We measured the overall performance of the CPUs included in this review using SYSmark2004, which is a program that simulates the use of real-world applications. Thus, we consider this the best software to measure, in practical terms, the system performance.

The benchmarks are divided into two groups:

• Internet Content Creation: Simulates the authoring of a website containing text, images, videos and animations. The following programs are used: Adobe After Effects 5.5, Adobe Photoshop 7.01, Adobe Premiere 6.5, Discreet 3ds Max 5.1, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia Flash MX, Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.
• Office Productivity: Simulates the use of an office suite, i.e. simulates sending e-mails, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc. The following programs are used: Adobe Acrobat 5.05, Microsoft Office XP SP2, Internet Explorer 6.0 SP1, NaturallySpeaking 6, McAfee VirusScan 7.0 and Winzip 8.1.

This software delivers several results, all of them using a specific SYSmark2004 unit. First we have a SYSmark2004 overall score. Then we have a group result for each batch listed above. And for each batch, we have specific results: 3D Creation, 2D Creation and Web Publication for Internet Content Creation and Communication, Document Creation and Data Analysis for Office Productivity.

We were eager to know what performance gain an average user would have by using a dual-core Athlon 64 instead of a single-core one. The results you can see on the chart below.

The performance gain has surprised us. We thought that dual-core technology would improve only very specific applications like 3D rendering, but Athlon 64 X2 4600+ achieved an overall result 19.49% higher than Athlon 64 3800+ (both runs at 2.4 GHz), running regular programs. It is very interesting to note that this improvement was basically on the Internet Content Creation batch, where Athlon 64 X2 4600+ was 40.99% faster than Athlon 64 3800+. On Office Productivity both CPUs achieved the same performance.

The most benefited application segments were Web Publication (50.00%), 3D Creation (38.46%), 2D Creation (36.30%) and Document Creation (11.22%).

With Athlon 64 FX-60 we could see the benefits of a bigger L2 memory cache (1 MB per core, against 512 KB per core on Athlon 64 X2) and a clock 200 MHz higher (2.6 GHz). It achieved an overall performance 13.30% higher than Athlon 64 X2 4600+ and 35.38% higher than Athlon 64 3800+. For Internet Content Creation it was 11.18% faster than Athlon 64 X2 4600+ and 56.76% faster than Athlon 64 3800+, while for Office Productivity it was 15.61% faster than these two CPUs.

Compared to Athlon 64 X2 4600+, Athlon 64 FX-60 most benefited application segments were Document Creation (17.11%), Web Publication (14.34%) and 3D Creation (10.76%). And compared to Athlon 64 3800+, the most benefited application segments were Web Publication (71.51%), 3D Creation (53.37%), 2D Creation (46.98%) and Document Creation (30.24%).