The minimum frame rate for smooth animation is 30 frames per second (fps). As you can see, a result of over double this - and sometimes way more than double - was achieved on even the most rigourous tests. And these results were achieved without any overclocking or special tweaking of the video drivers to optimize performance.
My Super PC With AMD Athlon 2600+ Processor and Gainward GeForce4 Ti 4200
This is the My Super PC configuration prior to what I have today. It's interesting to see the difference that was made by upgrading just the video card. In all other respects, the previous configuration was the same. The NVIDIA line of GeForce4 Ti 4200 video cards are quite powerful, but these results do show that you get quite a bit more punch with the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Moral: the video card makes a big difference in overall system performance.And here are the detailed score results.
My Super PC With AMD Athlon 2100+ Processor and Gainward GeForce4 Ti 4200
And here are the results from the configuration of My Super PC prior to that. This time it's interesting to see the difference that was made by upgrading the processor. Going by just the GHz, an Athlon XP 2600+ processor is 20% faster (roughly) than an Athlon XP 2100+ processor. But the end improvement in system performance is nothing like that since there are bottlenecks in other components that compromise the full gain. In my case, an improvement of something like 10% was achieved. Moral: paying a lot for a little more processor speed is getting even less than you might have thought.These are the previous detailed score results.
