Tech
Page building
AMD’s Athlon XP has its nose in front when rendering HTML pages. The Athlon XP/2100+ is already slightly faster than the 2.53GHz Pentium 4, and the 2200+ extends that lead.
The benefit of Pentium 4 optimisation is shown by the Acrobat Reader 5.05 test. The fastest AMD processor (Athlon XP/2200+) lags behind a Pentium 4 with 2200MHz and DDR266 memory. The top position is held by the 2.53GHz Pentium 4 with PC1066 Rambus memory.
The 2.53GHz Pentium 4 claims the top spot when representing XML pages, with the Athlon XP procesors slotting in above the Pentium 4/2200, which lags behind the others.
JavaScript
Intel processors lag behind AMD’s chips when rendering Internet pages with JavaScript. Even the 2.53GHz Pentium 4 with PC1066 Rambus memory cannot match the performance of the Athlon XP processors.
The new W3C consortium specification for creating HTML pages with JavaScript shows the Intel chips in a better light. Here, the 2.53GHz Pentium 4 with PC1066 Rambus memory can at least keep up with the Athlon XP/2200+.
AMD’s processors are again faster than the Intel’s fastest CPUs at rendering XML pages with JavaScript.
Internet animation
Flash animations are rendered slightly faster by the 2.53GHz Pentium 4 with Rambus memory. When using slower memory types (PC800 Rambus and DDR266), the Pentium 4/2533 is slower than an Athlon XP/2200+ with DDR333 memory.
However, the performance differences between CPUs in the Internet animation tests with Flash and Shockwave (below) are barely significant.
