Pentium 4 vs. Athlon XP Performance in Games 

Excellent video. Back in 2001-2003 the Athlon Xp had a much better price/performance ratio than the Pentium 4. The Athlon Xp was practically just as fast as a Pantium 4 but it was much much cheaper, so it really did not make sense to buy a P4.

Nice work, I bought a Athlon 1200c with my pizza delivery job in cold hard cash! Took me ages to save but it was worth it! Good old times.

Hard to believe there was a time when CPUs cost less than $250.

Love my athlon xp 2500. After a year of owning, and a sketchy bios update, I managed to force it to run at 400fsb for a nice performance boost. Then after the 3rd time the system got hit by lightning, another bios update bricked the board. 1st stike hit on board lan, 2nd was audio (nforce 2 audio was actually pretty decent at the time) and 3rd took out the pci lan card that replaced the on board lan. One issue later in athlon xp 2500 use was lack of sse2. Other than that it was great, oh and Barton core

At the time the options were very clear, Intel=pay a huge premium on all parts and have an space heater/pc or AMD= a bit less performance but way cheaper. The whole Intel range was so expensive that for the same price you got a more powerful AMD pc. I remember the PC magazines doing articles on the Celeron 800Mhz while I already had an AMD XP 1333. I suppose the real market target was enterprise where a slower but equally modern and more power efficient cpu could be a desirable option, but for home users that actually knew about computers the choice was clear.

I love seeing benchmarks of old computer hardware. It's interesting to see how different components stacked up back then, because even though I lived in the early 2000's, I was a kid and didn't know much about computers.

800*600 and 1024*768 were the common resolutions at that time. It was all about the price. AMD 1700+ OC @3200+ was very easy (pin mode). In overall stability pentium won every time. Q3 was running fine on Celeron@433 on 640x resolution, P2 P3 were great on 800 and 1024x

I had a P4 1.8A when those things were released. Thing is, it had about the same TDP as an Athlon XP 1700+, which would be its closest rival. But the Intel cooler was about three times larger than the one that came with Athlon (Socket A heatsinks were about the same as Socket 370 heatsinks that cooled P3 CPUs). Which resulted in Athlon CPUs having a bad rep in our region for running too hot - it's surprising when RU-vidrs complain about early P4 being the hot one. Athlon CPUs also had two other drawbacks: if your CPU overheated, if would explode, while P4 would thermal throttle and shut down. Thermal shutdown was implemented on the chipset for AMD CPUs and turned off by default. The second drawback was the exposed silicon, which made it quite easy to break or chip while installing the heatsink. AMD motherboards often had very unstable chipsets (at least until nForce and KT266A came out) and used low-quality capacitors, and surprisingly were more expensive than Intel motherboards.

While answering to another comment about overclocking AMDs socket A(462) cpus you mentioned that you think about / want to try to unlock multiplier on an Athlon XP to gain a performance plus. If i remember those playful times back in the day correct, unlocking the multiplier isn't the way to go as this worked only on earlier core generations and became obsolete with the later, way more efficient and less hot running dies which had hard locked multipliers - but were able and ment to work with higher FSB speeds. And the FSB clock speed was what one wanted to pimp for best results. Those earlier Athlon XP did run on 133mhz fsb (double pumped = 266mhz ram speed), the early Durons had a 100mhz fsb ( =200mhz ram speed). Later XPs had 166mhz fsb what needed chipsets able to do 333mhz ram speed, next step was 200mhz fsb / 400mhz ram speed, imho the Nvidia nforce chipsets worked best with high fsb mhz and were best for overclocking purposes. Another thing one has to know about with the socket A AMD cpus is second lvl cache stuff. Athlons had 256kb (barton cores even 512kb), the Durons were cut down to 64kb. Bigger 2nd lvl cache is good in many ways, but can also be a limiting factor, f.e. bartons bigger cache was way harder to keep cool if one wanted to overclock. The best "bang for your bucks" performance i got out of socket 462 was combining Nforce2-boards like the cheap but great Abit NF7(S) v2 with the late bargain Applebred Durons which came with 133mhz fsb and 64kb 2nd lvl cache, especially the slow Applebreds were great due to their low multiplier. To me best was the Applebred Duron 1400 which made 1400mhz out of 10,5 multiplied with 133mhz fsb stock. My 1400 Durons ALL made fsb speeds over 200mhz on the Abit boards, with good ram 210mhz ( x10,5 =2205mhz cpu core) up to 220mhz ( =2310mhz core) were easily achievable with a low cost Artic Cooling cooler on a cheapo Duron 1400 sitting on the great (but also cheap) NF7(S) boards. So i'd like to suggest to look for such parts if you want to experience the easiest but biggest performance gain on socket A(462).

looooove this type of video and content, well done!

