The Register: Linux Quake3 rocks Win-XP Quake3 on new P4

[ Thanks to Peter
Rasmussen for this link. ]

“The new Northwood 2.2gHz 0.13-micron P4, as I
mentioned earlier , seems made for Windows-XP. It’s got special
chipset drivers; it’s got an ‘application accelerator’; it’s got
Rambus working overtime.

For Linux it’s got nothing special to offer — no accelerators
or drivers. Just 2.2 in clock speed and a memory controller that
exploits RDRAM nicely, which is definitely nothing to sneeze at.
But it’s got that on Windows as well.

So imagine my surprise when I benchmarked it with the only test
I know that crosses the great divide between Linux and Windows —
the Quake-3 FPS benchmark — and found that the performance of this
Windows-loving kit was considerably better on Linux, at least in
that context.”

Complete
Story

The Register kicked off a series about the Pentium 4 under Linux
a few days ago with Our first look
at Intel’s Northwood P4. Linux will play a prominent part in
their evaluation as these stories unfold.