Low-Cost PC Shootout! AMD vs Intel

The Intel Celeron* processors and the AMD K6*/K6-2* processors are the most popular choices in the low-cost PC space. In order to see how they perform in audio processing tasks, we put together a 350 MHz AMD K6-2 and a 333 MHz Intel Celeron system and ran a series of tests.

The result is quite surprising. Although the AMD K6-2 is 3% faster than the Intel Celeron processor in general business applications, when it comes to audio processing, the K6-2 system is half the speed of the Celeron processor!

The Low-Cost PC Phenomenon
Low-cost PC's have existed for many years. The IBM PCjr* cost less than $1,300 when it was released in 1983. But why didn't sales take off until just recently? The answer is simple--the low-cost PC's of 10 years ago were annoyingly slow. In contrast, low-cost PC's of today are "fast enough" to run most general productivity applications.

The IBM PCjr came with a 8088 processor running at 4.77 MHz, and 64 KB of memory. This setup was barely enough to run a text editor and simple games. But for the same amount of money today, you can get a system with an Intel Celeron processor, or an AMD K6-2 processor, and 64 MB of memory. This setup is "fast enough" for most general applications.

Today's Contestants
The K6-2 is the latest and fastest processor from AMD. It contains a set of proprietary instructions, called 3DNow*, that speeds up 3D graphics software that are written specifically for it. Programs that use DirectX* 6 also benefit from the new instructions.

The Celeron is a new line of processors from Intel that is designed specifically for low-cost PC's. Intel also has a line of processors, the Pentium II*, for mainstream PC's, and another line, the Xeon*, for workstations and servers. The Celeron processor is slower and has less features than the Pentium II and Xeon processors. Of course, the Celeron processor costs a whole lot less too. The particular Celeron processor used in this test was one of the newer models with the on-chip cache. (See the complete system configurations for full details.)

How We Tested
The test procedure is very similar to our previous benchmarking article--How Fast Is The 400 MHz Pentium* II Processor?. We used Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge* and Ziff-Davis' Winstone* 98. Sound Forge is a very comprehensive audio editing and processing tool that runs on both Windows 95*, Windows 98* and NT*. It can perform EQ, pitch shifting, reverb, and tons of other functions. Along with Sonic Foundry's DirectX plug-ins, it can also do acoustics modeling, noise reduction, and many more effects. If you haven't seen it, try out the demo copy. Winstone 98 is a system-level, application-based benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when running today's top-selling Windows-based business applications. It is a benchmark written by the publisher of PC Magazine* and PC Week*.

The two systems that we ran the benchmarks on are very similar in configurations. The AMD system contains a 350 MHz K6-2 processor; the Intel system uses a 333 MHz Celeron processor. Both systems have the same amount of memory, same video card, same disk controller, and the audio samples are stored on the same disk. The K6-2 has a 100 MHz system bus; the Celeron has a 66 MHz system bus.

We picked a 19-second stereo sound clip from our MusikMesse '98 Coverage and ran it through three computationally intensive functions in Sound Forge: Noise Reduction, Pitch Shift, and the Acoustics Modeler. For a more comprehensive look at these functions, please see How Fast Is The 400 MHz Pentium* II Processor? Note that the benchmark results from the previous article should not be compared to the results here. The previous benchmark was done under Windows 95 whereas this one was done under Windows 98. Programs sometimes perform slightly faster under Windows 98.

Results

	350 MHz AMD K6-2* System	333 MHz Intel Celeron* System	Celeron* Faster By
Noise Reduction (lower is better)	19.063 seconds	9.724 seconds	96%
Pitch Shift	10.692 seconds	6.973 seconds	53%
Acoustics Modeler (Masonic Center)	19.523 seconds	9.544 seconds	105%
Acoustics Modeler (Capitol)	23.253 seconds	10.874 seconds	114%
Winstone* 981 (higher is better)	27.2	26.3	-3%

System configurations information available.

1. From Tom's Hardware Website. Systems are similarly configured but are configured differently than the systems used in the audio processing tests.

The Intel Celeron system is 53% to 114% faster than the AMD K6-2 system in audio processing tasks. The reason is that audio processing often involves a large amount of floating-point calculations and the current AMD processors are not designed to execute these calculations quickly. Intel processors, on the other hand, have a more balanced overall design.

What Should You Buy?
From the benchmark results above, the Celeron processor is substantially faster in floating-point calculations which are used extensively in audio processing programs these days. These results do not apply when an application relies primarily on integer based processing. If you plan to use your PC for audio work, a Celeron processor-based system is probably your best bet.

For More Information....
on the performance of PC processors:

• Intel Processor & System Performance -- Intel's benchmark page
• AMD-K6-2 Processor Benchmarks -- AMD's benchmark page
• The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation -- one of the most widely used benchmarks
• Business Application Performance Corporation -- another popular benchmarks for business environment

on the software programs used in this article:

• Sonic Foundry -- maker of Sound Forge, a very comprehensive audio processing software
• ZDBop -- Ziff-Davis Benchmark Operation tests products for PC Magazine, PC Week, etc.

*All other brands and names are property of their respective owners.