CineBench 2003

CineBench is a multi-threaded benchmark that we used successfully in our X2 review. Multi-threaded rendering in Cinebench is enabled only when the application detects the presence of more than one physical or logical processor. Pentium 4s with HyperThreading, SMP machines, and dual-core systems qualify -- the rest do not.

In the chart above, single-CPU rendering shows us that the 3.6 GHz Prescott, and both 2.2 GHz Athlon 64s are neck-and-neck. Approximately 22 seconds later, both the 2.8 GHz Pentium 4s show up. As expected, the second core does nothing for single-threaded rendering. A multi-threaded run of Cinebench shows us that the Pentium D 820 is capable of using both of its cores very effectively in this case. We saw a 47% reduction in rendering times on the 820, which is nothing to scoff at. Once we consider the multi-threaded scores, the Pentium D 820 comes in at second place.

POV-Ray 3.6

POV-Ray 3.6 results are quite interesting. With the exception of the screamingly-fast-clocked 3.6 GHz Prescott, all of our other chips are more or less tightly-knit, though the Athlon 64s manage to edge out their 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 counterparts. Since POV-Ray 3.6 is a single-threaded benchmark, the 820's second core does nothing.

POV-Ray 3.7 beta4

POV-Ray 3.7 paints quite a different picture for the Pentium D 820. Here, both the single- and dual-core 2.8 GHz Pentium 4s have an edge over the Athlon 64 parts. The margin is very slight, but keep in mind that the D 820 is a mainstream part half the price of the X2 4200+. Intel's continued strength in media encoding gives them a huge boost here in price/performance ratio. Enabling multi-threaded rendering on the HyperThreaded 670 at 2.8 GHz and both Intel/AMD dual-core parts skews up the results. Naturally, the native dual-core parts see a ~50% reduction in rendering times, with the HyperThreaded part also seeing a slight reduction. The Pentium D 820 manages to best the X2 4200+ by 13 seconds in multi-threaded rendering. Again, impressive given the price differential. If more results were like this the 820 would take the community by storm.

As was the conclusion in my X2 4200+ review, it is obvious that the use of a second core does nothing to increase rendering performance on either the Intel or AMD platforms with single-threaded applications. This was expected. However, I was quite surprised to see that the Pentium D 820 managed to improve its rendering times by a factor of ~2x once multi-threading was made use of, especially given its poor synthetic CPU arithmetic scores. The capabilities of Smithfield, at least in the case of rendering tests, seems not to have faltered.