Hi there, I found this video interesting, although I did not entirely agree with your results, though I did agree with your conclusions. A lot of the time you awarded a draw when for the Athlon it was technically a win - given that I am sure the logic is that you would not notice a difference in use, I would say that was also true for the Pentium 4's win. I'm nitpicking and believe me, I'm not angry I am only expressing an opinion. What I would like to see is a test using these processors and more modern methodology checking 1% lows. That would be hugely interesting, as that would let us know more readily which one would have 'felt' better when gaming - if at all. Platforms would also be an intereting variable, as I noticed that nForce2 really made the Athlon XP shine, and I discovered that just months after upgrading to an Athlon64. Thanks for the content.

I still have my original Athlon XP 2500+ build from 2004 and it still works to this day. That old Athlon XP really served me well,with 2GB of RAM and an Nvidia 6800 Ultra i was even able to run games that were not supposed to work on it based on the game requirements. I played Hitman Blood Money and COD4 MW with it and it was more than playable on decent settings. I still love that old computer even if it's mostly considered an old piece of junk for this day and age

Used to run a Duron 1600 Applebred which I re-enabled the full 256kb l2 cache on using a pencil. Performed the same as an XP at the same FSB x multiplier. Also had a dual XP (modded into MP) system consisting of dual 1700+’s on an Asus a7m266-d mobo.

Athlon XP 2600 Barton Core on A7N8X Deluxe. That nForce 2 chipset was awesome wish i still had it. I went from GF 4 MX, to 9600pro and GF-7600gs so i used it for quite some time

First PC I bought with my own money was an HP with AMD Athlon XP 2600+. Good machine, felt really fast. Still have it somewhere in my parents house.

Awesome, i was always an AMD Athlon fan boy. Dont those bartons overclock alot? I had a mobile barton 2500+ that i could overclock to the moon

Watt per watt the Athlon was a power hungry beast just as the later Prescott p4's were. They got the name "presshot" for a reason. Besides, intel only cared about speed over performance because the pipelines in some of the later p4's actually made them slower. Don't even get me started on the early Pentium D's. Intel didn't seem to get it right until the core 2 duo.

Just found your channel, and I liked it! Subbed. RU-vid algorithm doing something for once.

hi midnight, i cuestion you, im looking for a motherboard and found the asrock p4i65g interesting, can you explain me how good these mobo are? tranks and sorry for my bad english

A great comparison. How would you score each for stability and compatibility?

Thanks for the video. P4 was like my childhood dream. First time I saw a PC ad on TV and it look so cool and futuristice. INTEL INSIDE. Never had the money to buy them tho. I'm like 2nd grade elementary.

xp 2800+ was a monstrously HOT chip, even with a proper heatsink (zalman cnps6000). my bro had the 2800 while I had a classic P4 2.8. i can't even recall what he upgraded to, but after that P4, my next system was the i7 920 when it released, then later jumped directly to a 9900k. my next upgrade is estimated to be around 2030 or until there's a 60% performance gap between the 9900k and the next chip. atm, there's only a 25% performance difference between 9900k and 14900k. way too early.

You can overclock the XP to crush any P4, the fake number name stopped being accurate over 3ghz, but you could OC. The real problem was SSE2+ not being supported, which wasn't an issue then, but AMD obviously had less longevity, and so did the chipset drivers. Either way, you could outlast the gaming performance of p4 with XP using overclock, dual channel, 400+ FSB. The lower FSB like 333 was a problem in later games from bandwidth. I wouldn't bother building a retro PC with XP though, as there are many more problems, drivers, PSU, instruction set, used cost. The only worthy reason is the sound force audio from Nvidia.

Not a Barton is a perfect choice for this test. Thoroughbread B Athlon XP have more MHZ, but clock to clock more weak like a Barton. For The Athlon XP the best choice NForce 2 or VIA KT880

i like you due to your efforts speaking english and having a channel like this

Hoping you can give me your opinion as I am behind on PC technology. My last build was a pentium 4 with 1gb DDR and a huge triple fan GeForce video card with 512mb ram 😂. After roughly 20 years, I want to build my daughter a gaming PC for her birthday. But the variety of processors and other components are much greater. She is into Fortnite, online games, editing/posting RU-vid content, etc. Her current PC is old and lags on games, etc. I am thinking of using Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming II system board paired with an AMD Ryzen 7 with built in graphics, 16gb DDR4 3200 memory and an SSD 1tb drive..... How will this perform for online gaming, RU-vid editing, etc? I tried talking to a sales person in a big box store, but he just snickered at my last build and tried to get me to buy a laptop 😂.

i have a pc running windows xp sp2, 768mb ram, athlon xp 2000+ and im unsure about the gpu

This GF 6800 looks like it have bulging capacitor(s), that might be the reason for not working. Replacing caps isn't very hard to do, so it might be worth a shot.

