SSE/3DNow! score very low

[DimensionDude]

I'm hoping that someone can shed some light on this "problem." I've checked 3 different Athlon equipped computers and found this oddity.

System 1 SSE/3DNow: 67.3

System 2 SSE/3DNow: 37.2

System 3 SSE/3DNow: 799.2


System 1:
Epox 8KTA3, 512MB PC133, Athlon 1200, nVidia GeForce FX 5200 AGP, Win98SE

System 2:
Gigabyte 7IXE, 256MB PC133, Athlon 750, ATI AIW Pro PCI, Win98SE

System 3:
ECS K7S5A, 256MB DDR, Athlon 1200, ATI Rage Pro AGP, WinXP Professional. Actually, this is an underclocked Athlon 1700 because the motherboard refuses to run above 110MHz.

All motherboards, controllers and video cards have the appropriate drivers installed.

Could WinXP make the difference here?

System 3 was also tested with 192MB PC133, the score dropped very slightly to 793.3.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Ian (PassMark)]

The PerformanceTest SSE/3DNow! test will run an SSE test if SSE is detected, and a 3Now! test if SSE is not detected (and 3DNow! is detected).

System 1 and 2 CPU's don't support SSE, but do support Enhanced 3DNow!, and hence the 3DNow! test is run. System 3, an Athlon XP 1700, supports 3DNow! Professional (Enhance 3DNow! + SSE), and hence the SSE test is run.

Hence the difference in results is due to different CPU tests being run on systems 1 and 2, versus system 3, with the SSE test producing a higher result. You should expect system 3 to run applications written for SSE to be much faster.

Best regards,
Ian (PassMark)

[DimensionDude]

Thanks, Ian

From what I had read on the web, I assumed that SSE was Intel only, not supported by AMD processors.

So, on the surface it appears that I would get better video rendering performance on the system with the higher SSE/3DNow score (providing that the software supports it).

EDIT

I've discovered that I was mistaken about the clock speeds of Athlon processors.

Athlon 1200 = clock speed 1200MHz

Athlon XP 1700+ = clock speed 1467MHz

Thanks again for pointing out that XP processors support SSE, I see that now in WCPUID, didn't see it (or just disregarded it) in earlier testing.

[David (PassMark)]

It should also be noted that SSE support is blocked by Windows 98. (so it is not only the fault of the CPU).

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David