I just did some tests comparing Amithlon and WinUAE 1.3 on the same machine. I used two benchmarks: SysInfo and DSPSPEED.
MachineA: PIII-1000, 384 MB RAM
[color=ffff00]..........[/color]|-------SysInfo----------| |-DSPSPEED-|
[color=ffff00]............[/color]MIPS[color=ffff00]..[/color]MFLOPS[color=ffff00].[/color] Dhrystones[color=ffff00]..[/color]PSA_I PSA_F
Amithlon[color=ffff00]..[/color]707.62[color=ffff00]..[/color]287.60 [color=ffff00].....[/color]677907[color=ffff00]...[/color]1520 [color=ffff00]..[/color]990
WinUAE[color=ffff00]....[/color]370.33[color=ffff00]..[/color]144.10[color=ffff00]......[/color]354784[color=ffff00]....[/color]810 [color=ffff00].[/color]1170
[/size]
Looking at the numbers, Amithlon is about twice as fast as WinUAE on the same machine. The only exception seems to be in Floating Point calculations as seen in the PSA_F tests.
I came to the conclusion that for most tasks, Amithlon will be faster. WinUAE 1.3 has newer Floating Point routines which explains its advantage over Amithlon. Remember WinUAE 1.3 just came out within the last month or so. Amithlon is almost 5 years old. The only thing that has really been updated were the drivers.
I use both WinUAE and Amithlon. Subjectively, Amithlon is much faster. In fact, it is a more responsive OS than the Windows XP machine I have in the office which is a P4-3000 with Hyperthreading and 2 GB RAM. Even though I have optimized it (keeping it clean of spyware and removing unnecessary background tasks), it still has unexplained pauses, and sluggishness for no apparent reasons. My Amithlon (which is on a much slower PIII-1000), is much snappier: Windows and Icons appear immediately, I never experience any sluggishness. My word processors (AmigaWriter and ProWrite) are faster. Even my web browser (AWeb) is more responsive than either FireFox or IE.
I use WinUAE for its compatibility with the Amiga Custom Chipset. It is amazing how accurate its Paula emulation is. I use Deluxe Music with both MIDI and internal sounds. The internal sounds sound almost exactly the way they do on a real Amiga.
But for software that uses AHI audio and P96 graphics. Amithlon is better.
I'm sure if Amithlon had continued development, its Floating Point routines would have improved a lot too.
But who says you have to choose between one and another. I have both on the same machine. It's a dual-boot Windows XP and Amithlon computer. And in Windows, I have WinUAE.