The graph below shows the CPU and FPU (Dhrystones and Whetstones) results. As expected from research before the upgrade, the AMD CPU score was more than double, and the FPU was nearly 4 times the 6x86 results. The 6x86 FPU was the main bottleneck for newer games, and going to 4 times the old power is a very noticable improvement (see here (~113 KB) for some before & after screen shots showing frames-per-second results). Things that were very marginal as far as playability are now enjoyable.
More details are in the tables below.
| CPU | (1) Cyrix 6x86@133 MHz |
| Video Board | Matrox Mystique PCI |
| Video Mode | 1024x768@16bits/pixel |
| RAM | 64 MB |
| OS | Windows 95 4.0.950 |
| Area Tested | Value |
|---|---|
| CPU Integer | 335.6047 MIPS |
| CPU Floating Point | 103.0021 MFLOPS |
| Video(2D) | 37.23169 MPixels/s |
| Direct3D | 25.73238 MPixels/s |
| OpenGL | 4.936415 MPixels/s |
| Memory | 200.0822 MB/s |
| Cached Disk | 32.52104 MB/s |
| Uncached Disk | 2.967957 MB/s |
| CPU | (1) AMD K6-2 with MultiMedia Extensions@332 MHz |
| Video Board | Matrox Mystique PCI |
| Video Mode | 1024x768@16bits/pixel |
| RAM | 64 MB |
| OS | Windows 95 4.0.950 |
| Area Tested | Value |
|---|---|
| CPU Integer | 807.2584 MIPS |
| CPU Floating Point | 393.7024 MFLOPS |
| Video(2D) | 44.71753 MPixels/s |
| Direct3D | 29.65906 MPixels/s |
| OpenGL | 5.840977 MPixels/s |
| Memory | 498.4768 MB/s |
| Cached Disk | 43.94989 MB/s |
| Uncached Disk | 2.907847 MB/s |
All aspects showed noticeable increases, except for the uncached disk access. I think the differences are within expected scatter (about 2% lower for the AMD) and aren't really of concern. The drives I'm using are not the most modern, and weren't the fastest even when purchased. I've always been more concerned with capacity in a hard drive rather than speed. I have few applications that are extremely disk intensive; the "bang for the buck" quotient for me is always slanted toward higher capacity and lower cost. Plus, who runs hard drives uncached?
Next, Other benchmark results
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This page last updated 12/5/98