Intel Pentium Prescott 3.2GHz compared, contrasted

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Online reviews read, analysed and condensed
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X86 Secrets

Pentium 4 Bis Repetita
Isn't Intel Pentium 4 Prescott really meant to be called Pentium V? After all, the changes in specifications are important enough to warrant a number change. Roughly similar changes brought us the Pentium II out of the original Pentium Pro back in May 1997. The hype and speculation surrounding Prescott's launch has been magnified, and to some extent exaggerated, by the mere fact that Intel's minnow competitor, AMD, was also about to make its own Athlon 64 launches. If you are a regular INQ reader, you will have surely noticed that Prescott's launch was nowhere near a smooth and easy one. Power consumption as well as disappointing performance figures left the world wondering if Prescott wasn't simply a re-edition of the Pentium's IV launch. Starting at 1.3GHz, the latter was behind the older Pentium III family in most benchmarks but ultimately succeeded in replacing it even though aficionados of the Tualatin core are still numerous.

Things however are not that simple now. While others avenues are yet to be introduced (3D/stacked cores, multiple cores, super-hyper threading, revolutionary methods of cooling, SSEx instructions or organic CPUs), Intel chose to extend the life of the Pentium IV (available since November 2000) using well known reliable techniques - thinner manufacturing processes (90nm), a new set of instructions (SSE3 - 13 in all), larger caches (both L1 and L2) and deeper pipelines.

None of these techniques would have alone increased performance significantly. So we can pray so that together they will benefit Prescott with time.

Intel, however, has been expeditious, to say the least, with releases of various speed grades to complement and gradually replace existing 800MHz and 533MHz parts, even though this was done without any press release and supplies seem to be a little tight on both sides of the Atlantic. Remember, shifting to 90nm as quickly as possible produces more CPU (hence more profit) per wafer. 2.4GHz parts are more likely to be P4 2.4A (without Hyper Threading and using 533MHz - which some have called the Prescott Celeron) while 2.8GHz, 3.2GHz, 3.0GHz and 3.4GHz replace the A with an E.

As compared to the original Pentium 4, it has doubled the FSB (from 400 to 800MHz), quadrupled the L2 cache to 1 MB, doubled L1 cache to 16Kb, halved “thickness” of process to 90nm and that of its physical size to 112mm^2, tripled number of transistors to 125 millions, decreased core voltage by around 20% but doubled Thermal Design Power to 89w, added 50% more pipelines (from 20 to 31 stages) and worst of all, is rumored to increase considerably the size of standard HSF.

Performance and overclockability
The performance of the new chip on the block is far from astounding. In fact, it has been greeted with little enthusiasm. While in some rare cases, it succeeds in pipping other chips, in almost all cases, it is trounced and utterly outwitted by its predecessors and its competitors. This will probably change with time with updated benchmark software to reflect market realities. As with the early Pentium 4, previous generations are more mature and pack more punch. Nonetheless, the cat is out of the bag. Credit has to be given to Intel though for having restrained its spindoctors and its marketing department from making Prescott a flafla paper launch.

As for overclocking, the 3.2GHz Prescott has achieved 5.101GHz using exotic phase change cooling, gaining almost 2GHz, not so far from what seems to be a world record of 5.30 GHz using the utterly different Pentium 4EE.

Also, a word of caution. I have noticed that benchmarks for similar software packages vary widely across the reviews examined. Downloading the packages and performing the benchmarks might prove to be a better idea. Finally, please don't read the benchmark table out of context, it's simply a measuring stick. We strongly advise you to visit the websites where we obtained these figures.

In the marketplace
One thing to start with. No man is an island and neither is CPU. Without the motherboard, it's nothing. Unfortunately, 100% compatibility with existing motherboards is not warranted. ATI Radeon 9100IGP, Intel 848P, 865P, 865G, 865PE, 875P, SiS 655FX, 655TX and VIA PT800, PT880 based motherboard seem to be the ones to go for. No i845X, SIS650 or P4X motherboards. To complicate things even more, different families of Pentium IV co-exist in the market. Older 533MHz-FSB Northwood CPUs are still abundant on the market , newer 800MHz Northwood processors still rule the hill and the Extremely-Expensive Pentium 4EE (which look more like a consumer Xeon than anything else) was introduced only months earlier to act as a buffer and to compete with AMD's Athlon 64, all of which make the picture even more blurry. While Spinsters at AMD can now easily use their PR ratings to differentiate between processors to suit both marketing and technical requirements, Intel has yet to come out with something similar.

As for pricing, 2.4GHz, 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz and 3.2GHz parts cost respectively $144, $180, $239 and $289. The yet unannounced 3.4GHz will ship at $492. As usual, Britons do not seem to enjoy the depth of supply as Americans. Only ebuyer seems to stock parts at a premium. £130.78, £154.99, £213.52, £316.83 buy you parts from 2.8GHz to 3.4GHz.

In conclusion
The future of the Pentium 4 family lies in the Yamhill x86-64 extensions as well as (to a certain extent) in La Grande security features which will probably be included before the end of this year. Towards the second semester, we will witness introduction of new “improvements” like the new LGA775 socket, new chipsets (i915 and i925), new instructions, enhanced hyper threading and some more core steppings. Also, the 90nm manufacturing process is still in its infancy with loads of tweaking and tuning ahead; achieving 4GHz (with the Tejas AKA Pentium 6?) by the end of the year is conceivable but simply increasing speed will prove insufficient. AMD for once does not seem to care much about speed and has already announced that it will include one of Prescott's gems (SSE3) in future Athlon64 CPUs. Also notice how Intel seems to launch major processors (P2/K6, P3/K7, P4/Thunderbird, P5/Athlon64). So should you go and buy one? If you are one of those very rare golden birds who can spend thousands a year on systems and upgrades, go right ahead. Else, either wait for major system upgrades to come later this year or better still, buy yourself a dual Opteron. For the rest of us, penny pinchers, objectively, AMD still provide more oomph per unit money. Finally, I wonder where will the Pentium 4 EE fit in the picture having apparently been launched to counteract AMD's concurrent CPU launch.

Resources
VR-zone's overclocking board
Intel Official Roadmap
A Handy P4 comparison chart