Intel Pentium III

Desktop Application Performance

SSE for gamers only? Not at all, using Naturally Speaking, a Speech Recognition software package that supports SSE you can take a look at the speech recognition time in seconds of an 8MB wave file. According to Dragon Systems, the makers of Naturally Speaking, 3DNow! support as well as SSE and MMX support is integrated into Naturally Speaking, explaining AMD's performance in the test. Intel's advantage here is in their control of the market, you can expect SSE optimized applications and games to dramatically grow in numbers as time goes on. This is definitely not a repeat of the MMX fiasco.

Encoding an online video show? There are large numbers of users out there that do it on an almost daily basis, and using Microsoft's Netshow Encoder you can see the small but somewhat noticeable improvement in performance due to the SSE optimizations already built in to the software.

The Photoshop benchmark provided to AnandTech was a bit geared towards SSE optimizations in the method of implementation of the image manipulations and filters, however it does illustrate room for SSE's intervention in the lives of graphics artists. Once again, we're provided with a setting where SSE already receives a benefit in an area where the more mature 3DNow! instructions have barely received any attention. Is it fair? Nope, however that's the cold, hard truth.