I think the Athlon was not very common in prebuilt systems, because the exposed die without heatsink was a huge risk in shipping. Basically impossible to strap a pound of copper to a bare silicon die and ship that without damage. But they were very common for DIY or custom built machines. I still have an Athlon XP running at work to drive an old machine that only works with windows xp.

Today I'd take the P4 for SSE2 instructions.

i have never used athlon xp barton 2500+ on stock 166mhz fsb till 2023:), any cpu will do min 200mhz fsb , on my board abit nf7sl was whole its life time on fsb 223mhz(was able to 229 but with instability sometimes), try with your abit board, i garantee you at least 215mhz fsb(thats number i had it on 40c summer lan parties,not because of instability,just for care). fsb200mhz=20% more performance(with geforce4ti)..just huge difference in everything..now i have it stock in my retro pc because of win98se which doesnt give even 1% difference oc or not..but win xp, its just mad difference.

I have 3 retro builds; >Athlon XP 3200+ w/ 2GB DDR333 & Radeon 9800XT >P4 3.2GHz w/ H.T. w/ 2GB DDR400 & GeForce 6800 OC Ultra >Athlon 64 3200 w/ 2GB DDR400 & Radeon 850 XT PE They all game excellent with older titles!

I know it's a stupid question, but: AMD sempron 2500+ can beat a 2.4ghz pentium 4?

How could anyone start flaming regarding such a cool video? I was a P4 devotee at the time but am now more into AMD from that era. But as you say quite simply, there’s plenty for everyone 👍

Great video. Thanks for making it.

No love for SiS motherboards? Bummer! I had a SiS730 based one for my Athlon TBird 900. Main machine till 2012 :-/ I could only dream of a SiS 741 based one with an Athlon XP on it :-)

Hi, in that time i has a Athlon XP 2500, and the Abit NF7-S v2.0 motherboard, that actually have both on my collection, this motherboard die for one strike of lightning in 2005, and they was in a box for 2 years, and then send it for repair, affortunately i have luky , the motherboard dont work because the integrated LAN was fried, now in 2022, the only problem that they have its that dont keep the bios settings with new battery inside, i have some Pentium 4 too, in the practice are almost the same, i have 4 computers for this era, i can make a 2003 LAN Party ......cheers.

The problem at that era was that Athlon XP was never able to clock (reliably) higher than 2.2Ghz, no matter what core/version/step you had. That limited the competition - Thus my interest. I think that AMD at the later days of Athlon XP was creating space for Athlon64 and Semprons rather than competing with P4.... and AMD also increased their prices way too much creating a really viable gap for P4 CPUs with no reason.

Architecturally the Athlon XP was by far the better CPU, there is good reason AMD chose to use a "performance rating" rather than a direct clock frequency in their marketing. The Pentium 4, clock for clock was completely outclassed. The problem was, intel played dirty (which they got in trouble for) and paid/offered massive discounts to system vendors (dell, HP, etc) to use their CPUs. The Pentium 4 was actually worse than the Pentium 3 in many ways, particularly clock for clock. Intel even marketed the reason the P4 was slower as a good thing. There is a lot of literature and a fair number of videos on the subject. On most enthusiast forums at the time the Athlon XP was the CPU of choice, particularly the higher clocked variants as well as the mobile variants (on the same socket) which overclocked better. AMD should have absolutely dominated the era but intel used their deeper pockets to cheat out a win. AMD came out swinging with the Athlon 64 and 64 x2 not long after however and really put a hurting on intel's market share. The Pentium 4 was massively overhyped. It could be clocked to some impressive frequencies to compensate for it's weaker IPC but the Athlon was far superior in almost every way, at least early on. Later P4s benefited from a higher FSB, faster RAM support and higher frequencies that ultimately compensated for the weaker architecture. I had a P4b 2.4ghz that overclocked like a beast back then, 3.6ghz on air at stock voltages. I really wanted an Athlon XP 3200+ but it was out of reach. Overclocked to 2.8ghz+ the 3200+ was an absolute monster.

