AMD Athlon 850

Advanced Visualizer (AWadvs-03) Viewset

Taken from http://www.spec.org/gpc/opc.static/awadvs.htm

Advanced Visualizer from Alias/Wavefront is an integrated workstation-based 3D animation system that offers a comprehensive set of tools for 3D modeling, animation, rendering, image composition, and video output. All operations within Advanced Visualizer are performed in immediate mode with double buffered windows. There are four basic modes of operation within Advanced Visualizer:

 
• 55% material shading (textured, z-buffered, backface-culled, 2 local lights)
• 95% perspective, 80% trilinear mipmapped, modulated (41.8%)
• 95% perspective, 20% nearest, modulated (10.45%)
• 5% ortho, 80% trilinear mipmapped, modulated (2.2%)
• 5% ortho, 20% nearest, modulated (.55%)
• 30% wireframe (no z-buffering, no lighting)
• 95% perspective (28.5%)
• 5% ortho (1.5%)
• 10% smooth shading (z-buffered, backface-culled, 2 local lights)
• 95% perspective (9.5%)
• 5% ortho (.5%)
• 5% flat shading (z-buffered, backface-culled, 2 local lights)
• 95% perspective (4.75%)
• 5% ortho (.25%)

With the KX133 chipset, the Athlon 850 as well as the 800, 700 and 600MHz parts take the lead courtesy of the updated NVIDIA drivers and the 133MHz memory bus frequency offered by the KX133 chipset itself. This is a huge improvement from the professional level OpenGL performance of the Athlon on the AMD 750, even with SuperBypass enabled as you can see by the two scores at the bottom of the charts belonging to AMD 750 based systems.

Since the Apollo Pro 133A chipset uses the same AGP/memory core as the KX133, the updated NVIDIA drivers helped to push the PC133 based 133A system slightly above the more expensive RDRAM based i820 setup.

For 3D modeling and animation, as long as you stick to the KX133 chipset, the Athlon is not only the more affordable but also the higher performing solution.