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PERFORMANCE
The PentiumŪ 4 processor delivers the highest SPECint_base performance of any processor in the world. It also delivers world-class SPECfp2000 performance. These are industry standard benchmarks that evaluate general integer and floating-point application performance.
Figure 8 shows the performance comparison of a Pentium 4 processor at 1.5 GHz compared to a PentiumŪ III processor at 1 GHz for various applications. The integer applications are in the 15-20% performance gain while the FP and multi-media applications are in the 30-70% performance advantage range. For FSPEC 2000 the new SSE/SSE2 instructions buy about 5% performance gain compared to an x87-only version. As the compiler improves over time the gain from these new instructions will increase. Also, as the relative frequency of the Pentium 4 processor increases over time (as its design matures), all these performance deltas will increase.
Figure 8: Performance comparison
For a more complete performance brief covering many application performance areas on the Pentium 4 processor, go to http://www.intel.com/procs/perf/pentium4/.