Intel Canterwood 3GHz/800 FSB combo is a real road scorcher

UNTIL OCTOBER/NOVEMBER last year all motherboard manufacturers expected the "satanic" front side bus 666 to turn up, Intel caught most people on the hop, skipped this loaded number and chose to go directly for a front side bus speed of 800MHz on its new Pentium 4s.

The real frequency is 200MHz multiplied by four since that's how Intel's quad pump bus marchitecture works. The new P4 3.0 "C" gets its name as Revision A was Northwood, revision B was HT enabled 3.06 GHz and now we've got the 3.0 GHz C. The cache remains at 512KB and the number of SSE 2 instruction is 144 while, as we said, Intel overclocked its own marchitecture and made this PCP work at 266 MHz faster than the earlier FSB 533 CPU. Canterwood is something that killed Intel's chipset Granite Bay before it was even born since it looked attractive even then.

Hyper Threading is built in which can result in some performance increase in some applications.

The new stuff that you will get from this CPU is the FSB 800 that delivers 6.4 GB/sec and features a "split transaction deeply pipelined bus", whatever that means. It's important to know that this CPU will work with all existing IA-32 applications and will work on existing operating systems. The Pentium 4 3-0 C uses a standard socket Micro 478 and looks identical to previous P4's.

On the iI875p Bonanza motherboard you can change a number of settings using a special BIOS mode enabled through jumpers.

Our first tweak resulted with 1.6 GHz frequency while we didn't change multiplier to 15 since it was fixed at eight in our case. When we set this we didn't need to touch the test system apart from some necessary BIOS settings.

The cooler Intel supplies with this CPU has a copper core and is oval shaped with a unique retention mechanism that is easy to mount but not so easy to take off. It's possible to mount complete system with one hand if the other is broken, you can trust me on that one and blame ATI on the other hand.

Canterwood, the i875P, is one big step for Intel since this is a serious move into Dual DDR after it turned out Granite Bay was not so great performer when compared with single channel DDR chipsets such as the i845PE.

The i875P is designed for the Pentium 4 processor with hyperthreading marchitecture that is meant to use your CPU's time as effectively as possible. This current computer is one hell of a hyperthreading platform. Intel has one nice gadget called Performance Acceleration Technology (PAT) that is used to provide optimal performance of bunch of marchitecture such as Dual DDR 400, AGP 8X, FSB 800 CPU, Dual S ATA ports, USB 2.0 and Gigabit Ethernet. Dual SATA is now in ICH5 Southbridge and will help push these kind of drives into the mainstream market.

The Intel D875PBZ "Bonanza" motherboard is a typical Intel board with great software bundle for antivirus but not SRAS and internet security, with two times two DDR slots in black while we are sure that Intel partners will do these slots in different colours.

The printed circuit board is also black and features AGP 8X, five PCI, two S-ATA connectors that can work in Raid mode as well and two IDE connectors for your old drives and floppy that simply won't die. The IDE connectors are very close to each other, so you cannot use all the IDE cables that have side locks. The front panel features six USB ports with antique parallel and serial port and an RJ45 connector for LAN card. The keyboard and PS2 mouse port still live despite the big push to be USB.

The northbridge uses a passive heatsink that certainly helps with noise reduction while you cannot overclock on Intel board following its old tradition but you will sure be able to do that on its partners' motherboards.

The BIOS is standard but allows you play with memory timings, so letting you easily block your system if you're not careful.

If you want to use IDE and SATA drives at the same time you will need to set that in BIOS while you can only use one IDE channel with S-ATA enabled.