Hah, 420 subscribers. nice

still running my athlon xp 2600+ with an ati 9550 lmao 2gb of 333 mhz ram, ide to sata 256gb ssd and 32 bit debian linux installed! was my first real computer that was mine back then

Video idea, take this to the extreme; 400mhz FSB XP3200+ with premium 400mhz dual channel DDR2 vs fastest 800FSB Pentium 4 with 800mhz RAMBUS memory!? 😮

I was so convinced that a Celeron was good as in a belief as if one believes in his faith. I just believed it. Overclocked my 2.6 ghz Celeron to 3.2 GHz and it still sucked in games, I had a good motherboard, and very expensive memmory also a Ti4200. That time , 2002/2003 was AMD's era. later on I upgraded my 2.6Ghz Celeron to a 2.6P4 northwood with HT. my games all improved with a ton I mean really alot.

The reason why pentium 4 was better in some games and good for browsing it was because they had newer instructions and tehnologies than sempron/athlon xp. Athlon xp was better in terms of gaming but pentium 4 was better in terms of web browsing. That's why pentium 4 processors were expensive than amd's processors. I hope it's clear.

pentium 4 had a huge oc headroom, my p4 2.4 northwood can do 3ghz easily

Cool video, the Athlon XP were so good. Def better than the P4 in everyway and then the Athlon 64 just blew intel away.

There are so many myths from these times, I am testing many of them now and many of those myths are busted, like that myth that tualatin Pentium III 1.4 GHz is significantly better than first Pentium 4, it's not, it's just a myth. Energy efficiency is one thing and it's similar case with Athlon XP, it was more energy efficient than Pentium 4, but Pentium 4 adopted DDR memory and later even dual-channel (which had some performance boost for Intel) so at the end, when you wanted raw performance, it was still better to buy some Pentium 4 or even better - buy Celeron D with prescott core, it was much cheaper than Petnium 4 and gaming performance was almost the same as Pentium 4. People now say how Pentium 4 was heating and energy consuming and it's probably true, but it was still not that bad compared to today CPUs where you have TDPs like 120W for 8+ core CPUs. And Pentium 4 in that time really had some technological advantages, like I sad - dual channel and those motherboards for P4 were generally better than AMD MBs. Another thing is availability. How many times you saw some Pentium 4 3 GHz or Celeron 2.8 GHz? Pretty often right? It was even in some office PCs, but how many times you saw Athlon XP 2600+ or better? It was pretty rare, now in 2023, I have full box of some 3 GHz Pentium 4, but to find some Athlon XP with better frequency is not that easy, those CPUs are rare and that's something which also should be counted to final result. So, was Anthlon XP more energy efficient architecture? Yes (but not THAT better as AMD people were saying back in the day), but when you wanted maximum performance in like 2004, you would still probably buy Pentium 4 or Celeron and overclock it. I had Celeron D 2.8 GHz overclocket to 3.3 GHz, which was possible even without increasing voltage, temperatures were totaly ok and when I am testing different CPUs and architectures from that time, I just can't get close to that gaming performence with any AMD CPU I have from that period of time. I think that in like 2002, it was pretty clear win for Athlon XP, but later? Prices went down, some usefull motherboard with socket 478 was for like 80 USD or even less and later Celeron D had pretty good price/performance ratio, so I would probably go to Celeron D again. Also, from my personal experience, some average socket 478 MB has much better OC possibilities than socket 462 or socket 754 boards, on AMD boards, you are very often limited by max voltage which you can set in bios, while with Intel, you were able to increas your frequency pretty high without touching voltage at all, so you could OC even on boards which didn't have voltage setting in bios, which is pretty much impossible with Athlons, you have to always increase voltage. What is the most ridiculous thing is that some AMD motherboards still didn't support USB keyboards well even in like 2003, settings "USB keyboard" in BIOS was missing, OMG, intel supported this since 90s on all MBs. Maybe it's fault of producers of those motherboars and not AMD, but still, Intel MBs were just better, except some chipsets which I didn't like from socket 370 era, like Intel 815 which had pretty bad IDE controller and it was constantly giving some errors during Windows install, but it never happened to me on later netburst motherboard.

I like your videos bro. The bring back some memories.

pickup a via kt333 chipset board it's the fast platform for 3.3v only agp cards like to voodoo cards, for those cards the fsb speed is as important as the cpu clock speed, because calculations like the transform and lighting for those cards are performed by the cpu not the gpu, and so being able to feed this data to the gpu as fast as possible will get the most out of them.

