There is no way you can test apple-to-apple or orange-to-orange as neither AMD or Intel has a platform that supports both companies CPU's. For those of you who have been into the scene for a while you can remember that until the late nineties this was not the case. Earlier on when both Intel and AMD were still Socket 7 based platforms most name brand motherboards supported the CPU's from both camps.
As it is I chose two motherboards that have been proven to be competitive boards in their own right. Both boards have won awards on various sites across the www and should show the strengths of both companies CPU's in a favorable manner. A lot of flack has come up recently about SYSmark 2002 being favorable toward Intel boards and AMD is shaking the tree in protest about this so-called fact.
AMD has a problem with the way MS office program Access is tested in SM 2002, as with SM 2001 it soared way ahead in scores above the Intel product. In 2002 this has been changed to work with better memory timings and Intel now shows the more favorable results. AMD will likely come to terms with this by joining forces with www.bapco.com the software architects responsible for bringing this benchmark to light and then begin working toward a more agreeable standard.
AMD Test System
- Motherboard: Epox 8K3A+
- CPU: AMD Athlon XP 2600+
- Cooling: Swiftech MCX 370
- Memory: Crucial PC2700 DDR SDRAM CAS 2.5
- CD: MSI 52X ATA33
- Hard Drive: Maxtor 40GB ATA133 7200RPM
- Video: MSI G43 Standard 64MB DDR SDRAM
Intel Test System
- Motherboard: SOLTEK SL-85ERV
- CPU: Intel 2.53GHz Pentium 4
- Cooling: Swiftech MCX 4000
- Memory: Crucial PC2700 DDR SDRAM CAS 2.5
- CD: Sony 52X ATA33
- Hard Drive: Maxtor 40GB ATA133 7200RPM
- Video: MSI G43 Standard 64MB DDR SDRAM
Drivers
- VIA 4in1
- Direct-X 8.1
- Intel Application Accelerator
- NVIDIA Reference driver 29.42
- Windows XP Pro with all updates