Test
The Canterwood rig we reviewed was:
Intel P4 3GHz C FSB 800 MHZ
Intel D875P Canterwood Bonanza motherboard
Kingmax 2 x 256 MB PC3200 DDR 400 module CL 2.5
Western Digital 80 GB 7200 8MB cache drive
Pioneer Slot in DVD
Targa Visionary 19 " display
Intel reference cooler
Enhance 300W Silent PSU

For the i845PE with 3.06 P4 platform testing we used:
P4 3.06 HT FSB 533
Albatron PX845PE PRO II Silver edition

For Athlon/Nforce testing we used:
Epox EP-8GDA+ Nforce 2 IGP + MCP-T
AMD Athlon XP 2700+ FSB 333 MHz CPU
2 x 256 MB Corsair PC3200 XMS DDR 400 module CL 2
Akasa Silver mountain 2

The setups were otherwise the same.

Benchmarks
We used standard Sandra 2003, PC mark 2002 and non replicable gamers test on 640x480, 1024x768 where the CPU has an important role.

The results were a big surprise.

In synthetic test Sandra 2003 on P4 3 C FSB 800 is not so different from 3.06 GHz on i845PE in CPU test as its only 200 Mflops different but 600 Mflops faster than Athlon 2700+ on Nforce 2 that used DDR but 333 in FSB 333 synchronous mode. The FPU test showed a completely new picture where P4 3 C FSB 800 results 800 Mflops better result than 3.06 GHZ on i845PE and shocking 1700 Mflops better in FPU + SSE 2 mode from 3.06 GHz on i845PE or an incredible 2500 Mflops than Athlon 2700+ on Nforce 2

In memory test 3.06 GHz on i845PE and Athlon 2700+ on Nforce 2 are really tight with a slight Intel advantage while Dual DDR 400 Canterwood results with shocking 4867 MB/s -- almost twice as much than its competitors. This baby sure could give you some bandwidth.

In the multimedia benchmark old Pentium stays close to Athlon although it's faster for 3000 IT/s in the floating point SSE2 test while P4 3 C FSB 800 on Canterwood results with record 21000 instruction per second or 6000 more than 3.06 GHz on i845PE or 7000 more than Athlon. In Sandra P4 3 GHZ C with Canterwood Dual DDR 400 memory we can see some wild performance.

PC mark 2002 makes similar picture where 3.06 GHz on i845PE is a little faster than P4 3 C FSB 800 and we believe that 60 MHz faster frequency while Athlon 2700+ is about 900 marks slower. The hard drive test is almost the same on both Intel's while Athlon on Nforce 2 didn't run the test. Memory test dominates on P4 3 C FSB 800 and it's two times faster than Athlon 2700+ on Nforce 2, even with its dual DDR chipset as well.

3D mark 2001SE shows shoulder by shoulder performance with Athlon 2700+ andP4 3.06 GHz while P4 3 GHz C gives about 1200 marks better result from both concurrent. Nature test is fastest on 3.06 GHz while it's interesting to see P4 3 GHZ C running its slowest.

3Dmark03 -- not recommended by Nvidia is about 150 marks faster on P4 3 GHz C versus P4 3.06 and the Athlon 2700+ while the Mother Nature test runs practically identically on all platforms.

CPU test 1 and 2 are slightly faster on Athlon 2700+ compared with 3.06 GHz while P4 3 GHZ C is about 20 percent faster than Athlon.

The legendary Quake 3 likes FSB 800 and memory bandwidth of P4 3 GHZ C on I875P that dominates and results with 90 FPS more than older 3.06 GHz on i845PE platform. Athlon 2700+ is slightly faster than old 3.06 GHZ, while it loses from P4 3 GHz C for significant 90 FPS.

Aquamark repeats previous scenario where Athlon 2700+ is slightly faster than 3.06 GHz while P4 3 GHz C this time is close to competitors but still 10 FPS faster than Athlon 2700+.

Serious Sam 2 on P4 3 GHZ C runs about 15 FPS faster than Athlon 2700+ on Nforce 2 at 640x480 while at 1024x768 Athlon 2700+ outperformsP4 3 GHz C for significant 7 FPS. P4 3.06 GHZ on i845PE is slowest platform in this case. Serious Sam 2 mysteriously runs better on Athlons.

