New Processors: P4 Prescott Up To 3.6 GHz

07:00 - Saturday 19 June 2004 by Patrick Schmid
Source: Tom's Hardware – Keywords: intel, stakes, its, vision, of, the, pc, future, with, 775, launch

Table of content:
12 – New Processors: P4 Prescott Up...
  1. 1 – Intel's 775 Launch Mixes Ambition With A Strong Aftertaste
  2. 2 – First Contact
  3. 3 – Obstacles And Hurdles
  4. 4 – More Findings
  5. 5 – New Socket: LGA 775
  6. 6 – LGA 775 Processor Installation
  7. 7 – LGA 775 Processor Installation, Continued
  8. 8 – LGA 775 Processor Installation, Continued
  9. 9 – MSI's CPU Installation Tool
  10. 10 – Transitional Products
  11. 11 – Poor Thing: Intel Reference Cooler
  12. 12 – New Processors: P4 Prescott Up To 3.6 GHz
  13. 13 – Specification Overview
  14. 14 – Model And Pricing Information
  15. 15 – Processor Overview:
  16. 16 – New Chipsets: 925X, 915G, 915P, 915GV
  17. 17 – New Chipsets: 925X, 915G, 915P, 915GV, Continued
  18. 18 – 925X Express Chipset
  19. 19 – 915G Express Chipset
  20. 20 – 915G Express Chipset, Continued
  21. 21 – 915G Express Chipset, Continued
  22. 22 – 915P Express Chipset
  23. 23 – Chipset Devices
  24. 24 – Intel Puts The Lock On Overclocking
  25. 25 – How To Unlock The Overclocking Lock
  26. 26 – New Memory: DDR2-533, Continued
  27. 27 – DDR2 Memory Vendors
  28. 28 – Intel Flex Memory Technology
  29. 29 – New Interlink: PCI Express
  30. 30 – More SATA, More RAID, More Ports
  31. 31 – Matrix RAID
  32. 32 – Creating A RAID Array
  33. 33 – More HD Performance For Free: Command Queuing
  34. 34 – More Networking: Intel Wireless Connect Technology
  35. 35 – New Audio: High Definition Audio
  36. 36 – Asus P5AD2 Premium
  37. 37 – Foxconn 925A01
  38. 38 – Test Setup
  39. 39 – Benchmarks And Settings
  40. 40 – Platform Benchmarks
  41. 41 – DirectX 8 Benchmarks
  42. 42 – DirectX 8 Benchmarks, Continued
  43. 43 – DirectX 9 Benchmarks, Continued
  44. 44 – Video Benchmarks
  45. 45 – Video Benchmarks, Continued
  46. 46 – Application Benchmarks
  47. 47 – Application Benchmarks, Continued
  48. 48 – Synthetic Benchmarks
  49. 49 – Synthetic Benchmarks, Continued
  50. 50 – Processor Power Consumption
  51. 51 – Integrated Graphics Benchmarks
  52. 52 – Game Benchmarks
  53. 53 – Halo
  54. 54 – Far Cry
  55. 55 – Video Performance
  56. 56 – Networking Benchmarks
  57. 57 – Storage Subsystem Benchmarks
  58. 58 – Conclusion
  59. 59 – A Final Note

New Processors: P4 Prescott Up To 3.6 GHz

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Intel introduces a full line of LGA 775 processors, starting with the new Celeron D at 2.53 to 2.80 GHz. Although these low-cost chips are finally based on the 90 nm process, it does not make them really attractive. They lack HyperThreading and all the features that are actually responsible for turning the current Intel architecture into a family of rapid workers: a decent cache size, a fast system bus speed (called Front Side Bus or FSB) and high clock speeds. While the FSB speed now is 133 MHz in quad data rate mode (FSB 533), the L2 cache size remains limited to 256 kB. In exchange, Celerons are cheap.

Apparently the pins have gone.

Next, a few words on HyperThreading as a refresher - Windows will detect and run two virtual processors on a HT-enabled computer. Intel has tried to increase the utilization of the processor's execution resources, as it is not always possible to efficiently feed the execution units with suitable instructions. For this reason, a feature called out-of-order execution helps to rearrange instructions, but a thread-based approach seemed to be the better solution. Thread-based software benefits from multi-processing computers because they are able to share the thread load to all processors available. What Intel has introduced with HyperThreading is the ability of a single processor to process multiple threads simultaneously.

In this respect, the new Pentium 4 processors are much more interesting, as they run FSB 800, come with 1 MB L2 cache and master HyperThreading. From now on, all future Intel processors will be identified by their processor number rather than by pure clock speed. The reason for this is that Intel is finally hitting the clock speed ceiling - ratcheting up the clock speed is becoming more and more difficult and, at the same time, today's rather small increases 200 MHz don't pay off much with regard to performance.

The 3.4 and 3.6 GHz versions are the most controversial chips, as they will likely be available in homeopathic quantities now - if they will be available at all. This is very likely going to be almost a paper launch until the E0 stepping introduces active power control to the processor line to dam the power loss. After having seen the temperature levels of a 3.6 GHz system, that strategy wouldn't surprise me.


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