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Benchmark Results
For this review, I pulled out a system that would typically have a similar configuration as something that would be upgraded using the Spectra 400:
|
Test System |
| CPU |
Intel Pentium MMX 200MHz
Evergreen Technologies Spectra 400MHz |
| Motherboard |
ABIT AX-5 |
| Memory |
64MB 72-pin EDO SIMM |
| Video |
ATI Xpert 98 |
| Hard Drive |
Quantum Fireball Plus LM 30GB |
| Optical Disc Drive |
Panasonic 24X CD-ROM
|
| Network |
Belkin 10/100 PCI network card |
| Windows |
Microsoft Windows ME (4.90.3000) |
| Drivers |
ATI Drivers for Rage Pro (4.12.2632)
|
All tests were run on a clean installation of Windows ME with all drivers installed. No other programs were left running in the background while tests were running, no screen savers or power saving features were configured and the mouse was left still for the entire duration of the benchmark. Each test was run three times, and the average of the three scores is shown within the results shown here.
Benchmark Results
First up, let's take the Spectra 400 for a spin with SiSoft Sandra 2001te:
|
Pentium MMX 200MHz |
Spectra 400MHz |
| SiSoft Sandra 2001te |
|
| Dhrystone ALU (MIPS) |
429 |
776 |
| Whetstone FPU (MFLOPS) |
234 |
483 |
| Integer MMX (it/s) |
411 |
1303 |
| Floating-Point FPU (it/s) |
158 |
1704* |
* With 3DNow!
Wowzers! The system with the Spectra 400 installed gives a HUGE boost in all of the above tests. In almost all the cases, the Spectra 400 gives the processing power a boost of two or three times, with the floating point unit performing a whooping 10x the original Pentium MMX 200MHz! Keep in mind, though, that the floating point score is very much in favour of the Spectra 400, since it is able to use its built-in 3DNow! support to boost the score. Still, these results are very much impressive.
Since SiSoft Sandra is very much a component-level benchmark, the above tests only measure the speed of the processor, and not of the system as a whole. In order to benchmark the system as a whole, we must look at the following real-world benchmarks. First up, we measure the business performance with ZD's Content Creation Winstone 2001.
As you can see, the picture changes durastically when we put the Spectra 400 into a real-world situation. While scoring more than double most of the time in SiSoft Sandra, the Spectra only scored a measly 2.1 extra Winstone Units. This is very little, considering that it runs at double the frequency of the Pentium MMX 200MHz.
Let's take a look at real-world gaming performance with a moderately-old game, Descent 3:
Ok, so we increase the clock speed by 100%, and we get a 10% increase in gaming performance. That doesn't sound right. Well, believe it or not, it's true! The Spectra 400 only gave me a 10% increase in FPS! Of course, these results might be limited by the older video card that I had in there, the ATI Xpert 98, but most people who plan to use this product will have a similar, if not, worser, card, so my results stand as valid.
The above results clearly proves that my prediction in the introduction of this review is correct. Although the Spectra 400 allows any old Pentium-based computer to run a 400MHz CPU, the older platform that is left behind will be the limiting factor. Thus, the relatively super-fast Spectra 400 is always waiting for the platform to deliver it data to process. This is clearly so because, by just testing the processor as we did with SiSoft Sandra, we noticed a HUGE performance increase, but by including the rest of the system's components into the benchmark, we see that the performance is very little in relation to the frequency increase.
 On to: Conclusion
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