Unreal Tournament 2003 FLY is 20 FPS faster on P4 3 GHz C than on Athlon 2700+ in both resolutions while in both test Nforce 2 dominates on both resolutions and its 2 FPS faster than P4 3 GHZ C. P4 3.06 GHZ on i845PE is slowest platform in this case as well. Unreal Tournament 2003 simply likes Dual Channel DDR.

Conclusion
This time Intel took our breath away, even if we're not the sort of people that get excited easily. This is one big performance step especially bearing in mind that we're talk about frequency decrease of 60 MHz from last P4. Up to 20 per cent is what we have experienced and this means a lot in this arena. Get 90 FPS in more Quake 3 while you just change your CPU and a board means a lot especially since the price of FSB 800 and 533 should not be much different. Gamers of all continents will benefit from faster game loading and better frame rate and this is a winning platform for you. Professional users may also benefit from this platform as well since extra speed always count.

AMD loses CPU battle at least for a while but I have in mind that Intel could be still caught by AMD, maybe with the new FSB 400 Barton. We expect to see a Barton FSB 400 in next month or two to fill the existing performance gap in AMD's line at least until September before Athlon 64 arrives. Athlon 64 will then have nasty competitor codenamed Prescott with 13 new SSE instructions and 1 MB cache on 90 nanometer.

If you have the money and want the fastest CPU and board in the tenement block, the P4 3.0 GHz C with FSB 800 and Canterwood chipset is the clear choice for you. You cannot get any better than this, at least for the time being. It's the fastest X86 CPU on the planet.µ

See Also
Intel Canterwood thrashes competition, takes Sun to the cleaners System Integrator review
Review of Evesham Canterwood machine

Benchmarks

Quake 3	640x480	1024x768
P4 3.0C FSB 800 Canterwood	391.8	364.8
P4 3.06 FSB 533 Albatron i845PE	301.7	283.2
Athlon 2700+ Nforce 2	302.1	295.1
Aquamark	640x480	1024x768
P4 3.0C FSB 800 Canterwood	115.10	96.9
P4 3.06 FSB 533 Albatron i845PE	99.4	87.5
Athlon 2700+ Nforce 2	104.9	91.4
Serious Sam 2	640x480	1024x768
P4 3.0C FSB 800 Canterwood	141.1	118.2
P4 3.06 FSB 533 Albatron i845PE	117.4	108.4
Athlon 2700+ Nforce 2	127	125.7
3Dmark 2001SE Nature	640x480	1024x768
P4 3.0C FSB 800 Canterwood	16380	96.9
P4 3.06 FSB 533 Albatron i845PE	15026	101.3
Athlon 2700+ Nforce 2	15117	98.9
UT 2003 Fly	640x480	1024x768
P4 3.0C FSB 800 Canterwood	234	218.3
P4 3.06 FSB 533 Albatron i845PE	206.1	200.1
Athlon 2700+ Nforce 2	206.1	200
UT 2003 Bot	640x480	1024x768
P4 3.0C FSB 800 Canterwood	71.8	71.9
P4 3.06 FSB 533 Albatron i845PE	64	63.8
Athlon 2700+ Nforce 2	73.5	73.5
PC Mark 2002	CPU	Memory	HDD
P4 3.0C FSB 800 Canterwood	7434	9435	446
P4 3.06 FSB 533 Albatron i845PE	7484	6921	477
Athlon 2700+ Nforce 2	6571	4955	N/A
Sandra 2002	Canterwood	Albatron	Nforce 2
CPU	8785	8586	8121
	2585/5745	1765/4036	3283
Memory	4867	2507	2442
	4806	2508	2316
Multimedia	13832	12196	12083
	21649	15532	12899
Composite Figures	3Dmark03	Nature	CPU Test 1	CPU Test 2
Canterwood	4862	27.1	76.9	12.9
Albatron	4724	27.1	62.7	10
Nforce 2	4703	27	63	11.3