Northwood 2.4GHZ is better, just because can be overclocked by 25-35%, Athlon XP has much more limited OC potential

i have the 3200+ barton and p4 northwood 3.40ghz those two are monsters

Legacy of Kain: Defiance

Athlon XP wiped the floor with netburst. Gotta think too, Athlon XP was made to combat tualatin, K7 was their arch to combat northwood. Williamette was a meme entirely tho

At the time I had an Athlon xp2500 that I set the fsb to 400mhz+ to make run faster than stock xp3200+. Very fast at the time. 20 years later I have no Athlon but lots pentium 4s lol.

supposedly, the Pentium architecture was so bad, when intel started to work on the core 2 series, the next series after the pentium, they actually went back to the pentium 3 and used that as a starting point.

Pentium 4 have a special place in my heart, because it was my 2nd CPU (a Northwood 3.0 Ghz), but the Athlon XP gain my respect with time (one of my retro builds is an AXP 3200+). Also in terms of thermals the Pentium 4 Northwood is much cooler than the Athlon XP. In 2002, the Pentium 4 Northwood HT 3.06 was faster than the Athlon XP 2800+ Thoroughbred, but this only happen with the High-end Setups, meaning you must haad to have an Intel i850E or E7205 Motherboard, both solution extremely more expensive compared to the motherboards with Nforce2 or KT333/A. In 2003, the Barton core was fast, but the Pentium 4 Northwood 800 was really faster in some scnearios and much cooler. The Athlon 64 (even Socket 754) is another kind of beast, Pentium never had a chance.

I've never owned a P-4. I had so much fun unlocking Durons and Athlon XP's by connecting the L1 bridges using conductive paint! Start a D I S C O R D server and post a link!

also my first CPU was a Intel Celeron 1100. That was not as bad compared to The P3. As the P4 Celeron to the Intel Pentium 4 Northwood. just imagine 128 cachce> 512 cache. and 400 fsb vs 800 fsb

I went the Amd route because of the money, an Amd system was just cheaper and just as good if you had the right parts.

Clock for clock its no contest athlon is miles ahead that netburst and its garbage long pipeline allowed for high clocks Thats why the core series used p3 design along with the mobile intel cpus before core series

I had a Pentium 4 from Dell, a really big solid workstation rig which came with lots of features and beefy build quality. A 2.0Ghz CPU wasn't the greatest, but the system just always worked, and it was my main rig playing Quake III for many years. Paired it with a Geforce 4 Ti 4800SE and a huge Diamond Mitsubishi 230SB. Cos I really only played Quake III back then, I never had to upgrade, until Doom 3 had been out a while. Also I wanted to play Chronicles Of Riddick and Gothic 3. So I moved to an Athlon 64 build, with a 6800XT. So I totally skipped the Athlon XP. A friend of mine had one, I think it was a 2600+, and it wasn't impressive. It was a frankenstein build, nothing on Dell Optiplex P4, so maybe I wasn't seeing "the best" Athlon XP machine. Regardless, the Athlon 64's were so good for the time, that's why I skipped the Athlon XP altogether.

Video title: Pentium 4 and Athlon XP 6:14 OSD shows 4 core CPU used in FarCry lol

Barton's were great overclockers, p4's not so much.

Should have used an Athlon XP 2800/ 3200+! Would have killed the Pentium. Overclock well over 3 GHz.

I had a barton 2800+ their clock speed limitation was a result of the very large cache that was making them perform better per clock in games, making them the 3d budget gamers choice at the time as more money could be devoted to the GPU purchase. It was possible to overclock the thoroughbred Athlons by bridging some pins on the cpu substrate. However I never managed to overclock my barton. we didn't really think to much about heat back then and the all looks thermaltake cooler I had was probably the limitation to all my attempts at software or BIOS overclock.

A 25 percent is a big difference in performance per core.

the actual history is the athalon is off a intell DX80486 build where the intell is off a x80486 build this gose way back to the processor wars celeron cyrix duron the AMD market killed the intell during the single core athalon k29 40Hz this is beore the first dual core and the verry first dual core did not prove there better than the AMD k29 today it,s the AMD 64 core vrs the intell 28 core not 32 core as there is a AMD 32 core intell hurting and so is the M1 mac processor

Are u romanian?

They were pretty close in games and everyday tasks. AthlonXP was cheaper, more efficient, better OCer but P4 Northwood pulled ahead with SSE2, later on with higher clocks, 800 MHz FSB and Hyper-Threading, better chipsets (i865, i875) with better memory and disk controller just to be immediately dominated by AMD64s. Good ol' times.

Netburst was so bad.

AMD for the win!

AMD IS BETTER THAN INTEL

What crap music, and way too loud, I had to stop watching. Pity 😢

20 years later even on cheapiest smartphone destroy this cpu